Help with writing Objectives for next year

[ErinAoife]

Hi, I need help to write my review, the objective part. I find it very stressful, so far for next year, one of my objective is too be more assertive but how do you put that in a development plan. How do you measure it.(smart goal) I am so bad at review, my mind always go blank and feel so stupid. Thanks

Do you not get help with this from your manager? In my workplace we work together with managers to come up with them - sometimes the manager does all the work, sometimes the employee most of it but usually it's a bit of a mix in our team.

It's hard to say without knowing your job - objectives are always tricky for me in that I'm not really a 'goals' type of role like sales or customer service, I'm just producing a service that members of our organisation get as a matter of course so I can't say 'Sell this many things', 'Call this many people ' etc

Not really getting any help from my manager. I am not in sales or CS. I just need to be more assertive and would like to put it as one of my objective but don’t know how to put it in a smart way.

There's a couple of different ways you could write and measure this based on the anticipated outcome of assertiveness.

So if by being assertive you hope to not be given all tasks then you could focus the objective on delegating more work eg

I will by the end of Q4 of 2021 identify the right people within the team to support the following activities: X, Y and Z. I will develop hand over materials that allow for contingency in the event of absence and conduct quality activity to ensure accuracy.

If by being assertive you want to take on additional responsibility and be seen as more of a leader then your objective may be something like.

In 2022 I will lead a project to process flow the activities of XX team, I will identify the relevant stakeholders, engage with them to agree timelines and actions. The project will start by xx/xx/xxxx, updates will be provided to management weekly with project completion by xx/xx/xxxx at the end of the project I will present to the management team a review of the processes with opportunities for improvement clearly identified and assigned to owners for ongoing activity.

If there are any training courses, mentoring, shadowing etc that you feel would benefit you be sure to detail that in your objective.

We tend to set three objectives that are business related - ie mine are: team competence, deliver a particular project and improve communications (With more detail on the how).
We then have a final objective which is personal development so this is where your assertiveness might come in. You could include courses to take, mentorship or opportunities to deliver. I'm of the opinion that not all objectives need to be Smart. Some are more nuanced than that.