Long term and short term goal setting is incredibly important to career advancement.
Follow these action steps to reach the goals you set and your career objectives. Your career objective could be an increase in your earnings, a move up the career ladder, or a change in occupation.
This article gives essential goal setting tips, discusses the importance of goal setting and specifies the theory of motivation for achieving goals in your career.
What is goal setting? The benefits of goal setting
Three to five years is the average time for long-term goals to be achieved, while short-term goals are obtained in one to three years, and are often the steps towards a long-term goal.
Goals should be set regularly – daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. The short-term day goals are often simple – clean off your desk. As you progress the goals get more complex and affect your future. It’s easy to say in five years you want to double your salary. Achieving that goal can be more difficult. How you formulate your goals will play a significant role in the achievement of those goals.
Setting Career Goals – The Criteria for Setting Goals and Objectives
There are no guarantees that the goals you set in your career will be reached.
You can however increase the likelihood of those career goals being met when you use criteria to set those goals. For example, a goal such as “I want to make lots of money,” is pretty is generalized – who doesn’t want to make lots of money. Instead you might set a goal such as “I want to be the District Manager by 2014,” which is a much more defined goal and thus more likely you will stay focused and achieve your goal.
Here are the basic tips for professional goal setting:
1. Measure Goal Outcome for advancing your career
Your goals must be measurable to be achievable.
This means you need to set a time frame just as we did in our example above. Another example might be, in two years I want to be the manager of my department.” Your goals need to always be positive. For example, “ I don’t want to be stuck in my sales job for another two years,” is a negative goal. A positive spin on that goal would be, “I want to better my skills so that in two years I can get a better job.”
2. Be Realistic With Your Goal Setting
Smart goal setting means you are being realistic and that the goals you set are actually achievable.
For example, “I want to win a million dollars next year,” isn’t a very achievable goal. Then again, “I want to attend a course on accounting before the end of the year,” is very realistic. Never set yourself up to fail. Take baby steps at reaching your goal and you are much more likely to achieve it.
3. Goal Setting Activities: Action Associated With Your Goal
You must always have an action associated with your goal.
Our example earlier, “I want to be the District Manager by 2014,” shows an excellent example of setting a goal.
4. Be Flexible With Your Goal
You must be flexible with your goals. It’s common to run into barriers that slow you down. In these situations simply adjust your goals to reflect your new situation and move on towards achieving your goals.
Personal Goal: The importance of setting personal goals for career development
Smart goal setting can be used in all walks of life from your career to your personal life.
It’s an effective way to move forward with your life and achieve the things you want to achieve. We have goals of what we want, and were we want to be but when we don’t put those goals to writing we are less likely to achieve them. So grab your pen and paper and start writing.