As we enter the new year and kick-off 2021, it is important to take some time to set your goals for 2021.
Setting Goals
Your goals might be personal goals, or they might be professional goals that you set as part of a collaborative process between you and your boss/ manager.
Start the new year right by setting your goals.
SMART goals
Whether writing long or short term goals, the most widely used framework is S-M-A-R-T. Here is a quick reminder:
- Specific: Well-defined with specific goals, so that both you and your boss can easily measure progress toward goal completion.
- Measurable: Provide milestones to track progress and motivate yourself.
- Attainable: Success needs to be achievable with effort not too high or too low.
- Relevant: It should be relevant to the companies objectives (not just your own).
- Time-bound: Establish enough time to achieve the goal, but not too much time to undermine performance.
Develop and expand your goals using this framework and most importantly – write your goals down.
Tracking Goals
Once you’ve established your goals, the next step is tracking progress on those goals.
We have developed a number of tools for going this including using a career journal If you haven’t already got one why not get started with PROMPT: 52 prompts for setting up and writing your career journal. It’s important to track your progress on goals because you will need to have the information available during the all-important review process.
For those of you who work for a company with a formal review/appraisal process you may which to use the Career Progression Goals and Meetings Notebook has a focus on setting goals, developing an action plan and tracking your progress as well as one handy place to prepare for and keep a record of career-related meetings, your achievements, training and of course that all-important appraisal/review meeting. The notebook can be used with or without a career journal.
Finally, we have the simple pocket Career Development Goals notebook, if you are looking for something minimalist to keep you on track.
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