How do I write leadership goals linked to behavioural feedback?
All organisations have a company vision, which is often expressed in the form of a mission statement. This enables the vision to get filtered down through the organisation, so everyone is familiar with it. Everyone then understands that the decisions, projects, and initiatives undertaken by the company are in pursuit of the organisation's overall vision.
Most organisations create performance agreements that state how they want their employees to behave. That means employees know they have specific targets to achieve, and the company documents how well their employees achieve those targets. However, in order for the company to be able to achieve its overall goal, employees need to realise their potential too, and that means identifying what might get in the way of their personal success.
Developing your leadership goals
If you are to succeed in leading your team members in developing their own goals and vision for success, it is important that you identify your own, both as an individual and as a team leader. To do this, you need to identify your main leadership goals, the behaviour you want to develop to support that goal and a secondary or supporting goal that reinforces or feeds back into the main goal.
Here's an example:
My main goal as a leader was to be liked and respected [MAIN LEADERSHIP GOAL], however, to achieve this, no matter how challenging and how demanding it was, I knew I had to be true to my authentic self. To be true to my authentic self, I knew I would need to have challenging conversations with my team. As a result of identifying this core goal, I know I will need to display confidence and assertiveness [BEHAVIOURAL GOAL] during difficult and challenging conversations in order to raise an employee's awareness of their negative behaviour and the impact it is having on the team's performance. During these conversations, the person on the receiving end may have a variety of thoughts and emotions, one of which might be that they don't like what they are hearing. This then leads to the identification of a supporting core goal, which is to demonstrate effective communication [SECONDARY LEADERSHIP GOAL] that results in a positive outcome for me and my team.
As you can see, in order for me to achieve my main leadership goal (being liked and respected), I was going to have to demonstrate one piece of critical behaviour (confidence and assertiveness) in order to help me in achieving my supporting leadership goal (effective communication).
Below is a summary of my core goals as a team leader.
I have highlighted the key words in describing my goals.
1. To be liked and respected [MAIN GOAL] as a leader by displaying confidence and assertiveness [BEHAVIOUR] during challenging conversations with my team.
2. To communicate effectively [SECONDARY GOAL] when working with my team.
Next, I asked myself some questions so I could elicit more detail around what my goals meant to me and why.
Here are the questions I asked myself:
What does being liked and respected specifically mean to me?
What is specifically important to me about being liked and respected?
What are the benefits to me of being liked and respected?
How will I know I demonstrate confidence?
What will others see, feel and hear when I display confidence?
What will others see, feel and hear when I am being assertive?
What are the specific benefits to me of feeling confident?
What happens to my thoughts, feelings and emotions when I think about having challenging conversations?
What's the worst thing that could happen when I have challenging conversations?
What's the best thing that could happen when I have challenging conversations?
What's important to me about improving and influencing my team's performance?
How will I benefit from improving and influencing my team's performance?
By answering these questions, I gained a deeper awareness of why my goals mattered to me, what my fears were around my goals and how I behave when working towards making my goals a reality. It was a big eye-opener for me, and so I encourage you to do the same exercise.
Set your leadership goals
Begin by identifying your own goals and vision of what you want to achieve as a leader of your team. Work out which goals you need to achieve in order to make your vision a reality. Next, answer the questions below so you gain a deeper insight into why these goals are important to you, including why they motivate you and how they are congruent with your own values and that of the organisation you work within.
What is your ultimate goal as a leader, and what behaviour do you need to commit to in order to achieve it? Has understanding your leadership goal and core behaviour led you to identify a secondary leadership goal? If so, what is it?
Look at the words you have used to describe your goal. What do those words mean to you?
What is important to you about your goal?
What benefits do want to enjoy as a result of achieving your goal?
How will you know when you demonstrate your core behaviour?
What will others see, feel and hear when you display your core behaviour?
What will others see, feel and hear when you are demonstrating your core behaviour?
What are the specific benefits to you of feeling the emotions associated with your core behaviour?
What happens to your thoughts, feeling and emotions when you think about working towards your secondary leadership goal?
What's the worst thing that could happen?
What's the best thing that could happen?
What's important to you about improving and influencing your team's performance?
How do you benefit by improving and influencing your team's performance?
By answering these questions, you will be establishing what 'gain' you expect from achieving your goal.
You can go through this process with your employees around their goals to help them become more engaged. What keeps you moving towards your goal rather than away from it? Or, in the words of Bev James, CEO of The Coaching Academy, "what makes you do it or ditch it?" The goal has to be so important that you choose to do it no matter what happens. However, it's important to remember that ditching a goal is still action, and when you ditch a goal, it's either because you have a new and more appropriate goal or because the original goal served little or no purpose.
With this done, you and your team can move forward and start to achieve the success you desire