Creating Effective Performance Goals

Success in any area, including performance management depends on designing an effective goal-setting strategy. By developing a clear picture of exactly what you hope to accomplish and determining what specific actions you need to accomplish it, you can more easily tell when you've succeeded in reaching your goal.  

Working with integrity

Have you ever worked with someone who was great at getting things done on time, but often had a poor attitude and was miserable to work with? Or someone who was fun to be around but consistently missed deadlines and under-delivered on commitments?

Our tasks and interactions with colleagues are two strong components that represent our work life. When we strive to work with integrity, these two components must be in balance.

In his book Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, Dr. Henry Cloud tells a story about his love for sailing and observing the wake left behind the boat in the water. He imagines that one side of the wake represents his accomplishments – the work he’s done, the tasks completed. The other side represents his influence on the people around him – his relationships. Together, both sides of the wake represent a record of his work performance:

“The wake is the results we leave behind. And the wake doesn’t lie and it doesn’t care about excuses. It is what it is. No matter what we try to do to explain why, or to justify what the wake is, it still remains. It is what we leave behind and is our record.” 

Creating performance plans

When our performance plans include job duties, goals and core competencies, it reflects that what our employees do and how they do it matter. Meeting both of these expectations demonstrates one’s integrity at work – a core value of Student Affairs.

Job Duties

The primary, day-to-day tasks the employee is required to do according to their job description. This may include tasks the employee is responsible for making sure are completed, and tasks that are delegated to others. All employees must master these tasks and consistently perform them well in order to meet expectations. Job duties are added to the performance plan by the supervisor.

Goals

Tasks that the supervisor and employee agree upon in addition to primary job skills.  Stretch goals or tasks that help the employee develop new skills or that require more effort, go beyond meeting expectations and are usually included in the performance plans of employees who have already demonstrated mastery of all primary job skills and are ready for a new challenge. Goals are included are added by the supervisor for more experienced employees who are ready for additional challenges and/or are seeking advancement.

Core Competencies

Skills that specifically relate to how the employee completes job skills or goals. We expect that all employees have a positive impact on customers and colleagues as they do their work. Poorly executed core competencies may reflect poor or damaged relationships with customers and colleagues. Core competencies are rolled out at the campus level and are the same for all employees. These core competencies will already be included in the performance plan in Cornerstone.

Setting your employees up for success

When creating a performance plan with an employee it is equally important to use a consistent goal-setting strategy in order to provide explicit work expectations. One such strategy is the SMART goal method.

SMART Goals

SMART is an acronym used to ensure that goals are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Timely:

  • Specific: Be straightforward and specific in your description. Specificity provides greater impact and increases the likelihood of accomplishment.
  • Measurable: Establishing concrete, objective criteria for measurement helps create benchmarks for achievements. Set these measurements to help with tracking progress.
  • Actionable: Divide your efforts into smaller, subjective measurements to help make them more attainable.
  • Relevant: Tie these to success in a specific area and weight the relative importance of each. This will help ensure appropriate prioritization and facilitate achievement.
  • Timely: Specify a time frame for achievement to provide a target to work towards. Without a completion date, progress may become vague and commitment may waiver.

Cornerstone Performance Management Software

 TheWizard function guides the user through the SMART goal method during the creation of an employee’s performance plan; more specifically, employee goals, job duties, and competencies.  

When a user clicks the “Create” button on the “My Performance Plan” page, the Wizard function button will be displayed in the upper right-hand corner. Though this Wizard function is optional, the SMART method is a highly recommended strategy to optimize an employee’s performance. The elements in the SMART method can be found in each step of the Wizard function.