SOFT SKILLS - P20MBMJ21

UNIT V - GOAL SETTING

Wish List, SMART Goals, Blue print for success, Short Term, Long Term,
Life Time Goals. Time Management. Value of time, Diagnosing Time
Management, Weekly Planner To do list, Prioritizing work. Extempore

INTRODUCTION
According to researches conducted in Harvard and Stanford Universities only 15%
of your career success is provided by your hard skills, whilst other 85% by so called
soft skills. “Soft skills get little respect but will make or break your career” (Peggy
Klaus).
“Soft Skills” correlates with some terms of a very close meaning: “Life Skills”,
“Emotional Intelligence Quotients”, “Social Skills”, and “Interpersonal Skills”.
Soft skills is a term often associated with a person's Emotional Intelligence
Quotient, the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language,
personal habits, friendliness, managing people, leadership, etc. that characterize
relationships with other people. Soft skills, also known as people skills,
complement hard skills to enhance an individual's relationships, job performance
and career prospects. It's often said that hard skills will get you an interview but
you need soft skills to get – and keep – the job.
Unlike hard skills, which comprise a person's technical skill set and ability to
perform certain functional tasks, soft skills are interpersonal and broadly
applicable across job titles and industries.
Many soft skills are tied to individuals' personalities rather than any formal
training, and are thus considered more difficult to develop than hard skills. Soft
skills are often described in terms of personality traits, such as optimism, integrity
and a sense of humor. These skills are also defined by abilities that can be
practiced, such as leadership, empathy, communication and sociability.
Soft skills could be defined as life skills which are behaviors used appropriately and
responsibly in the management of personal affairs. They are a set of human skills
acquired via teaching or direct experience that are used to handle problems and
questions commonly encountered in daily human life.
The subject varies greatly depending on social norms and community expectations.
Life skills have been defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “abilities
for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with
the demands and challenges of everyday life”. They represent the psycho-social
skills that determine valued behavior and include reflective skills such as problem-
solving and critical thinking, to personal skills such as self-awareness, and to
interpersonal skills. Practicing life skills leads to qualities such as self-esteem,
sociability and tolerance, to action competencies to take action and generate
change, and to capabilities to have the freedom to decide what to do and who to be.
Life Skills-Based Education has a long history of supporting human development.
Life skillsbased education is now recognized as a methodology to address a variety
of issues of youth development and thematic responses including as expressed in
World Youth Report (2003), World
Program for Human Rights Education (2004), UN Decade on Education for
Sustainable Development (2005), the World Development Report (2007), and so on.
Expected learning outcomes include a combination of knowledge, values, attitudes
and skills with a particular emphasis on those skills that related to critical thinking
and problem solving, self-management and communication and interpersonal
skills.
Social skills are any skills facilitating interaction and communication with others.
Social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and
nonverbal ways. The process of learning these skills is called socialization.
Interpersonal skills are sometimes also referred to as people skills or
communication skills.
Interpersonal skills are the skills a person uses to communicate and interact with
others. They include persuasion, active listening, delegation, and leadership. The
term “interpersonal skills” is used often in business contexts to refer to the
measure of a person's ability to operate within business organizations through
social communication and interactions. Interpersonal skills are how people relate
to one another.
WHY SOFT SKILLS?
Self
• An awareness of the characteristics that define the person one is and wants to
become.
Opportunity
• An awareness of the possibilities that exist, the demands they make and the
rewards and satisfactions they offer.
Aspirations
• The ability to make realistic choices and plans based on sound information and
on self opportunity alignment.
Results
• The ability to review outcomes, plan and take action to implement decisions and
aspirations, especially at points of transition (Kumar, A., 2007).
students need two things:
Academic Roots
– Discipline based knowledge and understanding
Academic Wings
– The ability to enhance that knowledge and understanding with awareness
(self and others), critical thinking, reflective practice.
The specificity of Soft Skills
• Discipline specific
• Placement / employability preparation
• Lifelong learners
– Learning how to learn
– Reflective practitioners
Soft skills focus more on people than processes. Today‟s service economy and
ascendance of
work teams in large organizations puts a new premium on people skills and
relationship-building
Soft skills = People skills=Street Smarts
THE LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
The module content is centered on students‟ learning and development. It
seeks to motivate students by helping them to be more effective, independent and
confident self-directed learners by improving their capacity to understand what
they have learned, how and when they are learning, and to encourage them to
monitor, reflect on, evaluate, plan and take responsibility for their own learning.
The Main tasks of the Soft Skills module are to develop and enhance:
• Critical and reflective thinking;
• Self-management and self awareness skills;
• Communication skills, including interpretation and use of feedback;
• Team working and peer support strategies.
