While I believe strategic goal setting is vastly under taught, it is still emphasized within most educational and professional arenas. And for the bulk of us who either fall under the bucket of being futuristic, ambitious or have a work structure that is built around regular benchmarks, have been introduced to the act of repetitively setting goals.
Properly, what is to be done with a goal? Setting a goal is half the battle, and I won’t take away any of the glory because it is a vital and big first step in accomplishing anything. But the real learning and growth comes from analyzing and dissecting your performance in striving for your goal. Could you have worked harder? Could you have worked smarter? Should you have delegated more? Should you have started sooner? Should you have finished sooner to allow for unforeseen errors? i.e. What have you learned?
At the end of your goal timeline you should value setting aside personal time, settling into a space that you have to yourself, and allowing yourself to fully analyze your efforts. In starting I would suggest writing out your goals and listing the actions you took to accomplish each. Take time to dig into each action item listed and analyze them: Was that action necessary? Could I have streamlined that process? This in depth evaluation will help when reevaluating your overall goal. Was the goal realistic to begin with? Did you overachieve and therefore learned that next time you can do it quicker or on a greater scale? On a much more personal level it’s key to even ask yourself questions such as: Did this process make me happy? How did I feel when accomplishing this goal? How does this goal relate to my personal brand?
Goal setting is truly an art. And within this art I truly feel that the Self Performance Review piece is the toughest aspect and the one in which it takes true self honesty to master. To help guide self honesty it is always wisest to use numbers, statistics and data to support goals and benchmarks and as well in analyzing your self-performance.
Don’t be your own worst critic. Become your own best coach!
If you would like some support in further defining your own self-review strategies or identifying particular steps and strategies to achieve your goals, let's connect! Contact me for a free Candid Professional career coaching session @ corbin@thecandidprofessional.com.
By: Corbin J Pickett