How to create achievable goals
By: Julie Kenny
Tags: Goal Setting, Work Life Balance, Career Development, Executive Coaching, Personal Development

Goal setting is an important skill to help you change behaviour and adopt new positive habits. Everyone knows that you need to set SMART goals but quite often we struggle to actually write achievable objectives.

I once did a program where I asked my class to write postcards to themselves with their goals listed down. The plan was to mail the postcards to them in three months. I shared with the group the SMART model of goal setting and then I asked them to work in groups and set themselves two to three goals. As I walked around the room I found all of the students had written down aspirations rather than actual goals.

I want to be fit

I want to get that promotion

I want to achieve better work-life balance

As I worked with each student I asked them to take those aspirations and rewrite them based on what will success look like? What measurements will help me to achieve this goal?

Clarity of Vision

The first thing we need to do when setting goals is to think about what it looks like if we’re successful.

For example, I want to be fitter but what does that actually mean or look like. Well before 2020, this would be to sign up for a triathlon and then start to train for that race. Within my goal, there would be further broken down into distance of the race, time for completion. Sub goals may also be set within each leg.

Where are the gaps

Once I have some clarity on my vision then I can start to identify the gaps between where I am and where I want to be.

Closing the gaps need to become my monthly, weekly, daily tasks. For triathlon training, this is where you create your training plan.

Review, Revise, Adjust

The training plan allows me to create a daily objective. I then sit down once a week and review.

Did I do all the sessions I set out to do?

If I didn’t, what prevented me from achieving my goals for the week?

What will I do in the following week?

Do I need to make any adjustments based on my challenges from the week before?

Performance Goals

When we look at work performance goals we need to follow a similar process.

My goal might be to be a better writer.

Clarify your vision

The first step in the process is to understand what do I mean by being a “better” writer? To do this I have to come up with a quantifiable, measurable, specific objective. To be a better writer, one needs to write more and get feedback from others to help me to improve.

Action Items

My vision then becomes to write 30 articles in 30 days. I will publish these articles on my website, LinkedIn and Facebook. I will ask for feedback and see how I can improve.

Review regularly

I will also review my progress weekly to see that I am achieving my vision. If I’m not then I need to understand why this is happening or not as the case may be. By identifying and analysing any failures I can learn from my mistakes and make adjustments the following week.

Is it Realistic

One thing I always ask is that are the activities achievable and realistic. Often when trying to improve in an area I find people set themselves the task of reading a book or a certain number of books/articles during a period of time.

When I challenge people as to how realistic is that they quite often say it’s not really achievable as they no longer read, or have the time to read. Further probing usually leads to the understanding that podcasts/videos might actually work better for them rather than forcing themselves to do something they don’t find easy to do.

Stay on track

Once we have clarity about what we are trying to achieve and have outlined the activities we will do to help us reach our goals — we then need to look at how we can keep ourselves on track. For me, I share my goals with some friends who I know will hold me accountable to my goals. They’ll ask me how I’m going? If I’m struggling they will help me to come up with some workarounds or alternative methods.

Personal Reflection

Today I am reviewing how I did on my first week of publishing an article each day. So far I have come to the following conclusions:

Do my 30 day’s need to include weekends?

If they do then I need to be better organised during the week so that I have my weekend articles laid out because I will struggle to write on a weekend.

The 30 articles in 30 days have been made easier for me as I had 18 articles already in some state of articulation. This meant that I only had to come up with 12 new articles and article ideas.

If I was to do this from scratch I would probably find it much more difficult to do.

What isn’t working?

The second half of my goal is to get feedback for improvement. This is not happening. I have been uploading my articles but I have not been getting feedback from individuals. Moving forward I will need to push myself and ask people whom I trust to give me feedback. I will add that to my list of activities for the next week.

To achieve our goals we need to understand what we are trying to achieve, why we are doing it and are the activities and tasks we set ourselves realistic and practical. Changing behaviour or creating a new habit is hard. If we don’t make it as easy as possible to be successful and if we don’t believe in it then it will be much harder to achieve.

What a coach can do

A coach is a great support system when it comes to setting goals and making those changes. They will help you to understand why you are doing what you’re doing. They can challenge you on what activities you are doing and they can make suggestions when you get stuck. They can also help you to stay on target and cheer you on should you struggle.