Goal Setting For Clear Career Advancement

Accelerate Your Career With Goals

Setting goals, sometimes called KPI’s, are a great way to set, track, and achieve your career aspirations.

Setting goals to achieve success is a collaborative process. Along with your manager, you can develop a robust, meaningful set of KPI’s that will provide a framework for success and development in your career.

Often, KPI’s are associated with being on a performance development plan. Whilst it is one element of many employee development plans, KPI’s can be used and work really well when you are setting your career trajectory.

Why is this?

• Firstly, because KPI’s track your achievements which gives you a solid start when it comes to your annual review and when you are seeking a promotion or pay increase. You’ve tracked every success and don’t have to rely on memory.
• Ongoing KPI’s provides a clear framework to work towards. This provides motivation, clarity and encourages you to continue achieving.
• Clear KPI’s help you to realise early on if you’re veering off your target goals so you can quickly enable course correction.

Setting goals for your own career is a great exercise of self-reflection. It encourages you to pause and consider how you want your career to move forwards. It’s a highly empowering activity because you start to realise how quickly you are learning, progressing and ticking off goals. It puts you in the drivers seat, taking control of your own career and learning.

Setting Your Own Goals

When it comes to setting your career goals, think about:

• What is your goal.
• The realistic timeframe in which you wish to achieve it.
• What support you’ll need – managerial help, a training course, specific tools, an internal mentor, networking events, access to industry subscriptions.
• How will you measure success?
• Frequency of reviewing the goals.
• Completion date.

You don’t need to be totally hard and fast with it. Rather, you can be flexible with your goals. For example, if one of your KPI’s is to become confident at public speaking, but half way through the process you realise you need more time and experience to gain this confidence, speak with you manager and adjust the completion date.

Clear Goal Setting

Being clear and specific about your goals helps you focus.

• Really think about each goal to get specific about what you want to achieve.
• Enter realistic timeframes, not putting yourself under undue pressure to achieve your goals too quickly. Don’t rush the process. Set yourself up for success and to gain confidence.
• Consider how you will measure your success. For example, if you want to be more confident when presenting to clients, how will you know when you’ve actually achieved this? Will it be when you receive positive feedback and feel confident within yourself when presenting?

Lean In To Challenges

When setting KPI’s, it’s a great time to approach head on what daunts you.

• For example, you may wish to start stepping up into a management role in 12 months time, but you are daunted by the financial reporting this step up in seniority will involve. Put into your KPI’s how you will start learning to improve the fiscal elements that the promotion would entail.
• Use your KPI’s to acknowledge truthfully what you find challenging. By doing this you are looking ahead with foresight and preparation.

Collaborate With Your Manager

Once you’ve identified where you would like to develop, you manager and wider team can start helping you to get there.

• If you want to start chairing those internal team meetings every other week to develop your leadership skills, your manager can now work with you to support your goals. They can find opportunities for you to be challenged and actively assist your progression.
• Your manager will have identified their own KPI’s where they feel you could develop. Through honest, supportive, collaboration you can both share your thoughts and start working together on the same plan.

Setting clear goals is a great way to keep moving forwards in your career. By taking the initiative to establish your goals or KPI’s, you’re more able to focus on your career development and progression with clarity and purpose.