If you’ve recently launched your startup or you’re looking for more effective ways to manage your employees, it’s important to keep some important goal setting strategies in mind. Launching a startup can have its fair share of ups and downs, and that’s why it’s important to make goal setting a priority for your company and team.
Effective managers who create smart performance goals for their employees are fully dedicated to their employees’ success. These managers believe in their employees’ skills, characteristics, and talents, and most of all, trust their employees to bring those qualities to the table. In addition, an effective manager also realizes employees need goals that can be achieved through a balance of challenge and inspiration. Your employees want to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel, so it’s important to provide them with smart performance goals to help them reach success.
The performance goals you create for your employees should be focused on productivity and motivate them to go above and beyond. In the end, these goals should help your employees not only improve their personal performance, but also your startup’s performance as a whole. To learn what you can do to help your employees perform at the standards of your company, check out these four tips for creating performance goals:
1. Create measurable goals.
The first step of creating smart performance goals is making sure the goals can be measured. To create measurable goals, you should ask yourself, “How will the employee accomplish this goal, and how will I know when it’s complete?” By asking yourself these questions, it can help you gauge the success of your employees and help you manage their tasks. This way, you will be able to work together with your team to help them make these goals happen.
It’s also important for you to always have the end in mind when creating measurable goals. By knowing what your desired outcome will be, you will have a better understanding of how to accomplish the goal. Plus, the desired outcome will also help motivate your employees to maintain productivity in the workplace.
2. Make sure those goals are attainable.
The key to creating excellent performance goals is creating ones that are attainable. Based on your employees’ skills, work ethic, and personalities, you should be able to create goals that are attainable for your team. Excellent startup managers understand how their employees perform best; therefore, it’s important to create goals that fit your employees’ work ethics and personalities.
Another key point to consider is the time frame you create for those goals. If you are a newly launched startup, it’s important to create smaller goals for your employees that contribute to an overall big picture. This allows you to create manageable projects that help your employees work toward the goals you set while performing with efficiency.
3. Manage your goals based on previous success.
Use your experience from previous successes to create smart performance goals for your employees. When you know what you’re capable of as a manager, along with the strengths of your startup, you will be able to create goals your employees will feel motivated to work toward. Even if you want to create new and challenging goals, be sure to keep in mind the strategies and tactics that were in successful in the past, so that you will become successful in the future.
4. Build accountability for your employees.
One of the best ways to motivate your employees is to instill your trust and confidence in them. Employees want to be trusted by their managers, and once they have that trust, they feel that they have the freedom to work at their best to get the job done. This is a great way to help your employees be successful because they will know that their actions and efforts are responsible for the outcome of the goal. Therefore, employees will be motivated to work hard and put forth the effort required to create a successful outcome.
Goal setting is an important skill for startup managers, especially when the startup is newly launched. It’s easy to get ahead of yourself by having the desire to accomplish all of your goals at once. However, when you focus on creating measurable and attainable goals based on your startup’s success, you will be able to keep your employees moving forward and accomplish the goals you have for your company.
How do you create performance goals for your employees?