DEFINITIONS
“What exactly are soft skills?” This basic question is not easy to answer, because
the perception of what is a soft skill differs from context to context. A subject may
be considered a soft skill in one particular area, and may be considered a hard skill
in another. On top of it the understanding of what should be recognized as a soft
skill varies widely.
Generally, soft skills may be subdivided into three basic categories:
1. Personal qualities
2. Interpersonal skills
3. Additional skills/knowledge
Soft Skills:
Critical thinking Communication Skills
Listening to others Reflective Practice
Group Work / working with others CV and Applications
Self assessment Professional practice
Assertiveness Creative problem solving
Mentoring and peer support Information Literacy
Digital Literacy Portfolio management
(tools for delivery, recording and reflection)
Soft skills complement hard skills to enhance an individual's relationships, job
performance and career prospects. Unlike hard skills, which tend to be specific to a
certain type of task or activity, soft skills are broadly applicable.
While your technical skills may get your foot in the door, your people skills are
what open most of the doors to come. Your work ethic, your attitude, your
communication skills, your emotional intelligence and a whole host of other
personal attributes are the soft skills that are crucial for career success.
Soft skills are often broken down into categories, or types of skills according to the
level of complexity and interaction. An example of one way of categorizing social
skills can be found in the table below:
Soft Skills Categorizing
Foundation Skills
Basic social interaction
Ability to maintain eye contact, maintain appropriate personal space, understand
gestures and facial expressions
Interaction Skills
Skills needed to interact with others
Resolving conflicts, taking turns, learning how to begin and end conversations,
determining appropriate topics for conversation, interacting with authority figures
Affective Skills
Skills needed for understanding oneself and others
Identifying one's feelings, recognizing the feelings of others, demonstrating
empathy, decoding body language and facial expressions, determining whether
someone is trustworthy
Cognitive Skills
Skills needed to maintain more complex social interactions
Social perception, making choices, selfmonitoring, understanding community
norms, determining appropriate behavior for different social situations.
Self-awareness includes identifying knowledge gaps, taking responsibility for own
learning and development, understanding the impacts of self-efficacy, dealing with
pressures and emotions, reflective practice, professional development and current
awareness.
The mentioned skills assist students in understanding the learning process and
constructing their own Selves in academic and professional activities. They become
apparent in
• Surface / deep / strategic learning
• Self-efficacy
• Requires reconstruction of known events in their own lives
• Constructing a self-MAP
• Motivation
• Ability
• Personality
INTEGRAL PARTS OF SOFT SKILLS
I. Self-Management System consists of Self-motivation, taking responsibility, task
setting/prioritizing, time-management. The structure of Self-Management System
is detected in the
II. Critical Thinking:
 «thinking about thinking» (Raiskums, B. W.)
 «this way of thinking, which does not accept the arguments and conclusions
blindly, rather, it examines assumptions, recognize hidden values, evaluates
the data and conclusions» (Mayers, D.)
 «reasonable reflective thinking, aimed at deciding what to trust and what to
do» (Ennis, R.)
 “An expert is a man (woman) who has made all of the mistakes which can be
made in a very narrow field” (Bohr, N.)
 “Imagination is more important than knowledge” (Einstein, A.)
  Critical thinking is the ability to question and to cope with uncertainty,
without which none of the above would be possible.
Critical Thinking Characteristics include logic; imagination; risk; “accepting
nothing, questioning everything”, reaching your own conclusion; being prepared to
change that conclusion in the light of emerging evidence; “The world was flat until
we discovered it wasn‟t...at the minute we believe it‟s a sphere...”.
Example of Critical Thinking:
• Experimentation (lab / hypothesis testing)
• Social research
• Data interpretation and explanation
• Creative problem solving
• Identify the issue
• Come up with alternative solutions
• Learning to cope with uncertainty and embracing it as a learning tool
(Pickard, A., 2010).
III. Reflection is a form of thinking used to fulfill a purpose or to achieve some
anticipated outcome and is largely based on the further processing of knowledge
and understanding that we already possess.
Another scheme of reflective practice consists of 1) the reflective diary; 2)
description; 3) interpretation; 4) outcome which involves hard systematic thinking
and soft insight, intuition and tacit knowledge leading to a plan of action based on
critical evaluation of all the available evidence.
IV. Communication and Interaction
Effective communication provides for high level of presentation skills:
 to increase both skills and confidence levels
 to improve research, design and communication skills
 to develop team working and project management skills
 to strengthen learning and enthusiasm for further knowledge
 to promote critical and analytical thinking
academic debates:
 Content and formats of academic debate
 Listening skills
 Giving and receiving feedback
 Reacting to grounded criticism and effective writing and listening:
Skillful writing examples:
 – Technical Writing
– Script writing / audience analysis / performance / reflection
– Observation (self and others)
– Press release;
• Same incident from multiple stakeholder perspectives
– Sign language qualifications (Strachan, R., 2010)
Listening to Others
The examples of effective listening include:
 Role play
 Sender / receiver
 Same audience, same message, how many interpretations?
