Original article published by Forbes
Will your New Year's resolutions last? If your goal is to climb the ladder and reach the pinnacle of your professional aspirations in 2024, you should know that merely wistfully listing out your New Year's resolutions is not sufficient. Many goals are created but lie dormant, waiting to be checked off twelve months later, because life happens, circumstances derail us, work gets busier, and we wind up caught in it all so that we lose motivation to keep going. So how can you set resolutions this year that actually stick and make a difference in your professional journey, for you to end the year in a better position than where you started?
Regardless of your specific goals, whether they be undertaking a professional development course, improving your team leadership skills, reading and completing a new book, or landing a promotion, goals that are solid and work well to keep you on track follow a framework known as SMART.
SMART is an acronym which means: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Do your current New Year's resolutions meet these five criteria? Let's find out:
1. Make Your New Year's Resolutions Specific
Set out to clearly define the who, what, where, and why of your goal. Using vague language such as, "I want to land a promotion," offers nothing tangible or motivating for you to work towards. Getting specific about who is involved (you, and having a conversation with your manager), what you want (to land a promotion to head of your department), where (at your company or in another organization), and most importantly, your why (so that you can have more financial security for yourself and your family, fulfil your career passion, etc.) will drive you towards achieving your leadership goal.
2. Are Your Resolutions Measurable?
Your next step is to define how you will track your progress and measure your success. When you set in place quantifiable metrics for your New Year's resolutions, these will not only indicate to you when you've attained your overall objective, but they will help you when you feel overwhelmed by the massive goal ahead by breaking it down into bitesize steps.
For example, if your goal is to improve your performance on KPIs by mid-year, you could use the reports from your monthly one-to-one meetings with your manager as measurement indicators, and could aim for a "good" rating by February, a "very good" rating by April, and an "excellent" rating by June.
3. Are Your Goals Achievable?
Sometimes we get ahead of ourselves and become so optimistic and excited about the possibilities of the new year that in our festive euphoria we set goals that are unrealistic and end up discouraging our progress in the long run. Your professional goals should be a combination of challenging and realistic—challenging enough to push you outside your comfort zone and be remarkably different to what you normally do, but not so challenging that it overwhelms you or is totally beyond your capability.
It might also be the case that the goal is within your capabilities but the timeframe you have set is not realistic, or you do not currently possess sufficient resources. If this is true for you, adjust the parameters accordingly.
So instead of saying, "I want to complete a 300-hour course in two weeks," pace yourself to achieve the completion of one module every two weeks, and complete the entire course in six months to accommodate your work schedule.
4. Make Your New Year's Resolutions Relevant
How relevant are your goals to your overall career vision and professional motivations? There's no use in setting a goal if it's random and not in line with where you desire to be five or 10 years from now. Goals should be ones that you personally desire and are meaningful to your own life, not ones that others have set for you. If you don't want it, you won't be motivated or driven to do it.
5. Create Resolutions That Are Time-Bound
Without a time-frame for achieving your goals, you leave the door open to procrastination, and it can even result in your employer not taking you seriously because your goals appear too vague. So instead of saying, "My goal is to lead more efficient meetings," you could say, "My goal is for all the team meetings I lead to last no longer than 30 minutes, including generating a list of follow-up actions." Or instead of, "I want to land a promotion to sales director," how about try rephrasing it to, "My goal is to land a promotion to sales director by January 2025."
6. Stop Saying "I Want"
A final point to remember: stop saying "I wish" or "I want," and replace these with more positive phrases such as "I am going to," or "My goal is to" or "I will." Saying what you want or desire leaves the impression on your mind that it will forever be a want, something to aim for in the distant future. Take yourself and your goals seriously and change your vocabulary when referring to your New Year's resolutions.
So now that you have this six-step framework to setting your New Year's resolutions for your leadership career, the question is, what goals will you set for yourself this new year? Read here for some inspirational goals every leader or manager should aim for in 2024.
