Author: Jacob Ahmadzai

Helping businesses improve performance with proven learning and development solutions. London based with a global reach.

Categories
Leadership Development Professional & Management

Setting Goals For Your Team

Setting effective goals

Have you ever explained a task to someone, and they seem happy with your instructions, only to find that later, they’ve done completely the wrong thing? Or they’ve come close, but the end result is still not what you really wanted? Responsibility lies on both sides here. When you explained what needs doing, were you clear? Did you provide enough detail, but not too much? Is the goal one they are capable of achieving? And the other party – did they really understand what you were talking about, or just go for the ‘nodding dog’ approach? Pretend to agree now, worry about it later? Did they ask questions to really get their head round it, or did they feel they couldn’t?

Clearly we need to improve the situation, which is where the SMART goals acronym comes in handy:

 

Specific

Clear and understandable information, not vague or open to misinterpretation. You know what a good result looks like, but have you successfully conveyed it to them? Check for their agreement and understanding, and make it ok for them to ask questions if there’s anything they’re not sure about. Nodding dogs, begone!

Measurable

Perhaps the most important letter in the acronym! SART goals are no use to anyone. Any goal or objective has to contain a measurable element, otherwise how will you know when you have achieved it? You could carry on regardless, working on a goal you have already achieved, but you don’t know that! The measurable part of the goal provides an indicator of how we are doing – it makes progress and success quantifiable. Some tasks are more measurable than others, e.g. in a sales team you will have monthly sales targets expressed in numbers – sell this much equipment, or make this much money – and at the end of the month, look at the figures on the sales spreadsheet. They will tell you if you have achieved your goal or not. With some goals, the measure is you either achieved it or not before the deadline. Make it measurable!

Achievable

Sounds obvious, but make sure the goal is one they can achieve! Ideally, the goal will be a stretching one – stretch them but don’t stress them! The goal is neither impossible nor too easy. They can do it, but they have to think and use their initiative. If the individual feels that the goal being set is not achievable, please encourage them to say so!

Relevant

The goal being set should be relevant to their role, making them better at their job by enhancing their confidence and skillset. You could also go for realistic (although if the goal is achievable, this has already been taken care of) or recorded – if the goal is part of the performance management process, then it should be written down for future reference.

Time-bound

You could also go for timed, timely or time-driven – it’s all about the deadline! Some people are given SMART objectives, in which case they should push back and ask for an appropriate deadline, otherwise the job will never get done.

Conclusion

We all need goals, otherwise we would never achieve anything. The SMART acronym gives us a useful model to work from – the 5 criteria for an effective goal or objective. When explaining what needs to be done, be as specific as you can. Make sure there’s a measurable element, and that the goal is achievable and relevant to their role. Add a suitable deadline to the equation and they’re ready to work SMARTer, not harder!

Different interpretations of the SMART goal framework has resulted in it losing its effectiveness or being misunderstood. Some people believe that SMART doesn’t work well for long-term goals because it lacks flexibility, while others suggest that it might stifle creativity. For more information on the potential weaknesses of the SMART goal framework, this article on Locke’s Goal-Setting Theory is a good read.

Categories
Soft Skills

Using Emotional Intelligence To Improve Performance At Work

Introduction

We all have a ‘toolkit’ to draw on as we seek to be the best we can be at work. In recent years a person’s emotional intelligence helps to increase our efficiency and productivity. It underpins the ‘how’ we do things in terms of the approach.

In this post we’ll provide more detail around emotional intelligence and provide specific examples of how we can use it to improve performance.

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional Intelligence refers to a person’s capacity to be aware of their emotions. It also allows a person to handle their interpersonal relationships fairly and sensibly.

A lot of research has taken place on the topic of emotional intelligence and therefore a number of ways it has been described. According to Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist who helped to popularise emotional intelligence, there are four key domains to it:

Self-Awareness: This can be defined as having the ability to recognize one’s own emotions. Also their strengths, weaknesses, values and drivers and understanding their impact on others.

Self-Management: Also known as discipline. This involves controlling or redirecting our disruptive emotions. It also controls our adapting to change circumstances in order to keep relationships moving forward.

Empathy: Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand how they may feel or react.

Social Skills/Relationship Management: Those who do well in the social skills element of emotional intelligence are great communicators. They are as open to delivering, or hearing, bad news as they would be when the news is more positive.

You can watch a short video of Daniel Goleman describing the four domains of emotional intelligence.

How to use EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE TO INCREASE EFFECTIVENESS AT WORK?

If we’re self- aware we know in advance how any actions are likely to affect our emotions and those of our colleagues. This helps us to take a better, more rounded, approach when it comes to our work and, ultimately increase our productivity.

An example of this might be that if we have awareness of how the emotions that working with ambiguity create behaviours in ourselves. These have a negative impact on colleagues, therefore we can take steps to remove the ambiguity, as much as possible.

Every workplace has moments where tensions are raised. Often this can cause strong emotions which can lead to behaviours which are not healthy. Being able to use self-management means we can keep a check on these behaviours and stay in control.

If you can display empathy you will be able to put yourself in someone else’s position. You will understand how this translates into maximising their productivity and ensuring wellbeing is maintained.

A good level of social skills/relationship management increases our efficiency in things like employee engagement and conflict resolution.

To summarise

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE TO INCREASE EFFECTIVENESS AT WORK is what enables us to be aware of, control and express their emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships fairly and sensibly.

Each of the four domains provide opportunities to become more effective in the use of our emotional intelligence. Statistics available show that working on this can provide success:

The source of this information is TalentSmart.

  • Emotional Intelligence is responsible for 58% of your job performance.
  • 90% of high performers have high emotional intelligence.
  • 71% of hiring managers believe emotional intelligence (EI) is more important