 Constructed conversations
V. Group work is one of the most useful ways of learning about cooperation, shared
responsibility, project planning, and time management. Learning how to work
successfully in a group has a close association with how we participate in the work
place and includes:
• Social responsibility
• Using logical and rational arguments to persuade others
• Identifying the needs of others and building positive relationships
• Understanding group dynamics
• Understanding yourself in relation to others and how they might perceive
you.
• Reflection on the image you portray
VI. Assertiveness
Assertiveness means “confident behaviour” and “self-confidence”. It is an individual
ability to advance and come true own aims, needs, wishes, claims, interest and
feelings. Phenomenon of assertiveness presupposes an existence of: a) subjective
attitude toward Self (self-allowance to have the own claims); b) social readiness and
ability to realize it in adequate manner (to have the own claims and achieve their
realization); c) freedom from social fear and inhibition (ability to register and reveal
own claims).
Assertiveness training helps to:
 recognise the three main categories of behaviours, advantages and
disadvantages and how
to respond to them
 explore strategies for assertiveness and influence
  understand and use the „Assertiveness Model‟ for greater effectiveness
 develop and enhance self confidence and self esteem
 create an action plan to move forward with assertiveness skills
In order to develop assertive behaviour we need to explore how to:
 Create boundaries and say „No‟
 Deal with disagreement, conflict and aggressive behaviour
 Negotiate win-win solutions
 Use assertiveness techniques and strategies in a variety of work settings
VII. Peer-to-Peer is an interaction and learning method (technology) when the
source of knowledge is not a professor but a peer student (peer instructor). It
promotes participation and interaction. Peer-to-Peer activity includes both trainers
and trainees into campus life and promotes a sense of belonging that combats the
anonymity and isolation many students experience at large universities during the
first year of study.
Mentoring
• Developed their personal and professional skills such as leadership, team
working, organising, time management, listening, interpersonal communication,
facilitation and presentation skills
• Enabled them to gain confidence especially in situations when teamwork is
required to attain a goal
• Provided valuable experience to enhance their CVs
• Enabled them to revise and practise their subject, and gain a deeper
understanding of it (Pickard, 2008).
• Not just doing the evaluating but also actively engaged
• Mentoring at point of need
• Evidence of strong success rate
• Number of models:
• Mentoring (PAL‟s)
• Learning Leaders
• Student ambassadors
OUTCOMES OF SOFT SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
Oral communication skills
Students are able to communicate confidently and effectively with a range of
audiences, in a variety of modes or registers and settings, including persuasion,
argument and exposition, and they are able to make use of different support tools,
including visual, audio-visual and technological.
Interpersonal Skills
Students have the skills to be able to work effectively with a range of people in a
range of different contexts, including teams, where they can be effective members
and, if required, leaders, including organizing team roles and activities. Students
are open to the ideas of others. Students are capable of listening and
understanding in a range of contexts.
Problem Solving Skills
Students are able to identify and define problems and through the use of skills of
analysis and critical evaluation plan an appropriate course of action and devise
solutions. Students are able to make judgments concerning different possible
solutions. They will be able to make use of creative and lateral thinking.
Organizational Skills
Students are able to set priorities, and anticipate potential problems or needs. They
are able to set and achieve targets in relation to both study and workplace tasks.
Students are able to manage their time effectively.
With these soft skills you can excel as a leader. Problem solving, delegating,
motivating, and team building are all much easier if you have good soft skills.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENTAL PLAN (PDP)
Personal Development Plan is a form of summative assessment.
What is PDP? It is „a structured and supported process undertaken by an
individual to reflect upon their own learning, performance and/or achievement and
to plan for their personal, educational and career development‟.
The primary objective for PDP is to improve the capacity of individuals to
understand what and how they are learning, and to review, plan, and take
responsibility for their own learning, helping students:
 become more effective, independent and confident self-directed
learners;
 understand how they are learning and relate their learning to a wider
context;
 improve their general skills for study and career management;
 articulate personal goals and evaluate progress towards their
achievement; and encourage a positive attitude to learning
throughout life.
PDP Structure:
• What are my development objectives?
• Priority
• What activities do I need to undertake to achieve my objectives?
• What support/resources do I need to achieve my objectives?
• Target date for achieving my objectives
• Actual date for achieving my objectives

S.M.A.R.T. Goals
“Want-to’s” or “wish-to’s” are unrefined hopes and cost-free aspirations that you
might do some day. Converting them into S.M.A.R.T. goals is a decision to take real
and practical steps to pursue and achieve them.
