Setting up goals for yourself at work is an important balancing act to perform. The goals you set need to fall in line with your company’s mission, but they also must be your own.
One way to help you set your goals would be to provide yourself with a sense of direction, motivation, targets you should aim for, and a clear focus. Using the SMART target guide is great for planning your goals.
SMART is an acronym that stands for:
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Relevant
T – Time-bound
A SMART goal incorporates all of these criteria to help focus your efforts and increase the chances of achieving that goal.
A SWOT analysis also allows you to assess yourself and will give you a powerful competitive advantage in your career. Successful professionals will continually self-evaluate, whether the subject is their career, their professional development, or their progress in relation to life plans and objectives.
Another method to create goals and targets would be a personal development plan. These help you to structure your thinking by constantly planning and thinking ahead. You look into what is important to you, what you want to achieve, what strengths you already have that help you to achieve your goals, and what help you need to improve and develop.
Having these career-shaping tools will help you to better understand where you’ll want to be within your business and the support and goals, you’ll need in order to achieve this. You will also be more productive with a clear focus on the targets ahead, which will benefit you, the rest of your team and the company as a whole.