Goals are more than a tick list, or set of to do’s, they’re an essential set of guidelines to help people move forward and progress from one place to another.
Millennials and Gen Zers are not motivated by long-terms career goals and traditional feedback frameworks, like the dreaded yearly review. Today’s smart leaders recognise that people need more to succeed. They want meaningful, co-created, goals that are discussed often.
How can you support people to achieve their goals?
There’s countless research on goals being powerfully linked to performance, success and motivation. The most effective goals should also provide purpose and meaning. In order to get that right, a huge importance should be placed on the process of setting goals; which is crucial for their outcome and success.
In order for people to achieve and succeed in their goals, management, mentors and leaders need to create a collaborative relationship to nurture and draw out the best of people; whilst challenging them to push forward and develop.
Here’s HappyHQ’s tips for supporting meaningful goals:
- Show you care: Find out what people’s long-term goals are, personally and professionally, and get to the core to create clarity.
- Provide the right tools: Identify knowledge or skill gaps and ensure the right tools and resources are in place.
- Collaborate to create goals: Once you know what make’s people tick, co-create goals together that people will be motivated by.
- Give real-time feedback: Abandon that dreaded yearly review and invest time in constructive, personalised, on-going feedback.
- Don’t micromanage goal achievement: Talk about goals often, but trust and empower people to make the right decisions in achieving their goals.
- Celebrate accomplishments, including the small wins: Acknowledge when people take proactive steps towards their goals, celebrate supporting goals as a collective.
- Work as a team: Share the journey to cultivate connection. Celebrate achievements, successes, and aspirations amongst teams.
Creating clear, specific, achievable goals is a keyway to nurture connection and culture within the workplace. They need to positively challenge people whilst being realistic and achievable.
SMART goals
Though there are many approaches to goal setting one well-liked and common example is implementing SMART goals. An acronym for
- Specific: Help people to understand why it’s important and how it effects their job role.
- Measurable: Set out a plan on how goals can be achieved, this will help provide clarity in their steps ahead.
- Attainable: Once you have built a connection, you can decipher individual capability. Help people push themselves whilst also ensuring goals are achievable and realistic.
- Relevant: Create an open, collaborative, dialogue, working together on goals and how they link to the bigger picture.
- Time-based: Having a date to work towards, whether short or long term, helps people to plan forward proactively.
Meaningful goals are not only great for managing day-to-day performance, they also create opportunities to grow, retain top talent, and create positive working cultures that helps companies and teams thrive.
HappyHQ helps companies easily recognise, implement, and sustain important culture changes. We help companies unlock their happiness potential by taking the science behind human flourishing and applying it in practical ways.
To find out how get in touch with the team today.