S.M.A.R.T. goals can be used in all aspects of life. From gaining an educational
qualification, becoming debt-free, having more time to spend with your children, to
starting a new career or business. The S.M.A.R.T. approach brings clarity to your
plans and frees up your energy to achieve your goals.
How to convert your “want-to’s” or “wish-to’s” into goals
Step 1: Choose one thing that you want to work on in your life.
Step 2: Define what you want to work on using the S.M.A.R.T. format of
 Specific
 Measurable
 Attainable
 Relevant
 Time-specific
Specific: A goal is specific when you can clearly define it to others.
 Bad example: “I want to increase my savings” is not specific – what does
“increase” mean in terms of dollars?
 Good example: “I want to increase my savings account by $1,000 every
year for the next 10 years,” or “I want to have $10,000 in my savings
account by the time I’m 30” is specific.
Measurable: You need to be able to recognize when you’ve accomplished your goal.
 Bad example: “I want to be better at communicating” is not a measurable
goal – how do you know when you’re “better”?
 Good example: “I want to improve my communication skills by
understanding my communication strengths and where I need to improve,
and I’ll complete the online assessment by the end of this month and review
the outcome with my coach to build action steps” is a measurable goal.
Attainable: It can’t be a pipe dream or something unable to be realized.
  Bad example: “I want to take a road trip to see my cousin in Pennsylvania
for his birthday at the weekend” is probably unattainable if your car has not been
starting in the mornings and you’ve had to catch the bus three times this week.
Relevant: A goal is relevant when it’s important to you – when it references your
values.
 Good example: “I want to be making all my payments on time by
December” is a relevant goal for someone whose personal financial values include
being debt-free.
Time- specific: Goals are not open-ended – they have dates attached.
 Bad example: “I want to start a day care center” is not time-specific.
 Good example: “I want to get the training and licenses I need to start a day
care center by August this year and launch the day care center in February
next year” is time-specific.

What are SMART goals?

SMART is an acronym that can help you set reasonable goals. Here's what it
means:
Specific: Define your specific goal before you begin. Instead of aiming for an
emotion or quality, determine what you'd like to change, how you plan to do
it, what actions you can take and why you're trying to do this.
Measurable: Making your goal measurable can help you track your
progress. You might do this by adding numbers or specific qualities to the
goal, like a certain number of attendees at an event or repetitions of the
task.
Attainable: An attainable goal can keep you motivated and help you
understand your own capabilities.
Relevant: When goals are relevant to the work you're doing, accomplishing
them is meaningful to you and impacts those around you, your organization
and your community.
Timely: Consider the timing of your goal so that you give yourself a
reasonable amount of time to complete it without neglecting any deadlines
and responsibilities to others.
Why are goals important for improving communication skills?
SMART goals may seem like they are more appropriate for setting sales or
marketing goals, which are more easily quantifiable, but this framework can be
very helpful to make measurable improvements to your communication skills.
Framing specific and measurable goals can help you understand exactly what it is
you'd like to improve. A planned goal can help you identify which techniques you
can use to improve your office's weekly meetings or provide more cohesive quarterly
reports for a client, for example.
Setting goals also allows you to customize your approach to your situation. As you
try new techniques, you can evaluate their effectiveness individually, keep the ones
that are working and replace ones that don't fit your circumstances.
Examples of SMART goals for communication skills
Here are some examples for creating SMART goals related to workplace
communication. Each example addresses the five criteria crucial to SMART:
Create more effective meetings
If you find your coworkers have a lot of questions on topics you cover in meetings,
you might try implementing a SMART goal to improve their information retention.
Your plan might include a specific way to document the information from meetings
so that others can access it, like a bullet list summary that you email to the team
afterward. You then plan to note how many questions you receive regarding
meeting information after you share each list with the team. Implementing this goal
for three weeks could be enough time for you to measure whether it is effective.
This goal is specific because the strategy includes a specific action: creating a
bullet list email summary. You can measure its effectiveness by tracking how many
questions you answer on meeting content after sending out your review emails.
Since you can write a bullet list quickly, you can attain this goal without a
significant time commitment. This goal would be relevant and timely in an office
where daily meetings and the questions they cause are a part of your routine.
Improve writing skills for memos and emails
If you want to enhance your written communication skills, you might create a
SMART goal that states you'll create an outline before you write each email. Within
each email, you plan to make your phrases concise, then edit out any sentences
that don't fit your outline before sending. You plan to follow this method for two
weeks so that you can form better writing habits in that time period.
