Level Up Leadership

As your business pushes forward into the new year, there’s a good chance that you have a nice big file of year-end assessments sitting on your desk. Hopefully those assessments give you some solid insights into what your employees are doing well and also the areas where they might need help. Assessments are a good starting point for moving forward, but they’re simply not enough. Make sure you follow up on your assessments by setting employee-specific goals for each one of your workers.

Employee goals should be set by the direct supervisor of each employee with the employee’s input. The point of setting goals is not to provide your employees with busy-work, but rather to help them hone their strengths and advance in their careers while contributing to the overall goals of the company. Individual employee goals should also give your team members opportunities to grow in their positions as well as within the company.

At Level Up Leadership, we like to help supervisors and their employees come up with goals that are SMART:

·       S – Specific. Goals like “improve your programming skills” are valid, but they aren’t specific. Which leads us to…

·       M – Measurable. Rather than “improve your programming skills,” a good goal might be to “learn C++.” Such a goal would benefit the individual’s career and also create a new asset for the company.

·       A – Achievable. When planning out goals with an employee, make sure that the goals are reasonable. You don’t want to break his or her spirit by setting unrealistic goals.

·       R – Relevant. Your employee may want to become a better singer this year, but that doesn’t have much to do with their future as a Computer Programmer. Make sure the goals you set are on-point and specific to each individual employee.

·       T – Timely. Each goal you set should have a specific deadline, whether it be monthly milestones or a year-end culmination. Set specific and realistic timelines for each and every goal.

In addition to being SMART, employees should also know the “why” behind each of their goals:

·       W – Written. Take the time to meet with each of your employees and write out specific goals that they will be able to refer back to. This will help both of you stay on track with what you’re hoping to accomplish over the coming year.

·       H – Harmonious. Make sure that your goals for your employees and their goals for themselves line up. You don’t want to push them in a direction that they’re not comfortable with, because that won’t be beneficial to either of you.

·       Y – Your Employees. The goals you set with your employees should be beneficial to the company at large, but if they’re not good goals for the employee, he or she won’t have any interest in achieving them.

At Level Up Leadership, goal setting is an important part of our assessment services and we can work with you and your supervisors to help ensure that each employee in your company has a set of goals that are follow “WHY-SMART” guidelines. Contact our team to learn more about our comprehensive employee assessment tools or to schedule a consultation.