🔒101: Work resolutions

We may set personal resolutions for the New Year, but what about for work? Whether you’ve shifted to remote work mode, gone back to the office, or are doing a bit of both, tips on ways to reach goals for improvement can be used in your own career and shared with your team as well. Here are some guideposts to keeping you on the path to your resolution destinations.

Get accountable and hone in, says Joseph Weintraub, founder and faculty director of the Babson Coaching for Leadership and Teamwork Program. This means to yourself, by writing down your resolutions, but also to others. This includes your manager, those you report to – even friends and family. This accountability equals commitment, and will mean others will hopefully hold you accountable as well. And as he says in Harvard Business Review, it means getting specific. If your goal is to reduce your micro-managerial tendencies, explain to your team you will be delegating more often. “Tell people: ‘This is what I’m working on, and here’s how I am trying to do it,’” he says.

Define and clarify vague goals. Let’s say your goal is to be more assertive. Fine-tune that goal to say you want a $10,000 salary increase within three months, says Neely Raffelini at the InHerSight blog, a career coach and founder of the 9 to 5 Project. That way, your goal is targeted and has a timeframe. Salary research will help you come to the correct number, she says. “Take small steps to be assertive in your daily life,” she says. “Speak up about your Starbucks order if it's wrong,” (Politely, of course.)

See it as done. Envision the goal as getting accomplished, or remember how you have felt when you have completed goals before, says Sarah Graves, chief relationship officer of inviteCHANGE, at SHRM.org. She coaches managers to shift from what she calls portrait to landscape mode, focusing not on tasks, but to the overall strategy.