Approaching the beginning of a new year, many leaders may set new professional goals for their organisation and teams, and perhaps personal goals for themselves.
But how can you ensure you set these goals for the best chance of success?
Here are our top hacks for achieving successful professional and personal goals.

Know what you want and get SMART about it

Goals work best when they have a broader purpose and a way to measure their success.

Firstly ask ‘why’ is that goal important to you? Then keep asking ‘why’ until you find a context that inspires you.  For example, if you re looking to find a new role or promotion, perhaps your ‘why’ is to “do challenging and meaningful work that uses my skills and expands my boundaries”.

Similarly, if your personal goal is to improve your fitness, your ‘why’ might be to achieve improved energy to play with your children, longevity, vitality, or overall well-being.

Once you ve got your overarching why , make sure your goals are S.M.A.R.T.:
Specific   Measurable   Actionable  Realistic Timely.

Find an ally

If you want to make your goal stick, share it with someone who s willing to keep you in check. Tell them why the goal is important to you and ask them to remind you of your goals if they see you going off track. Tapping into groups that have like-minded people, or connecting with someone else who shares the same goal (or has already achieved it) can motivate you to stay on track and support you.

Line your ducks up

Whether it s a personal or professional goal, make sure you have your resources ready to deploy. Planning to run a marathon won t turn out so well without a training plan and shoes that will go the distance. Ask, do you need to pace yourself, or is it a sprint?

Having the skills to achieve your goals is also vital. Take an inventory of what specific skill sets, training, competencies, behaviours, or attitudes you or your team need at each stage of the journey.

This will clarify what needs to be done (actions), what you need to have (resources), and who’ll you need to be (personal attributes) to meet your goal.

Break the big goal into micro-goals

Break down your overarching goals into smaller bite-sized micro-goals with milestones and diarise all the tasks needed to keep you on track.

Plan for a breakdown

It s almost certain that something will come up that puts achieving your goal at risk. Life will get in your way, or maybe you ll get in your own way.

In advance of starting towards your goal, write down all the things that are likely to take you off track. Get into the weeds of worst-case scenarios and your contingencies to counteract them.

Most importantly, call yourself out in advance on the personal and professional behaviours you normally use to wiggle out of things when the going gets tough – do you give up, avoid,  go harder and harder until you burn out, blame external forces, or demand such perfection nothing will ever be good enough?

Perhaps you’ll justify giving up with the excuse that an unachieved goal was either a silly idea in the first place, not important to you anymore, or that you or your team will never achieve anything beyond what you feel is possible.

Plan out what positive actions and behaviours will be required of you when these breakdowns happen.

Think about these quotes that may be useful ‘perfection is the enemy of progress and ‘behind every breakdown is a breakthrough’.

How you and your team prepare for and handle the obstacles and breakdowns and are able to put yourselves back on track will dictate your success or failure.

Celebrate your wins

Achieving big goals take time, resilience, and grit. Not all goals happen overnight, so it s important to celebrate the small wins along the way to keep you inspired and motivated and acknowledge how far you ve come.