Own Your Step - Family Business Leadership Development and Culture Advisory
Own Your Step - Family Business Leadership Development and Culture Advisory
REFLECTING ON YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND FAILURES IS A USEFUL TOOL FOR PERSONAL GROWTH. HERE ARE SIX STEPS TO HELP YOU SET GOALS FOR 2016.
BY STEPHANIE VOZZA
A growing number of companies, including GE, Accenture, and Deloitte, have done away with the annual review, opting instead for quicker feedback via monthly or quarterly check-ins. But there can be something powerful about looking at the past year as a whole—and it can be a good tool for personal growth, especially for entrepreneurs, says Lori Scherwin, founder of Strategize That, a management consulting firm.
“It is very important to set periodic career goals, otherwise what are you striving for?” she asks. “Setting goals requires a baseline, and a year-end review is a perfect mechanism to track progress, review your accomplishments, challenges, opportunities, and events from the prior year.”
You can assess your results by giving yourself a year-end review. Here are six steps to make it happen:
1. DO A BRAIN DUMP OF THE YEAR
Take time to write out every major event from the past year, suggests Scherwin. Bucket those into categories, such as projects, presentations, leadership, teamwork, compensation, and personal growth.
To ensure you captured everything, go back through calendars, meeting notes, and reports to find anything you might have missed, suggests human resources consultant Lisa Phalen.
And be sure to include life accomplishments, adds Scherwin: “Business success and life success are interchangeable,” she says. “Happiness in one area has a trickle effect.”
2. EVALUATE YOUR PERFORMANCE
For each accomplishment, give yourself feedback. Try to be honest, fair, and objective, says Scherwin, and include qualitative and quantitative information. Qualitative measures include verbal commentary on your overall performance or certain attributes, such as “need to contribute more in meetings,” and give you fodder for next-step goals. Quantitative remarks rank your skills using a scale such as one to five, where one is “needs significant improvement” and five is “outstanding.”
For strongholds, ask yourself what skills or traits you used to make them happen, Scherwin says. “In weaker areas or challenges, identify what got in the way. Isolating factors is critical.”
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