The power of goals
If you are not getting satisfaction at work, setting goals may improve this.
Speaking at the SPVS/VMG Congress, management consultancy expert Andy McCreadie described a study that found, in a single year, only two per cent of students had set themselves goals.
The study by Harvard University also showed that 20 years later, when that same group of students were studied, the net worth of those two per cent was the same as all the remaining 98 per cent put together.
If you are not getting satisfaction at work, setting goals may improve this. This is because having goals helps us to focus better on what we want and where we are going. A simple goal can change our behaviour and provide a high degree of motivation.
Personal and professional goals are interrelated and if either is out of kilter an individual's life will be out of balance. Where both sets of goals are being achieved an individual is able to function far more effectively and feel far better about their life.
If you lead a group of people, you must have goals in order to inspire others, but always remember that your goals may be very different from those of the younger cohort of practice members.
Goals need to be SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely - but just as important, you need to know why your goals are important to you. If you cannot find strong enough reasons for setting particular goals, discard them because it is almost certain that you will not achieve them.
The biggest challenge with goals is that so often people do not have any kind of plan for how they will be achieved. This is why it is important to draw up a detailed plan of what your goal is, why and how you want to achieve it, and even more important when it must be achieved by.
Motivation comes from goals and if you are a leader then this starts with you.
Joanne Webster, a professor of parasitic diseases at the RVC, has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).