This goal is specific and measurable because you've decided on a strategy—an
outline—and criteria that will help you evaluate your writing process. It's attainable
and relevant because it applies to email, a routine and specific task you complete
every day. Finally, this SMART goal is timely because you've given yourself a
specific timeframe to use these steps and work on this skill.
Public speaking
 If you want to improve your presentation skills, you might design a SMART
goal like making a preparation schedule for an upcoming speech. If your speech is
one month in the future, you might spend one week researching and drafting it,
two weeks practicing it daily and the last week recording yourself giving the speech
and adjusting your delivery.
This goal is specific because it includes precise time limits for each step, and
it's measurable because you can track whether you are keeping up with your
schedule and practicing. Setting a goal a month before the speech is more
attainable than trying to improve your public speaking skills in one to two days.
This SMART goal can be timely if you have a specific date to deliver a speech, and it
is relevant because it applies directly to your work responsibilities.
Motivate team
If you want to increase productivity or office morale, you might use a SMART
goal that states you'll implement a new incentive strategy. You might decide on a
specific incentive that appeals to your workforce, one part of your team's duties
that is easily measurable and an amount of time long enough to see results but
short enough to decide whether the incentive is working. You can combine these
elements into a SMART goal, like trying a summer program to provide a $50
paycheck bonus to the employee who turns in the most work each week.
This goal is specific because you define all elements of the program before it
begins. It's measurable because you can compare the rates of finished work to work
rates before the program started. It might be attainable if your company can afford
the bonus payments and if you can track how much work employees do
individually. This might be relevant and timely if you have a specific production
goal you'd like to meet over the summer.
Improve nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication is important whether you are working in-office or
remotely, and it can involve body language, movement, posture, speech, facial
expressions and touch. To improve your professional nonverbal communication,
you can use a SMART goal to enhance how welcoming you are to new coworkers.
You might do this by conducting body language research and noting the body
language of others in conversations for a week, then trying some of these
techniques the following week during the employee onboarding process.

This goal is specific because it involves two clear research steps and one
action step defined within the goal. You can measure your success by
implementing this goal with new employees so that your data is based entirely on
your new interactions and not on your workplace reputation. It can be attainable
and timely if you normally work with new employees as part of your regular duties,
and it can be relevant if you have new employees joining the team soon.
Providing individual feedback
If you want to improve the effectiveness of feedback that you give your team
members, you might set a SMART goal for a specific part of the feedback process.
You could set a goal to improve feedback for new employees in training by creating
a written goal with each team member at their first quarterly one-on-one meeting,
setting a calendar reminder and checking back in each week for a month to track
progress.
This goal is specific because it involves creating written performance
indicators and weekly check-ins, and you can measure your success by noting
check-ins on your own calendar. You can spend as much or as little time on each
check-in as you need to make the goal attainable within your own schedule. This
goal can be relevant and timely during any onboarding cycle.
Improve office communication
A SMART goal to improve your office communication might be to improve
how you report overlooked team issues to the manager. You might write issues
down as they arise, then present them to a manager during your next one-on-one
meeting if they are still unresolved.
This goal is specific and attainable because it involves just one new task:
noting issues discussed in the office. It becomes measurable after your meeting
with your manager, at which time you can evaluate whether reporting that
information helped create solutions to office issues. It might be relevant if your
office experiences ongoing challenges, and it can be timely if you have a one-on-one
meeting coming up with your manager.
Goal-Setting
What is goal setting?
graduationGoal-setting is the process of taking active steps to achieve your
desired outcome. Maybe your dream is to become a teacher, musician or physical
therapist. Each one of these dreams involves setting and reaching small (and big!)
goals. Each of these major goals can be broken down into smaller, more attainable
goals that will propel you towards success.
There are three types of goals- process, performance, and outcome goals.
 Process goals are specific actions or ‘processes’ of performing. For example,
aiming to study for 2 hours after dinner every day . Process goals are 100%
controllable by the individual.
Performance goals are based on personal standard. For example, aiming to
achieve a 3.5 GPA. Personal goals are mostly controllable.
Outcome goals are based on winning. For a college student, this could look
like landing a job in your field or landing job at a particular place of employment
you wanted. Outcome goals are very difficult to control because of other outside
influences.
GS relationship
Process, performance, and outcome goals have a linear relationship. This is
important because if you achieve your process goals, you give yourself a good
chance to achieve your performance goals. Similarly, when you achieve your
performance goals, you have a better chance of achieving your outcome goal.
General Goal Setting Tips
 set both short- and long-term goals
 set SMART goals
 set goals that motivate you
 write your goals down and put them in a place you can see
 adjust your goals as necessary
 Recognize and reward yourself when you meet a goal
Set SMART Goals
Set all three types of goals- process, performance, and outcome – but focus on
executing your smaller process goals to give you the best chance for success!
