3 What makes you feel excited and inspired about your work?
4 What motivates you to do your best work?
5 What are you naturally good at?
6 What would you love to do more of at work?
7 What energizes and excites you?
8 What type of environments do you want to work in?
9 What's your preferred work schedule?
10 Is there anything that's nonnegotiable for you at work?
11 What are the greatest accomplishments of your career?
12 What is it about the accomplishments that make them special for you?
13 What do you want your career to feel like?
14 What do you want to be known for?
15 How do you measure success?
When you start to think about your career values, your responses to the questions may require deeper and longer reflection, and your responses may change or evolve over time. There are no right or wrong answers and it's not a test. Your responses are for you to define. This is a space for you to consider what matters most in your career so that you can build a platform for goal setting and actions that will get you closer to where you want to be.
Get Your Goals Ready
Most people are asked about their goals roughly once a year when the performance review cycle rolls around. Somewhere in the self-assessment form you're asked to complete for your supervisor there will be a question along the lines of “What do you want to accomplish in the next year?” or “What do you want to be doing five years from now?”
Some of us may be tempted to answer, “I want to be working somewhere else” or “I want to have your job and your salary.” Most of us panic a little about the question and try to figure out an acceptable and appropriate answer. Whether it's a performance review that's looming or your own personal thought process, considering our future can be scary because we just don't know. Being asked about goals can feel like the worst kind of test.
“Can I be honest?”
“Am I thinking too small?”
“Is my goal too big and unachievable?”
“I straight up don't know what I'm aiming for.”
These are legitimate thoughts when someone asks you about your career goals. Goals are powerful, complex, and captivating things. They can be exhilarating and terrifying, all rolled into one.
So, what happens if you're confused about possible career goals? Or maybe you know what you want, but you don't know how to get there.
How to Set Goals
After you've documented and reviewed your career values, it's the perfect time to align your goals. If you're not sure where to start, pick a goal that really excites you, or could be a stepping-stone to something that really excites you.
Some of your goals might be big, some might be smaller, but there are no rights or wrongs when it comes to what you decide on. It just needs to feel right. The only thing I ask is to push yourself out of your comfort zone. That can be hard at first, and it may take a few attempts. I shared a set of goals with one of my mentors once and his immediate response was, “That sounds great, Octavia, but I'd like you to dream bigger.” That one statement alone was transformative to me. So, I added another layer to my goals that were bigger than I'd ever contemplated. He was right. After all, if you'd told me I'd start my career in one country and build it in another, I'd never have believed it.
Here are some questions to help you get started:
1 Based on your career values, what do you want to experience in the next chapter of your career?
2 Where do you feel stuck?
3 What do you want to set in motion?
4 What skills do you want to develop?
5 What's a next step that's just out of reach?
6 What's a next step that would feel like a giant leap?
How to Stay on Track
When you've chosen a goal to pursue, start to outline the next steps you need to take to make this goal happen. Often, professionals I work with assign a deadline to a goal, for example:
“I want to secure a new role by the end of the calendar year.”
As a coach, I think it's fantastic that you have a time line in mind for what you want. However, I always recommend focusing on the time frames to the actions you will take to pursue your goal. For example, the steps you need to take to do that might include updating your résumé, talking to your network about opportunities, and of course, spending time looking at job postings. Assigning time frames for key tasks, or including the frequency for key tasks, is what will propel you forward.
Including when you will do the tasks creates an action plan, which could look like this:
“Create an updated version of my résumé by the end of the month.”
“Set aside time twice a week to reach out to people in my network to ask for advice about my search.”
“Allocate Sunday afternoons as uninterrupted time to review job postings and prepare applications.”
I believe the best way to stay on track with your goals is to focus entirely on the actions you need to take. We can't control the outcome of our actions, but we can control what we do. By scheduling time for the actions required, and doing them, you may land that new job before the end of the calendar year, or after the end of the calendar year, but you will be moving forward constantly.
Sometimes our goal seems so far removed from our current reality that we don't know where to start. When that happens, it's not uncommon to feel deflated or even downsize our visions to something more achievable. This why breaking the big, scary goal into smaller pieces and scheduling the steps is so crucial. Setting your intentions to pursue the goal is the secret to success. Goals will only become accomplishments if you act. The best way to do that is to just start. Don't worry about what comes next; just take it one step at a time.
Create a strategy to hold yourself accountable, especially during the tough times. Maybe you choose to tag team with a friend, where you each share a goal you're working on and give each other encouragement along the way. Perhaps you journal about your process. Maybe you work with a career coach. Or perhaps you schedule time on your calendar to act and plan your next steps. Do whatever works for you.
When you've decided on and scheduled your next steps, you should plan how you'll celebrate each step. Yes, I advocate celebrating every step, not just reaching the end of the goal. It could be something small, like reserving time to do something you love or something bigger, like treating yourself to a special purchase. You get to decide. This will reinforce that you're making a continuous investment in your professional development and signifies that every step matters.
Here are some questions to help you stay on track with your goal:
1 How important is this goal to you?
2 What ideas do you have about next steps?
3 How could you break the next steps down into smaller pieces?
4 What's the next action you should take?
5 Who can you ask for help with this?
6 How will I celebrate the completion of each step?
7 What will you commit to doing next?
As a final