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Interview Patty

118 - How Goal Setting Can Help You Get More From Your Staff

Helping your employees set goals for themselves can motivate and encourage productivity. Follow these tips to make your team more productive.

As a small-business owner, you'd probably do just about anything to help your businesses grow—work nights and weekends, give up your favorite, time-consuming hobby, even mortgage your house. But what about your employees?

To be an effective leader, it's important to know why your employees work for your company—why they show up every day and what they hope to get out of their employment with your company. Put another way, what's the one bullet point they'll put on their resume that shows their biggest achievement while working for you?

Knowing your “employees' bullet point” shouldn't just be a slogan but an ongoing management tool. The key is to make sure that your employees' personal goals match with your overall company objectives. When they're complementary, employees work hard and stick around. When they diverge, however, an employee’s performance can sink, and they may eventually leave the company.

Goal-Setting Tips

How can you discover each of your employees’ bullet-point goals and support their achievement of them? Start with this checklist:

1. Ask them for specifics.
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Get each employee to tell you their primary and secondary work goals. These should be two distinct objectives, which can be pursued simultaneously as long as they're complementary to each other. A secondary goal can also become a primary one over time.

2. Put a measurement on it.
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Progress toward achieving the bullet-point goal needs to be quantified by the employee and the company. If it's not measurable, the employee won't know when it's accomplished.

3. Be realistic.
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Ensure that the bullet-point objectives are realistically achievable inside the company in a time frame of less than two years. Each goal must have a set deadline.

4. Align their goals with company goals.
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Ensure that the employee’s bullet-point goal overlaps with your company strategy. Identify areas and time frames where they might diverge.

Bullet-point objectives are typically long-term goals—daily emergencies will distract employees from achieving these overall objectives. Weekly or monthly tracking of an employee's progress will ensure that your employees don’t stray too far from their goals. Many times after such a review, an employee will be forced to refocus on the bullet or the company, and they'll need to dedicate more resources toward its achievement. For reinforcement and support, bullet-point goals can be shared by employees in front of the entire company .

Read the full article here: American Express

All the best!

Patty Block

Building Blocks

7941 Katy Fwy. #414
Houston, TX 77024 USA

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