SMART
specific – highly detailed statement on what you want to accomplish (use who,
what, where, how etc.)
Measurable- how will you demonstrate and evaluate how your goal has been met?
Attainable- they can be achieved by your own hard work and dedication- make
sure your goals are within your ability to achieve
Relevant- how does your goals align with your objectives?
Time based- set 1 or more target dates- these are the “by whens” to guide your
goal to successful and timely completion (include deadlines, frequency and dates)
Short-term goals in the workplace
Setting short-term goals for your career can help you better achieve your
professional aspirations, be more productive in the workplace, and improve overall
job satisfaction. To accomplish short-term goals, you must first know how to
successfully set them and then commit to seeing them through. Here we explore
what short-term goals are, explain why they are important for your career, and
provide several examples of workplace goals to consider to boost your professional
life.
What are short-term goals?
Short-term goals are goals that you want to accomplish in the near future.
Short-term aspirations can be set to achieve today or over the next week, next
month, or the next year. For example, a short-term goal in the workplace could be
to increase productivity over the next 30 days. The goal of establishing short-term
aspirations is to further your success and support your long-term goals. The more
specific and actionable your short-term goal list is, the more likely you are to
achieve each goal in a timely manner.
Why are short-term goals important?
Short-term career goals are important because they allow you to ultimately
achieve long-term goals. Setting a short-term goal can have the following benefits:
Boosts motivation: Setting a short-term goal can be much easier than
setting and achieving a long-term goal and allows you to realize results more
quickly. Even small achievements can help motivate you to continue on with your
goals and allow you to build momentum to keep moving forward.
Mitigates procrastination: When you have clear goals and actionable steps
in place to accomplish them, procrastination is often cut down and you’re more
motivated to continue working even when the going gets tough.
Provides a clear direction: A short-term goal list complete with the actions
you need to take to reach those goals provides you with a clear direction in which
to focus your attention and efforts. This can help prevent wasting time on activities
that don’t further your goals and reduces wasted time and energy.
Promotes your career success: Regularly setting and accomplishing goals
is an important key to moving forward in your professional life. Without goals, it’s
easy to get distracted and spend months or even years not making progress.
Clearly established goals allow you to keep your eye on the prize and not lose sight
of your long-term career goals.
WHAT ARE LONG TERM CAREER GOALS?
Long term goals take more planning, commitment, and time than short-
term. They’re a trajectory point for where you want your career to go in the coming
years, as opposed to months. Long-term career goals are broader than short-term
ones. They don’t have a defined timeline and may take many years to reach.
Consider the following popular long-term career goals.
Earn a degree. While a college degree does have a distinct timeline, it
qualifies as a long-term goal because it takes many years and a lot of dedication to
complete. Attending college and receiving a degree at any level is the first long-term
goal that most people set in anticipation of securing their future careers.
Getting a promotion. This is a common long-term goal in the professional
world. Receiving a promotion is an honor that describes your work ethic and strong
performance over the years with your employer. It shows a distinction that you’ve
been successful at your job and is a good barometer to measure your professional
accomplishments. Working your way towards meeting this milestone can take
anywhere from one year to a few.
Get published. Getting a scholarly journal, article, or book published can be
a considerable accomplishment in many fields. It’s a long-term goal that can be off-
putting to many professionals because of the effort and time it takes to complete.
You may not be an expert writer, but you could be an expert in the
information you have to tell. If you work in an industry or niche that could have a
readership, consider dedicating some time to the pursuit of getting your written
work published.
Attain a leadership position. Being offered a leadership role within your
company demonstrates a readiness to take on more responsibility for managing
other associates. Becoming a supervisor in your industry can take longer than
getting a yearly salary increase. But, it’s an excellent long-term goal to set because
it can end with you receiving perks such as more professional freedom, decision-
making duties, and a potential pay raise.
HOW TO SET YOUR CAREER GOALS
Setting your short and long-term career goals is a personal matter that depends on
what’s important to you and what can benefit your growth as a professional.
Establishing goals can be stressful, but doing so can improve your performance
and happiness at work.
Consider the following tips for how to set your short and long-term career
goals.
Be realistic. One of the key aspects of goal-setting is being realistic in what you’re
trying to accomplish. Many failed career objectives, usually short term, are due to a
lack of realism. A goal that’s out of reach from the start likely won’t be achieved
successfully.
Imagine you take on the short-term goal to become fluent in Spanish in the next
three months without any prior experience. Becoming fluent in a language in this
timeframe is nearly impossible. The task is far too large to be done successfully,
which will leave you feeling discouraged and defeated.
Setting realistic goals is crucial for meeting your short-term objectives.
