02-2.4: Helping Others Set Goals

Before you help others set goals, you should set your own goals using the guidelines described above. Your primary focus should be goals that are in line with the organization, in the waterfall form described previously. Then, you will want to set a few personal development goals and a few department-specific goals.

Once you have established your goals, you should have a meeting with each employee and help them set their goals. It is a good idea to ask them to come to the meeting prepared with some ideas of organizational, departmental, and personal goals that they would like to achieve. You should also be prepared with some goals that you would like to see employees work on.

In the meeting, ask the employee to write down the final goals decided on. (These should follow the SMART PPP format discussed previously.) Then, they can add action steps for each goal. Once they finalize the document, they should send a copy to you.

After goals have been set, they should be reviewed on a regular basis. The appropriate timeframe depends on the goal. We recommend reviewing each goal on a quarterly or semi-annually basis, and then creating new goals annually.

It is extremely important that the goals that you help employees set are designed for them, not for you. This will keep them motivated and help them achieve their goal.