 5-Step Goal Setting
Based on her work as key facilitator of the Women’s Leadership Alliance workshop series, Women and Leadership Australia’s Di Pierce explains the five steps of goal setting, from mining and refining to outright shining!
At the end of each year, there’s a tradition and a tendency for many people to set goals for the new year.
By now though, many of us look at our watches and declare with both dismay and disillusionment, “It’s already February and I’ve barely started!”
A large part of the problem is that, whilst goals don’t need to be complicated, there can be a large leap from defining a goal to seeing it realised.
A few carefully placed stepping stones from A to B can break down the task into discrete stages. This not only gives us permission to take it slow, but also gives us the confidence and time to review our work as we go.
When you boil it down, goals are simply dreams with deadlines. And as with any deadline, to meet it you need to plan, act and manage.
The following is a summary of a more comprehensive exercise for participants of the Women’s Leadership Alliance workshop series.
Step 1: Mining
At this stage, you simply need to start digging into the areas of importance in your life.
To make this step easier, write down your thoughts in terms of five different areas of life: home, family and friends; career development; personal development; values and beliefs; and social and spiritual.
In the process, think about what you would like to change in your life and the gap between your current and ‘ideal’ life.
At this step, don’t edit or censor your thoughts. Just write it down.
Step 2: Refining
At the refining step, your goal is to define your goals in terms of their priority: must do, should do, nice to do.
Also, have a look at the areas of importance to you that require development.
Step 3: Defining
Here you take your prioritised goals and define some actions around them.
You will need to think about realistic timelines, obstacles (both personal and external) and the investment (resources) required.
Step 4: Reviewing
For better or worse, with time many of our goals can shift. As you start to take action on realising your goals, you need to regularly review them.
Ask yourself if the goals are still relevant. Have you come across unanticipated obstacles? Was your assessment of the investment required realistic?
Most importantly, if you find yourself steering off course, it’s important to pause and reflect on how to get back on track.
Step 5: Shining
The beauty of well-defined goals is that their achievement is your reward.
For many of us though, it’s worth taking the time to celebrate your achievements. Once you start reaching your new goals, celebrate not only the goal itself, but the commitment and drive that you drew on to get there.
Celebrate the journey and you’ll enrich the goal.
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