If your goals aren’t clear…

Are you ever in a situation where the year has already started, and the goals are not defined. Or, let’s say you’re two months, three, or even six months into the year and the goals are still messy.

Or you’re in a situation where the goals that you thought you were working on, have now radically shifted.

🤯 No wonder leaders are having mental breakdowns…

Today I’m talking about effective goals for tech leaders. As tech leaders, I know you all have stuff related to goals that bugs you. I know this because I have done 1000s of coaching sessions with leaders and every leader has expressed concerns with goals. Because of your concerns with goals, I want to get real on some tactics that can help you get those goals nailed down.

How do your people know what to work on if their goals aren’t clear?

How do you know if your people don’t know their goals? Ask them. Let’s right, go ping your people. Casually walk by them if they’re in the office – or send them a message – and say, “Hey, what’s the number one goal of our team?”  How they respond tells you whether or not your people know what’s going on with the goals or if they don’t know what’s going on. And then you can also ask them:

❓ What is your number one goal?

❓ What are the goals of our department?

❓ What are the goals of our organization as a whole?

Because a lot of you are working at companies where you have multiple organizations inside of a larger company. Or it could be a big holding company that has other companies within it. Therefore, the holding company may have goals, but then the individual companies within the holding company have different goals. So, if they can’t articulate what the goals are, it is no wonder…

💥 that work is not getting done,

💥 your people are feeling more burned out, and

💥 it feels like you and your people are wasting time doing work that doesn’t matter.

Your personal brand + goals

As a leader, it’s your number one responsibility to make sure that your team knows what the goals are. Now, if you have listened to any of my other Today Top Leaders podcast episodes, or maybe my YouTube channel, you have heard me talking about personal brand.

Your personal brand as a leader – which ties to your leadership legacy – is really important. When you’re clear on your personal brand, it also helps you to make some decisions on what you want your own personal leadership goal to be at this moment. I’m not talking about the goals of the company; I’m talking about YOU deciding what you want to improve about your leadership skills at this time.

Determine your leadership goal

Therefore, do a little bit of self-reflection. Stop and ask your heart and say, “What is it that I really want to work on to improve as a leader this year?” Once you’re clear on your #1 way that you want to grow this year, it will help you to stay on track with your own career development and decisions throughout the year. If it’s the middle of the year, you can still stop and ask yourself:

❓ “What is my leadership development goal?”

❓ “How am I doing with that goal?”

Pick one main thing that you want to work on in your leadership development and then work toward that goal. For example, you may want to improve your communication with your team. Work towards that.  Other things are going to benefit from it as well.

Setting measurable goals

One last thing I want to say about effective goals, is the importance that the goals are measurable. But if you don’t pick something to measure, it’s really hard to know if you’re having progress, or not. Your people want meaningful work and to feel productive each day. I have talked to 1000s of people in companies who which that their leadership team was clearer on the goals.

Hopefully you’ve got some kind of goal, such as “We’re going to increase customer retention by 12% this year.” That gives you a number, something to work on, and then it helps hold everybody accountable to that number throughout the year. So, use this to help you with your goal planning, because goal planning doesn’t have to be hard.

Goals doesn’t have to be complicated. Leadership can be enjoyable!

For more information about what we can do to help you get to the point where goals are no longer an issue – and then you become the tech leader that everyone wants to work for – please contact me so we can talk.