First make sure you are in a good state before you set your Goal. Make sure you are feeling really good at work and feel like you have unlimited potential. This is really important – otherwise your Goal will be small and probably quite limiting. For example, you may just be setting your sights on a promotion one level up rather than a few levels up – maybe it’s time you think about heading up a department or a large project. Your goal needs to be really stretching and feel a little out of reach.
Try this exercise to really get what I mean. Stretch your hand up, stretch it a little more… now imagine your goal is a little bit higher and out of reach to where you have stretched your hand. If you stretch your hand further, you will be able to get that goal. That’s where you should set your goals.
This will ensure that you are really challenging yourself and using your full potential – and when you do achieve your goal, it will feel like a real accomplishment! The other reason setting a good goal is really important is so that it can help you prioritise which decisions and actions you need to take. For example if your goal is to head up a large department, you can then choose the actions which have the highest impact towards achieving your goal. Any decision that does not get you closer to your goal, you can simply ignore.
Make sure you are not limiting your-self by your fears, past experiences or worse other people’s limitations of you. Managers are all too quick in appraisals to give feedback such as “you didn’t do this well’ or “you need to improve on this” or “you need more experience of this” or worse “you are not ready for that”. Do NOT let others people’s opinions limit your opinion of yourself.
In setting your goals, you need to be thinking of the next few roles ahead and the future. I always tell clients to have short, medium and long term goals. Short term goals are quick wins that can get you things like more money, a promotion, a new project. A short term win will boost your self-esteem and remind you that you are capable of so much more. The long term goal is the big goal that you have to work hard to get and feels really rewarding when you do finally achieve it. The medium term goal should support the long-term goal and act as a milestone on the journey. Say for example, your long-term goal is to head up a large department, your medium term goal will have to include experience of staff management, attending senior management meetings and taking responsibility. You can then work out how to get this experience – for example it may happen by taking on a particular project.
How do you know you have set the right Goal?
Once you have set the goal, you need to check out that it is right. You can do this via a visualisation. Close your eyes, take a deep breath and clear your head of all thoughts and feelings. Then IMAGINE that you have achieved the goal that you set and that you are living this goal. Step into the body of the future you who has achieved this goal. How does your day start? How are you dressed at work, how are you speaking in meetings and around the office? What posture do you have? What words are you saying, how do other people in the office regard you? And how are you feeling – are you feeling excited and vibrant? Is your spirit and personality excited to be in this goal with you?
If the answer to all the above is positive, then you have set the right goal. You will know from the feeling it brings you when you think about having it. In fact, the thought of the goal should make you feel so excited that you want to jump out of bed each morning to go to work and achieve it! If that’s not how you are feeling, then you have not set the right goal. In that case, you need to take some time to evaluate what it is you really want. Get some help if you need it – there are coaches who can help with this or if you want to try it your-self, then there are several books that talk about how to set Goals.
By Career Coach, Meera Shah. For more details, visit www.meeracareercoaching.com