Goal setting isn’t an unfamiliar practice for many leaders. They form a journey to where you want to be, helping you focus on what’s most important to change or create new behaviours.  

But the act of goal setting can be somewhat of an art, especially when growth as a leader will involve goals that are less straightforward to measure than, say, hitting yearly sales targets. 

Here are our top 5 tips to set effective goals that will help you stay accountable and committed to achieve them to your full potential.  

1. Create a vision 

Your vision is a “picture” of what you aspire to – and what inspires you – as a leader. Having a clear vision is the first step to creating effective goals to support it. If you don’t already have a vision, take some time to create a vision statement, or a short description of what successful leadership looks like to you in the long-term. To help you out, think about questions such as: 

• Where do you want to be in 2 – 3 years? 

• Who do you admire? And what attracts you to them? 

• Imagine yourself as a leader of the future. What is it that you’ve accomplished to get there? 

Write your vision statement in the current tense, rather than future tense so it feels achievable, and not too distant. 

2. Set long and short-term goals 

Now you have a vision, the goals you set will help you get there. And if you set both long and short term goals that support one another, you’re more likely to see success. Why is this? 

Long-term goals usually take a while to achieve. If you think of your vision as the final destination, your long-term goals are the big milestones that you need to achieve along the way. From a leadership perspective, these could include “build dynamic teams”, “create strong relationships with peers” or even “get promoted”.  

These goals won’t happen overnight and are easy to lose sight of when they don’t need your immediate attention. This is why short-term goals are important. Short-term goals are the steps you will take to achieve your long-term goals. These could be weekly or monthly but importantly, they are always in your line of sight. They’ll keep you moving on your journey and provide a sense of accomplishment on the way.   

Remember: Vision + long term goals + short term goals = greater success and performance. 

3. Adopt a growth mindset  

In a perfect world achieving your goals would always be smooth sailing, but life and the workplace often present us with hurdles and setbacks meaning absolute success as you first envisioned it may not be realistic. This is why it’s important to set your goals with a growth mindset, describing them with words that acknowledge progress as success.  

For example, if your goal is to ‘be an effective listener’, re-phrasing it to ‘become a more effective listener’ means success is determined by becoming better than you started (whether that’s by a lot or a little!) and help you feel confident to continue developing.  

4. Set ‘approach’ rather than ‘avoid’ goals 

Think about how you frame the wording of your goals. Shift it from something you want to move away from (for example, stop being negative at work), to something you want to move towards (for example, demonstrate a positive mindset in the workplace).  

Why’s this important? Goals which aim to avoid something often lack specificity because they focus on present and past behaviours, rather than helping you set a vision of what positive future behaviours could look like.  

5. Don’t set and forget…. Take time to reflect 

Once you set your goals, commit to regular reflection to keep yourself motivated and on track. Not only will this help you maintain awareness of your progress, reflection is an important tool to identify learnings and barriers as you work towards your big picture goals, allowing you to adjust course if necessary.  

As you set your goals, remember that setting goals isn’t just good practice for leaders. If you’re working with a team share these tips them to start setting effective goals, too.