A new year is the perfect time to take a look at the goals you already have in place for your business, yourself and your team.

Happy New Year to you! We trust you have had a good break and are raring to go as we start 2022. We are looking forward to working with you this year.

After reflecting on 2021 you may be thinking about what you’d like 2022 to look like for you and your team. A new year is the perfect time to take a look at the goals you already have in place for your business, yourself and your team – seeing if you are on track to reach them, adjusting them or maybe making them bigger as you’ve already smashed through the last set you set!

We all know that if you don’t have a target, you won’t hit it and won’t know that you’ve met it?

On our Management Development Programme, we ask our participants to create goals for themselves, both professional and personal. Not to give too many spoilers away, but we then ask them to aim for them on an archery target. Wow, such a powerful exercise, it really helps you to focus on achieving that goal. Whilst I was aiming for mine recently, I was thinking through how I was going to achieve the goal – this activity helped me to visualise the process and the feeling of celebration when I achieve it!

We are often used to developing operational goals and professional goals for our team, yet they can be many other areas too, such as award aspirations – for your team to be recognised in your industry or local area, wellbeing goals and what about social goals, do you have goals to have fun with your team? Fun is one of our key values so we always factor that in when setting our team goals for the year!

When training people on setting goals or objectives I always give the example of me climbing Mount Everest! If I say I want to do it but don’t have a SMART objective in place it is likely to stay on my ‘bucket list’! Our objectives need to be SMART, or as we like to say at Pro-Development, ‘SMARTIE’. They need to be:

• Specific using action words to outline the goal
• Measurable provide a way to evaluate success
• Achievable within the scope of role/business, and possible to accomplish
• Relevant ensure it makes sense within the function of the role or business
• Time-bound be specific giving a timeframe for when it will be achieved
• Involvement state who is accountable, who is involved and make sure everyone is clear
• Engaging state how you will engage. Make sure people are engaged in wanting to achieve this. Measure Engagement

To start with they can take a little practice to develop good SMARTIE goals, it’s worth persisting with them as they get a lot easier the more you write or work with them.  Evidence of poorly written goals is when many questions need to be asked about it, “How am I going to achieve this?”, “When does it need to be done by?”, “Who else is involved?” etc.

Setting aside valuable time with your team to create goals and objectives is rewarding as you inspire and empower each other, stretching the goal posts even wider to see all that is achievable. This helps create ownership, engagement and motivation as your team fully connects with the vision and goals.

Diarise times when you remind the team of its goals. We all know how unsettling and demotivating it is when we are unsure of the destination or the steps we need to take to get ‘there’. Even if we think our team ‘know’ or ‘should know’ what their or your team goals are for the year ahead, regular reminders help to reinforce them and gives opportunities for clarification.

SMARTIE Objectives are developed in line with the organisations vision and strategy for your team members and can then be regularly reviewed and monitored through 1:1 conversations and performance reviews so that you can monitor and support individuals as they go about their work.  And if you don’t have a vision or strategy documented yet, look out for the blog coming out later this month on how to do that.

Have fun setting your goals this year, and remember we are always here to help you achieve them!

Take a look here for more on our Management Development Programme, and here for more information on our People Fundamentals course.

Enjoy your January.

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