Setting goals when the goals elude you
An important part of growing in your role and developing your career is setting goals to help you get where you want to be. You often hear about the need for them to be S.M.A.R.T goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant & time-bound) to help you succeed, but what if you don’t know what you want to achieve?
I find it hard to set realistic, achievable and measurable goals as, honestly, I don’t always know where I want to get to and even if I do, I don’t always know the steps to get where I want to be. As a software developer, I think my expected career journey is to aspire to go from a developer to a tech lead and then on to a principal engineer, but is that the career that I want for myself? I don’t know the answer to that at the moment. So, when you don’t really know but still want to progress, how do you set achievable goals so you don’t remain stagnant?
What can I improve and work at to be a more effective team member? What are my peers doing well that I want to learn about?
Firstly, I’ve tried to think about what I want to be better at in my current role. A few of my colleagues have recently been working on some pretty cool architectural work, and I think it would be beneficial for me to understand our systems and applications in greater detail. I aim to be capable of talking about these details confidently to both a technical and non-technical audience.
It’s so easy to compare yourself to others, especially those you work closely with, and think how much better they are at their jobs than you. I’m certainly guilty of that, and I’ve been trying to consciously change that way of thinking to “What can I learn from them?” or “How can I do that” instead and incorporate that into my goals.
How can I grow my network and promote my ‘personal brand’?
I often cringe at the phrase ‘personal brand’, but I think it’s important to be aware of and work on. There’s the age-old phrase “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, but I think Lauren Corderoy put it beautifully in her recent blog that, in fact, “It’s not who you know, it’s who knows YOU”. I don’t think this even means that you need to be a specialist or expert in something, you don’t have to be the ‘go-to’ person for a certain topic. If people know who you are and know that you’re willing and are happy to get involved, it can create opportunities you may not have thought about and lead you in a direction you may not have realised existed.
So, how can you promote yourself? Are there networks, guilds, or groups at work that resonate with you that you could get involved with? These groups provide great opportunities and help increase your network with people that you may not necessarily get to know in your day-to-day role. They also allow you to try things you may not normally do, such as public speaking, event organisation or project management. And who knows, it might even lead you down a new career path!
How can I improve the tools my team and I use daily to make our lives easier?
It may seem like a fairly short-term and even short-sighted goal, but I believe it’s important to review day-to-day tasks and tools regularly as it’s very easy to get caught up in how something works because “that’s how it’s always been”. Just because something is done a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the best way. I tend to find someone joining a team or company helps to surface these weird nuances. A fresh pair of eyes can see if something looks a little wonky and ask why it’s done a certain way, a great prompt for reflection! If you don’t have the opportunity to bring anyone new into your team, try and imagine explaining the tasks you do often to someone who has never done them before. This can help you question what you can do to improve things for you and your team.
What am I interested in?
Lastly, is there something that you’d love to learn or get involved with? If you’re passionate about something, you’re more likely to want to work on it. If it’s not something that you think goes with your current job, speak with your manager about it and see if there’s a way it can still work as part of your goals. After all, if you don’t ask, you don’t get!
Setting goals is difficult at the best of times, so hopefully, these questions and thoughts will help generate some ideas on how you can grow yourself and help others at the same time.
In the meantime, how about trying this little activity to make a start on your goals, courtesy of Krys Catterall:
- Write down all the things that are important to you about your role
- Note how much time you spend on each task per week
- Order the tasks by what is most interesting to you or what you find most important for your personal development
- Look at the time you put into those sections, and if it’s less time than you think you want, you may want to consider increasing the time you spend on the items you are most interested in
Happy goal setting!!
