5 Critical Steps to Goal Setting

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Brian Williams, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

We are business professionals, entrepreneurs, parents, athletes, or business owners. We all have objectives that we are striving to meet. They might be formal goals like increasing sales, breaking 20 minutes for my next 5k run, or saving for retirement. No matter what, it helps to have an idea where our actions might take us.

Many people use the SMART system as a functional template for goal setting. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Based. This article will give you a series of questions and examples designed to speed up the actions required to give your goals life.

When do I expect my goal to be achieved?

We have all heard the cliché, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Yet most of us are used to instantaneous access to information, resources, and entertainment. This makes goal setting, especially for more complex outcomes, very challenging.

Research studies have found that creating time-based outcomes is critical to achieving our goals. For example, an app developer wants to drive one million downloads. Leaders in the company might take the approach of developing incremental objectives. They could:

• increase the number of favorable online reviews
• incorporate measureable unique and appealing design characteristics within the app
• improve the click-through rate to download thresholds for mobile search ads

Break the larger goal into bite-sized pieces. Then you can achieve short-term wins while still moving toward your objective. Additional benefits of creating nested goals may include:

• achieving mastery in related critical skills
• fostering motivation and cohesion within teams
• improving operational efficiency

What is the outcome that I expect from my investment of time and resources?

Let’s face it. Everyone is looking for immediate results. And they want them with the smallest financial investment and the least amount of effort. In other words, we want to hit the mega-millions jackpot—today. Given the odds, how can we stack the deck in our favor, giving us the highest chance for success?

First, establish a broad vision that connects with your core values. The most successful individuals and companies in history have one thing in common. They all embrace an easily understood mission that connects them with the people they work with.

Here are a few examples:

Amazon: Our vision is to be earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.

Amanda Steinberg, Founder of Dailyworth.com: To use my gifts of intelligence, charisma, and serial optimism to cultivate the self-worth and net-worth of women around the world.

Microsoft: We believe in what people make possible. Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Ford: People working together as a lean, global enterprise to make people’s lives better through automotive and mobility leadership.

Sir Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group: To have fun in [my] journey through life and learn from [my] mistakes.

Patagonia: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Am I moving toward a desired outcome or away from an undesired state?

Michelangelo famously stated, “In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”

How we frame an objective is as important as understanding the desired outcome. Moving towards a goal improves performance and well-being. It also reduces anxiety and depression. Clearly understanding the goal’s trajectory is also critical to maintaining focus and drive. Compare a client whose goal was to “avoid stressful home and work situations” to another who sought to “establish a focused balance at home and work.”

Consider the following goals and how you might frame each one to move positively towards it:

• Work toward greater physical fitness.
• Find 10 new prospects for my business this month.
• Meet new people through my present friends.
• Write one new blog article this week.
• Be mindful about things that upset me.
• Promote happiness and hope to others.
• Achieve 6 hours of restful sleep per night.
• Maintain dietary discipline between meals to lose weight.
• Always be thankful, no matter what the circumstances.
• Keep my German Shorthair Pointer puppy happy and healthy.

Is my goal focused on performance or process?

One of the key phrases that I use as a personal development coach is that great processes lead to great performance. The most impact comes from goals that instill both growth and grit into a project. These tenets of goal-setting are based on the related research into mindset and resiliency conducted by Professors Carol Dweck of Stanford and Martin Seligman and Angela Duckworth, both of the University of Pennsylvania.

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, focused on embedding a “growth mindset” in the company. It has led to a fundamental transformation in the firm’s business model. Speaking to Bloomberg in 2016, he said:

“In [the book Mindset] there’s this very simple concept that Carol Dweck talks about, which is if you take two people, one of them is a learn-it-all and the other one is a know-it-all, the learn-it-all will always trump the know-it-all in the long run, even if they start with less innate capability.”

Dweck’s book presents the idea of a “fixed” mindset. These individuals become reliant on their innate talents. Others have a “growth” mindset. These individuals believe that their abilities can improve through hard work.

Additionally, Seligman and Duckworth showed that how we approach our failures and successes greatly determines the outcome.

Do we learn from mistakes or attribute failure to forces beyond personal control?

Again, how we frame an outcome can make a monumental difference in projected performance.

Do my goals align with organizational or personal values?

Stephen Covey, in his seminal work The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said of mission and values:

“A mission statement is not something you write overnight… But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.”

What is on your core value list?

• Honesty?
• Integrity?
• Recognition?
• Performance?

Understanding the impact of a goal is the most important aspect of setting one. Goals that promote self/team-efficacy will also build resilience and personal growth. Self-efficacy means you believe that you have the abilities and resources to reach a goal.

When core values, mission, goals, and actions align, the results can be life changing.

Goal setting

It is important to know when and how you will achieve your goal. Keep the objective positive, and develop a growth mindset. For us to stay motivated to succeed, our goals need to align with our personal and professional values.