Setting Personal Goals

Setting Personal Goals Setting Personal Goals Do you set personal goals? Are some of your goals more important than others? Setting goals will help ...
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Setting Personal Goals

Setting Personal Goals

Do you set personal goals? Are some of your goals more important than others? Setting goals will help you take more responsibility for your own development.

What are goals? Goals are what we are setting out to achieve, where we are heading, and how we will know when we’ve arrived. In other words, goals give us: A purpose for our activities - where we want to be A sense of direction - which way we’re going A way of measuring our achievement - to know when we’ve arrived In this session we’ll look at these three aspects of personal goals: 1. Where do you want to be? 2. How do you want to get there? 3. How will you judge when you’ve arrived? By the end of the session you should have made some decisions about your own personal goals, decisions that may help you plan your personal development.

Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd © 2006 Copied under licence

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Setting Personal Goals

Where do you want to be? Most people spend very little time thinking about their personal goals. We all tend to wait for job or training opportunities to crop up and, if they look interesting, might try and grab them. The trouble is, if you don’t know where you want to be you won’t be looking for the best opportunities. And you may take opportunities that look as if they might be right for you but then turn out not to be, because you hadn’t really thought them through. Reads this case study to see what could happen.

Case Study Tom works in a plant nursery. He has been there for about a year and really enjoys the work. The trouble is, he isn’t qualified and so the jobs he can do are fairly limited. Some of the other people he works with get to do more advanced work, but Tom is not allowed to do so. He finds this frustrating. One day a friend says he is starting a gardening business, going round to people’s houses to mow the grass, do weeding, and so on. He asks Tom to join him and Tom agrees. After a few weeks he finds that this is less interesting than his old job, but he can’t go back because they have taken on a replacement. One day he meets his former manager and says how we wished he’d not left. His manager replies: “If only you had said, we could have put you on a training course. We didn’t realise you were really serious about the work. The new person is working towards an NVQ.”

Tom’s mistake was not to ask. You may think that an employer would ask what you want to do, but many don’t. Just because they don’t ask doesn’t mean that they won’t support you either. But, if you don’t know what you want to do, then you can’t ask for opportunities and you may get attracted by opportunities that don’t actually turn out to be what you really want to do. Opportunities can be: The chance for training A promotion or transfer to another job The chance to gain some experience in a different job to see what it involves All these opportunities can help you develop yourself and your career.

Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd © 2006 Copied under licence

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Setting Personal Goals

Exercise Where do you really want to do go with your career? What do you really want to be or to do, five years or so from now?

What sort of training and experience do you need to get there?

How do you want to get there? Some goals can only be reached in one way, but that’s not always the case. In fact, there are often several different ways of getting where you want to go. Imagine you want to get to somewhere on the other side of a large town or city. You could drive through the centre, more or less in a straight line. You could use the smaller roads that weave about through the town, avoiding the main traffic jams. Or you could get onto the ring road that goes round the outside of town and then come in from the other side. If you don’t know the place, you might use a guide book, a map or a satellite navigation system. However, they don’t always show the best route, the one that avoids the worst trouble spots. Even if you know the place, you may only know the regular routes. You may not know that there is an alternative that’s much easier and quicker. If you don’t know the town and you don’t have a map, you may ask someone. If you ask the right person, you may get very good advice. If you ask the wrong person you may find yourself going round in circles.

Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd © 2006 Copied under licence

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Setting Personal Goals Let’s think about these alternatives: Maps (or guides) can help, but they may not show all the choices Personal knowledge can be useful, but may also be limited Other people may be helpful, but may not always know the best options The best way is to use your own knowledge, ask as many others as possible, and find out what maps or guides are available. It’s the same with your personal goals. If you have identified what you want to do in your career, what kind of job you want to aim for, ask yourself: What information is available about the job, or any training for it? What do I know about how to do the job? Who is most likely to know about how to get to do the job? By taking advantage of all the sources of information, you are more likely to identify all the possible ways of achieving your goals.

Case Study Tom decides not to make the same mistake twice. He really wants to get back into the world of plant nurseries, so he looks on the Internet for information about the kinds of qualifications and jobs he could do. He then sits down and thinks about the people he worked with and the kind of work they did. He then thinks about which of them were doing jobs that he really would like to do, and decides that it was Sam and Jenny. Finally, he goes down to the pub where they all used to go after work and meets up with them all again. He asks Sam and Jenny if they mind if he has a word with them, and asks them how they got the jobs they had. Sam says he went to college for a year after school, and Jenny says she did a Foundation Apprenticeship. Tom worries that he is too old for an apprenticeship and he can’t afford to give up work for college. Sam tells him: “You can do it part time, although it takes a bit longer. Why don’t you go down to the Information Centre at the college and ask them?” Jenny adds: I found them really helpful. They will always tell you about the other opportunities as well.”

Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd © 2006 Copied under licence

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Setting Personal Goals

Exercise How can you get where you want to go? What do you know about the opportunities available to you to help you achieve your goals?

Where can you get information about the opportunities available to you to achieve your goals?

Who do you know who might be able to give you advice about achieving your goals?

How will you judge when you’ve arrived? Goals are not just about having some idea of the direction you are heading in, but should provide you with the ability to judge whether or not you have arrived. That way you can monitor your progress. Monitor means that you can check your progress towards your goals. That way you will know if you are moving in the right direction and whether you will arrive in the time you set. The best way to do this is to set SMART goals.

Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd © 2006 Copied under licence

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Setting Personal Goals

SMART Goals One useful mnemonic to help you set your goals is SMART. A mnemonic is a word made up of the first letters of a set of words you want to remember. SMART stands for: Specific - your goals should be clear and detailed enough so that there is no doubt what you meant to achieve. (eg “To get a team leader qualification” rather than “Improve my qualifications”.) Measurable - you should be able to know whether or not you have achieved them. (eg “Sign up for a course in the next six months” rather than “See what courses are available”.) Achievable - there is no point setting goals you have little chance of achieving. Equally, your goals should stretch you. Stretch goals make you reach out for them and raise your performance. Resourced - you will need time to undertake some training or job shadowing, to pay the fees for a course and the support of your line manager. These are all examples of resources. Time-bound - you need to set a time for the achievement of your goals, so that there is a point in the future when you can review your performance. Whenever you set goals, run through the SMART checklist. You are far more likely to achieve goals which are Specific, Measurable, Achievable , Resourced and Time-bound.

Set priorities Priorities are about the degree to which particular goals are important and urgent. People often get these two mixed up. Just because something is important doesn’t mean that it has to be done soon. In the same way, something that has to be done soon because otherwise the opportunity may be missed, isn’t necessarily important. It often helps to use the idea of importance and urgency to work out the order in which to do tasks. The diagram over the page can help you to sort tasks and plan when to do them.

Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd © 2006 Copied under licence

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Setting Personal Goals

The Urgent/Important Grid More urgent

More important

Less important

Less urgent

Must be done soon.

Plan a time for it

Do you need help?

to be done.

Can someone else do it? If not, do it quickly.

Does it need doing? Can someone else do it?

One way of using the urgent/important grid is to divide your desk or work table into four boxes. You can do it in your head, you don’t need to mark it. Write all the things you need to do onto pieces of paper or sticky notes. Put each note into the appropriate square. Then use the advice above to decide how to deal with it. Use this to set your goals.

Using milestones Some goals are so large that they seem almost impossible to achieve. That’s where milestones can help. Milestones are sub-goals, goals that help you on your way to achieve your main goal, just like milestones on the road tell you how far you are from your destination. A goal like ’Replace all the shelving’ can be broken down into: Get the team to clear all the shelves by 11 o’clock. Get maintenance to take out all the old shelves by lunchtime and install the new shelving, by three o’clock. Get the team to sort through everything that was on the shelves by lunchtime, to see if anything needs to be disposed of. Plan the new shelving layout, by lunchtime. Review and agree the proposed layout with the team, by three o’clock. Put everything back on the shelves by five o’clock.

Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd © 2006 Copied under licence

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Setting Personal Goals If you set SMART goals (and sub-goals) for yourself, and set priorities for the tasks you need to complete to achieve your goals, you are much more likely to achieve them. Then, after you complete each goal, take time to review what you have accomplished. You need to congratulate yourself. Instead of seeing only an endless series of hills to climb, you will be able to see what you have done. If you can be happy about what you have done, you will want to set more goals. As you meet your goals, you will see just how much you are accomplishing! You will also know if you are going to miss your overall goal, if anything starts to go wrong. You can revise your overall goal and warn anyone who is affected by it.

Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd © 2006 Copied under licence

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Setting Personal Goals

Comprehension Check Complete the following exercises. Refer back to the session if necessary. A. What three benefits will you get from setting personal goals ? 1. 2. 3. B. What three types of information can you use to help you achieve your personal goals? 1. 2. 3. C. Read the following questions. Circle the letter in front of the answer. 1. How do goals help you? a. When you set goals, you don’t have to worry about what you do. b. Setting goals uses time that you would otherwise waste. c. Goals let you know what you need to accomplish in a set amount of time. 2. A task that must be done soon but which you aren’t too worried about achieving is: a. urgent and important b. not urgent and important c. urgent and not important 3. Darren is keen to become a team leader. He agrees with his line manager to have time to work in all four departments in the organisation as soon as he can. Is this goal: a. Specific b. Measurable c. Achievable d. Resourced e. Time-bound? (Choose each one that applies)

Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd © 2006 Copied under licence

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Setting Personal Goals

Making Connections Answer the questions following the case. Peter works at a branch of Computer World. At the beginning of the workday, Peter’s team leader, Mary, tells him to dust off the computers on display, put the boxes of new CD-ROMs on the correct shelves, and move the colour printers to another display area. Peter dusts off the computers. A customer asks him where she can find a book. Peter takes the customer to the area with the books. Peter and the customer talk about computer games. Then Peter unpacks the box of CD-ROMs. Peter thinks he has finished the most important part of the job task. So, he spends the rest of the morning talking with a team member. Mary sees Peter and asks why he hasn't moved the printers.

1. What were Peter’s goals for the morning?

2. Which goal did he forget?

3. What skill could help Peter finish his task?

Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd © 2006 Copied under licence

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Setting Personal Goals

Think and Apply How well do you use the skills in this session? Think about what you learned and then consider someone that you know who is well organised. You might think of a friend or a team member who accomplishes a lot in a day. How does the person do it? Does he or she identify goals? Does he or she have priorities?

1. Read the list of skills. Tick the boxes to show your strengths and weaknesses. Skills

strengths weaknesses I’m good at this

I’m I’m not I’m quite so quite good good poor at this at this at this

identifying your goals finding out information to help achieve your goals planning the sequence of your goals ensuring your goals are SMART setting priorities for goals using milestones 2. Do you want to improve any of these skills?

3. How do you plan to improve the skills you listed in question 2? (You might want to discuss this with your line manager or your tutor/mentor/coach.)

Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd © 2006 Copied under licence

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