Make the goals specific. A mistake that people make when setting goals is making
their objective too broad to be achieved. Deciding that your long term goal is to be
happier or be rich doesn’t speak much to the details of what this endeavor will
entail. Instead, consider what will make you feel happier or richer, and create an
outline for how you plan to get there.
Specificity makes it easier to follow the path that leads to meeting your goal.
Create a game plan. Strong planning skills account for many professionals meeting
their long and short-term career goals. Once you’ve decided what you want to
accomplish, you need to figure out how to do it.
Deciding on the steps of your plan for how to achieve your goals include:
Establishing a timeline for completion
Creating specific milestones
Outlining the smaller steps towards meeting the goa
Take on new challenges. The point of working towards a goal is to challenge
yourself. The things that come easiest to you aren’t the situations that make you
grow and improve as an employee. It’s difficult tasks and objectives that help your
career in the long run.
Don’t shy away from a long or short term goal that’s challenging to you because
that’s probably the one you should go for.
Be positive and flexible. You never know what life will throw at you. Whether it be
personal, financial, or professional hurdles, you’re going to face some form of
difficulty when it comes to meeting your goals. This can be especially true of long
term goals that may span over multiple years.
Setting Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in
your lifetime (or at least, by a significant and distant age in the future). Setting
lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your
decision making.
To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set
goals in some of the following categories (or in other categories of your own, where
these are important to you):
Career – What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you
want to achieve?
Financial – How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this
related to your career goals?
Education – Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What
information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals?
Family – Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good
parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your
extended family?
Artistic – Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?
Attitude – Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of
the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to improve your
behavior or find a solution to the problem.)
Physical – Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you
want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to
achieve this?
Pleasure – How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure that
some of your life is for you!)
Public Service – Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
What Are Time Management Skills?
Time management involves both managing your own time and the time of the
others.1 Time management means working efficiently, and employers in every
industry look for staff that can make optimal use of the time available to them on
the job. Saving time saves the organization money and increases revenue.
Effective time management requires staff to analyze their workload, assign
priorities, and maintain focus on productive endeavors.
Employees who are excellent time managers can eliminate distractions and enlist
support from colleagues to help accomplish their goals.
Types of Time Management Skills
Prioritizing
It might be impossible to do every single minute task expected of you. You also
might want to do everything all at once. But you must prioritize so that you are
able to complete the most important tasks in an order that makes sense. When
assigning priority, consider such factors as when each task needs to be done, how
long it might take, how important it might be to others in the organization, what
could happen if a task is not done, and whether any task might be interrupted by
bottlenecks in the process.
Allocation
Managing Expectations
Waste Prevention
Prioritizing requests and demands
High-Value Activities (HVAs)
Performance Reviews
Goal Setting
Scheduling
Scheduling is important because some tasks have to be done at specific times.
Scheduling affects your day, your week, your month, as well as other people’s
workflow. Most have specific times of the day when they are more or less productive
as a result of energy levels and demands of the day. Schedules can be a good way
to avoid procrastination, too.
Scheduling Software
Intentionality
Punctuality
Breaking broader goals into milestones
Breaking up milestones into projects
Task Management
To-do lists (properly prioritized and integrated with your schedule) are a great way
to avoid forgetting something important. They are also a great way to avoid
spending all day thinking about everything you have to do. Remembering tasks
takes energy and thinking about everything you have to do all week can be
exhausting and overwhelming. Split all the necessary tasks up into a list for each
day, and you won’t have to worry about all of it all at once. Just take your tasks
one day at a time.
Proactive
Batching
Creating daily, weekly, and monthly to do lists
Multitasking
Thoroughness
Organization
 Email Management
Workload Management
Pacing your work, even though it may seem an odd thing to call a skill, is an
important time management concept. Although working long hours or skipping
breaks can sometimes improve productivity in the short term, your exhaustion
later will ensure that your overall productivity actually drops. Except for rare
emergencies, it is important to resist the temptation to over work. Include
necessary breaks, and a sensible quitting time, in your schedule.
Knowing and enforcing an optimum workload for yourself ensures consistency in
your performance and avoids burnout. Employers want to be able to count on you
for the long-term.
Process Management
Assertiveness
Eliminating Waste
Taking Breaks
Delegation
Depending on what type of work you do, you may be able to delegate some tasks.
Knowing what and when to delegate is an important skill. Some people resist
delegating, either because they want to maintain control or because they want to
save money by not hiring assistants. Both approaches ultimately hurt productivity
and raise costs.
Remember, however, that if you practice time management diligently and still can’t
get everything done, you may be trying to do too much. It is better to succeed at a
few tasks than to attempt and fail at many.
