Goal-setting is a cornerstone of personal and professional success; a truth acknowledged and explored by various experts in the field of psychology and management. Among the seminal frameworks that have guided people in this endeavor are the SMART Goals, the expanded SMARTER Goals by Michael Hyatt, and the emotionally resonant HARD Goals by Mark Murphy.
Each of these frameworks offers invaluable advice on how to craft goals that are not only aspirational but practically achievable. The SMART Goals framework emphasizes the importance of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound objectives. The SMARTER Goals framework builds on this by adding two more elements: Exciting and Relevant. Michael Hyatt focuses on goals that don’t just set you on a path but also fuel your journey with intrinsic motivation. On the other hand, Mark Murphy’s HARD Goals framework dives into the psychological aspects of goal-setting, bringing in Heartfelt, Animated, Required, and Difficult as critical components to ensure the goals resonate with the individual on an emotional level.
Inspired by these frameworks’ richness and complementary nature, I have synthesized them into a new approach: the SET GOALS framework. This framework aims to capture the essence of effective goal-setting by incorporating attributes from SMART, SMARTER, and HARD frameworks. The SET GOALS acronym stands for Specific, Exciting and Emotional, Time-bound, Growth-oriented, Objective (Measurable), Animated and actionable, Life-aligned (Relevant to your current life circumstances), and Significant. It offers a comprehensive guide for setting actionable and emotionally resonant goals, ensuring the pursuit and the attainment of what you hold dear.
However, choosing the right goals is only part of the journey, so our 7-step approach provides a holistic roadmap covering everything from initial self-assessment to continuous improvement.
Step 1: Review Your Personal Mission
Reflect on Your Values: This step involves deep introspection to understand your core values and the things that genuinely matter to you. It sets the stage for aligning your goals with your true self.
Craft a Personal Mission Statement: Here, you articulate your findings from the reflection phase into a coherent statement, providing a clear focus and direction for your life.
Step 2: Self-Assessment
Strengths and Weaknesses: Identify your strengths and weaknesses. Knowing these can help you set goals that leverage your strengths and reduce the effect of your shortcomings.
Current Status: Assess where you are right now regarding your career, relationships, health, and other areas of your life.
Step 3: SET GOALS
Explanation of the SET GOALS Framework
The SET GOALS framework is a synthesized approach to selecting meaningful and achievable goals. The acronym encapsulates eight critical attributes that effective goals should possess: Specific, Exciting and emotional, Time-bound, Growth-oriented, Objective (Measurable), Animated and actionable, Life-aligned, and Significant. Each of these attributes draws from existing renowned goal-setting frameworks like SMART, SMARTER, and HARD, combining them into a comprehensive guide for crafting emotionally resonant and practically actionable goals.
Benefits of the Framework
The SET GOALS framework offers multiple benefits, such as providing a structured yet flexible methodology for goal selection. It ensures that your goals are specific, measurable, emotionally engaging, and aligned with your life’s circumstances. Incorporating various elements like time-bound criteria and growth orientation pushes you to venture outside your comfort zone, making the process not just an exercise in listing aspirations but a meaningful endeavor in personal and professional development.
Importance of Other Steps in the Goal-Setting Process
While the SET GOALS framework is instrumental in guiding you to select well-rounded goals, it is but one crucial step in a more comprehensive 8-step goal-setting process. This holistic approach begins with reviewing your personal mission and conducting a self-assessment, moves through the SET GOALS framework for optimal goal selection, and then transitions into developing actionable plans, monitoring progress, and eventually celebrating achievements. Each step is designed to work in harmony with the others, providing a full-cycle approach to not just setting but achieving your life’s most significant goals.
SET GOALS
Specific: Clearly define your goal with specific details to eliminate ambiguity.
E: Exciting: Choose goals that inspire and excite you and have emotional significance, giving you a more profound reason to achieve them.
T: Time-bound: Attach a specific timeframe to your goal to instill a sense of urgency and focus.
G: Growth-oriented – outside your comfort zone: Opt for goals that challenge you and contribute to your personal or professional development, making you grow meaningfully.
O: Objective (Measurable): Ensure your goals can be measured objectively through concrete criteria, making it easier to track your progress and know when you’ve succeeded.
A: Animated & Actionable: Visualize the outcome of your goals vividly and make sure the goals are actionable, meaning you know exactly what steps you need to take.
L: Life-aligned (Relevant to your current life circumstances): Choose goals relevant to your everyday life circumstances, responsibilities, and values, ensuring a harmonious effort toward achievement.
S: Significant: Commit to goals that are important in your life, making them non-negotiable commitments.
Step 4: Develop an Action Plan
Break It Down: This involves breaking each goal into smaller, more manageable tasks or sub-goals, making the process less overwhelming.
Resources: Here, you identify the resources like time, money, and social support required to achieve your goals.
Milestones: This step involves setting smaller markers or milestones along your path and offering periodic checkpoints to measure your progress.
Step 5: Monitor and Adjust
Regular Review: Consistent monitoring lets you stay on track and adjust as needed, ensuring that your efforts yield the desired results.
Course Correction: If something is not working or you’ve encountered unforeseen challenges, this step allows you to tweak your goals or methods to achieve them.
Step 6: Reflect and Celebrate
Review: This is the time to acknowledge your hard work and achievements, whether big or small and to reward yourself for the journey you’ve completed
Celebrate: Acknowledge your achievements and treat yourself to something nice, regardless of how big or small the accomplishment is.
Step 7: Continuous Improvement
Feedback Loop: This involves soliciting feedback from trusted sources to understand how to improve further.
Set New Goals: Informed by feedback and your reflections, this step is about setting new goals, starting the cycle anew but at a higher level thanks to the insights gained.
The journey towards achieving your aspirations involves more than listing what you want. It requires a multi-dimensional approach, capturing the nuances of self-assessment, planning, execution, and ongoing evaluation. This article has laid out a 7-step strategy, central to which is the SET GOALS framework for selecting your goals. This integrated framework ensures your goals are Specific, Exciting, Time-bound, Growth-oriented, Objective, Animated, Life-aligned, and Significant, laying a robust foundation for the following steps.
The SET GOALS framework is a holistic guide to setting and achieving meaningful goals. It combines the most effective elements of existing frameworks while bringing in its unique components. This approach ensures that your goals are specific, emotionally resonant, time-bound, and aligned with your current life circumstances. It also pushes you to step out of your comfort zone and continuously assess and readjust your strategies.
However, the SET GOALS framework is not an island; it is a critical component within a series of steps designed to guide you from introspection to celebration. From reviewing your personal mission and assessing your current status to developing an action plan, monitoring progress, and celebrating achievements, each step is geared towards ensuring the setting and achieving meaningful goals.
If you’re a healthcare professional/leader interested in a more guided approach to achieving your life’s ambitions, I invite you to contact me. I offer a structured goal-setting tool based on this 7-step approach, designed to navigate you through each phase of your goal-setting journey. This is not merely about setting targets; it’s about hitting them, celebrating your successes, and setting the stage for even more significant achievements.
