The start of a new year often brings a time for personal reflection. It’s also an opportune time for managers to connect with their teams, to support individual work goals, develop team goals, and ensure alignment with wider business objectives. This work is critical in 2021, as businesses and industries collectively move forward and recover from the events of 2020. Having clear goals will give teams a common purpose to aim at.
By encouraging your team to set their goals early-on in the year, managers can give much-needed clarity amid the uncertainties ahead. Goals can be a powerful tool to give direction. As business strategist Tony Robbins explains, “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”
Furthermore, making time to regularly discuss and give feedback on team and personal goals is vital, particularly as nobody can predict what opportunities and challenges lie ahead in 2021.
Why individual goals matter ?
But why should HR leaders care in the first place?
When businesses support their people in achieving their personal goals, both parties benefit from greater productivity, motivation, and futureproofing.
91% of companies with effective performance management report that their employees’ goals are linked to business priorities.
This rings especially true given the events of 2020. Many business leaders realize that their company performance relies on having people working at their best – and that support was needed to ensure they could do their best work. As Leena Nair, Chief Human Resources Officer at Unilever, says – “You cannot have a healthy business in a sick world. For businesses to thrive, society must also thrive: from employees, to consumers, to suppliers, shareholders and other stakeholders. When you leave some people to fall through the cracks, you lose all the benefits they bring to society, from their skills and talents, to their experience and unique understanding.”
Helping people reach their career goals is a surefire way to avoid them falling through the cracks.
Individual and team goals
This requires a combination of team and individual goal-setting. Team goals will help people feel more invested in their company’s objectives and in partnership with their colleagues. When closely aligned with business goals, they also help a team prove their value and skills to a company and can also showcase an individual’s contributions. Individual goals, meanwhile, help to equip people with the skills and knowledge they need to do their best work. And employers, by supporting those goals, show that they are invested in their people’s individual development.
The manager’s role
The role that managers play is critical. They are the link between the business objectives and strategy, and what team and individuals want to achieve. They also have oversight of their team’s progress and any skill gaps that may be hindering this. Managers also lead by example.
So, how can managers effectively support their team’s goals?
It begins with skills. Someone cannot achieve a goal if they don’t have the right skills. Team goals will be hindered by unaddressed skill gaps. The best support a manager can give their team, therefore, is ensuring everyone has the skills they need to achieve their goals – or are working at building those skills. Providing opportunities to reinforce their upskilling, through work projects, volunteering, stretch assignments, or mentoring, is also worthwhile. The same applies to career growth opportunities. Managers can assign or point their team members to projects and tasks that align with their longer-term career goals.
The next step is to provide the right resources. In the current economic climate, a massive outlay on formal training may not be possible but there are many free and low-cost resources that can upskill people in everything from coding to leadership skills. Peer-led learning, articles, TED talks, videos, books and podcasts are just some avenues to explore.
Giving people the time and space to learn is also important. This may involve setting aside regular time for people to work on their goals or to facilitate more learning in the natural flow of work. People may also feel that they need ‘permission’ to learn at work. Google, for example, has communicated to every employee about their right to learn during working hours. Regularly scheduled events can also help – AirBnB holds fireside chats featuring different industry leaders, for example.
Managers also have a mentoring and coaching role to play. Accountability through regular check-ins will help workers make progress on their goals, overcome any obstacles, and find ways for employers to support each worker’s development.
Individual driven
It’s worth noting that these efforts should be individual-led and not top-down. Careers are very personal things, especially when it comes to career moves and upskilling for the future. Individuals won’t be motivated to work towards their personal and team goals if they’ve played little part in developing them with their managers.
Nair advises that businesses, “Support people to find their own sense of purpose and realize their full potential by working with them to develop a purpose-led, future-fit development plan. This is more than just running reskilling programmes. This is equipping people to lead the change, rather than having change done to them.”
Equipping managers
Of course, effectively supporting a team to meet their goals is a skill in and of itself. Business and HR leaders, therefore, should consider how best to support and equip their managers to take on this task. Leadership, communication and coaching skills would be useful, for instance. It’s little surprise therefore that they are among the top skills needed across all industries in 2021.
Goals give direction
Time will tell what 2021 will hold for employers, teams and workers. Setting goals at the start of the year will offer a North Star for many employees. It will help to unite teams, at a time when many people remain working remotely. It will provide motivation to individuals and will keep careers developing, ready for the future.
The driving force behind this will be managers, helping their teams stay on-track, equipping them with the right skills, and ensuring every team and individual goal has a tangible impact on the business.
Kelly Palmer is on a mission to change the way the world learns. A well-known thought leader on learning, business, and career development, she is currently on the executive team of Degreed and was formerly the chief learning officer of LinkedIn. Prior to LinkedIn, Kelly was vice president of learning at Yahoo! and held executive positions in learning, M&A, and product development at Sun Microsystems.