Seeking Expert Assistance
Moderating Meetings
Presentation
Teamwork
Leadership
Collaboration
Motivation
RELEVANCE OF VALUES IN MANAGEMENT
1) Integrity: Honesty and integrity are the cornerstone of sustainable success. In
order for people to want to follow their leader they must have complete trust in his
honesty, his dedication, his commitment and his unshakeable ethics and high
standards and values. Managers who are open, truthful and consistent in their
behaviors are more likely to inspire trust, loyalty and commitment in their teams.
2) Willingness to take Risk: are not afraid of taking risks or making mistakes.
They take calculated as opposed to reckless risks and while they weigh their
options and alternatives carefully they do not allow themselves to fall prey to the
“analysis paralysis” syndrome. The best leaders learn from their mistakes and
emerge from them resilient and ready to take on the next challenge.
3) Optimism and Enthusiasm: A great manager inspires others with their
infectious enthusiasm, their disarmingly genuine keenness, passion and their zeal
for what they do. Rather than dwelling on problems they are solution oriented and
focus on how to make things work and succeed. They are willing to see the silver
lining in every cloud and have a ‘can-do’ optimistic attitude that leaves no place for
negativity.
4) Commitment to Growth: Leaders recognize that learning is a life-long process
and never stop doing what it takes to grow professionally and personally and
maintain a grip with emerging trends and tools and business realities and
technologies. The best leaders realize that to remain at the vanguard of their
particular function or industry requires constant learning, enquiry, exploration and
innovation as well as continuous self-scrutiny and analysis.
5) Vision:Leaders know precisely what they want and make clear detailed and
achievable plans to get there. They are not vague or ambiguous in their goals nor
do they leave anything to chance. Leaders are also able to articulate and
communicate their vision clearly and in no uncertain terms and inspire and win
others to their platform with their vision.
6) Pragmatism:While leaders may have lofty visions and ideals, they do not hide
their heads in the clouds and are mindful of the hard facts and figures that
surround them. They are very realistic when it comes to assessing the landscape
they operate in and practical about the decisions they make.
7) Responsibility: Leaders can be depended on to take responsibility for their
actions and to live up to their responsibilities completely. They stand firmly behind
the commitments they make and do not let their teams down; nor do they assign or
allocate blame to deflect from their own responsibilities. They do not have a victim
mentality that holds others responsible for their poor choices and deficiencies but
stare challenges in the face and confront them head-on.
8) Hard Work and Conscientiousness: Leaders work hard and accept no short
cuts. The best leaders lead by their example demonstrating a stellar work ethic by
being the first in the office, the last out and the most productive, persistent and
dedicated while at work. They have a strong sense of duty and very high standards
of excellence and they apply these rigorous standards to themselves first always
seeking better, smarter, more effective ways of doing things.
9) Self-confidence: Leaders have no shortage of that essential commodity of
selfassurance that enables them to risk giant strides, be bold and tough-minded
and ‘fall forward’ in the rare instances when they do fall/fail. Leaders generally
have little need for approval and are motivated by an inner strength, maturity and
drive. Leaders are very cognizant of their inner strengths, weaknesses and the
impact they have on others and knowledgeable of what they can and cannot
realistically do/achieve/influence. They do not wallow in self-pity or guilt over past
mistakes or doubt.
10)Emotional Intelligence: Empathy, self-awareness, decisiveness, self-discipline,
intuitiveness and social competence are all key to successful leadership and all are
associated with high levels of emotional intelligence. Congeniality, the ability to put
oneself in another’s shoes and relate with others, the ability to read between the
lines and analyze the pulse of a relationship or situation, the ability to focus on the
positive and refrain from negative and self-defeating attitudes and behaviors, are all
elements of emotional intelligence that contribute to leadership success.
11)Expertise in Industry: While there are many generalists in leadership positions
the best leaders become generalists not by knowing a little about many fields but
my being experts in a multitude of fields. Good leaders are characterized by a very
high level of energy, conscientiousness and drive and spare no efforts to become
experts in their field and harness all the information and knowledge and
competence they need to maintain an edge over their competitors.
12)Ability to Engage Others: A key leadership trait is inspiring, motivating,
engaging and bringing out the best in others. The best leaders encourage
leadership in all around them and strive to develop and empower others to assume
roles of leadership and responsibility. They are able to propel others to elevated
levels of performance through their own energy and enthusiasm and insight and
can maximize the strengths and capabilities of their team for the benefit of the
whole organization.
SECULAR SPIRITUAL VALUES
Secular spirituality refers to the adherence to a spiritual ideology without the
advocation of a religious framework. Secular spirituality emphasizes the personal
development of an individual, rather than a relationship with the divine. Secular
spirituality is made up of the search for meaning outside of a religious institution;
it considers one's relationship with the self, others, nature, and whatever else one
considers to be the ultimate. Often, the goal of secular spirituality is living happily
and/or helping others