Achieving Goals_ Define and Surpass Your High Performance Goals - Kathleen Schienle [13]
SOURCE: “The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence” by Cary Cherniss, Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, Rutgers University, 2004.
POWER POINTS
SWOT ANALYSIS
An acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, SWOT analysis is an approach to goal-setting and decision-making that capitalizes on an organization’s strengths. Goals are individualized to take advantage of each employee’s potential and are based on a realistic assessment of opportunities and threats.
Make a comparative analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of your employees.
Examine the performance of your employees as a team and your own performance as manager.
Consider the difficulties and challenges of the job and tailor goals accordingly.
Focus on opportunities in developing performance targets.
Analyze weaknesses and threats as realistically as possible. It is best to face them upfront when setting goals.
Also examine your weaknesses both from the inside and from an external viewpoint: Do other people perceive weaknesses in your employees that you don’t see? Are other teams doing better than you are? It’s best to be realistic now—and to face unpleasant truths when you can do something about them.
Opportunities. Helping employees develop performance targets is all about finding and focusing on the opportunities that are likely to excite them. Opportunities emerge from the specific strengths of your employees and their role in the organization.
Externally, opportunities often arise from change: in technology, markets, government policy, and cultural and lifestyle trends. What are the opportunities facing your employees? What interesting trends do you recognize that you, your employee, or your company could take advantage of? Also, analyze the weaknesses you’ve identified in your employees and yourself and consider whether eliminating them would unlock any opportunities.
Threats. An analysis of possible threats can be particularly illuminating, not only because it shows what needs to be done, but also for the perspective it offers on your problems. For example, is evolving technology changing the requirements of your employees’ jobs—and the goals you should be setting for them? Could any of your employee’s weaknesses seriously threaten their—and your ability—to meet the goals you’ve set?
Using Personality Types in Goal-Setting
Besides factoring in the potential of each of your employees when helping them set and manage goals, you should also consider their personality type. All people have a different mix of abilities and talents, which influences what they want and how they go after it. This mix determines what motivates people, the risks they’re willing to take, and the way they handle roadblocks and snafus. Personal development coach Rodger Constandse has identified four basic goal-setting personality types—or archetypes—that represent natural human tendencies and traits: the Warrior, the Explorer, the Diplomat, and the Scholar.
Though many people demonstrate characteristics of all four archetypes, most people tend to have a dominant style. Understanding your team members’ personality types, Constandse says, will help you figure out the best way to work in your department to build on individual strengths and minimize their weaknesses as you set meaningful goals and strive to achieve them.
The Warrior. Focused and goal-oriented, warriors like challenges and risk but can be impatient with details and poor at planning, and therefore susceptible to “unexpected” problems. Their goal focus can make them forget their mission and overlook opportunities. Encourage them to write down goals, to plan and focus on the big picture, and to look for opportunities. Remind them about their