Performance Development
Tips for Setting Goals
Reflect
Growth Mindset
Prior to setting goals, reflect on what you have already achieved.
What skills did you acquire and what did you learn along the way.
Determine if something was missing from your achievements last
year that is still important and should be added to your goals this
year.
When setting goals, consider concepts from the Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck. The growth mindset focuses on effort and
the ability to learn and change through experience and to embrace challenges and maximize potential to help to achieve
goals.
Inspire
Align
Create goals that challenge you in a healthy way and inspire you
because the work is valuable and important to you and your
team. Ask yourself about your motivation and purpose behind
each goal. Creating 3 to 5 goals per year is ideal to help keep you
challenged and inspired.
Create work goals that are individualized to you but align with
priorities for your team or your organization. Making connections to the work you do and the value it ultimately brings to
citizens helps create meaning in the work you do every day.
Flexible
SMART Goals (see reverse for more detail)
Goals you establish at the beginning of the year may look different at the end of the year. Our goals are dynamic and shifting
and we need to determine how important and/or urgent our
goals are and be flexible on work that can be deferred and what
is a priority. Have a discussion with your leader to help determine priorities. The Urgent-Important matrix or the Eisenhower
Matrix may help to determine what work is urgent and important.
Make Your Goal SMART
How to Frame your SMART goal:
By ………., I will ………., which will be achieved by ………., so that ……….. Expected results include ………..
TIME BOUND
By ….. (date) …..
ACHIEVABLE
I will ….. (what you want to achieve) …..
SPECIFIC
which will be achieved by ….. (action items) …..
REALISTIC
so that ….. (why is this of benefit to self/organization) …..
MEASURABLE
Expected results ….. (what does success look like) …..