You made it through 2020 and the first few weeks of 2021. You’re officially on your way to a year of great new beginnings.
Now that you’ve set your organizational goal, this is also the perfect time to set personal goals and think about how you can maximize your own learning and growth through these business objectives. To help you design a plan of action, we have put together some ideas of personal development goals from across the board.
Benefits of Developing Personal Goals
Add Value to Your Role
- Clarity of direction and personal expectations
- Stronger connections at work
Maximize Personal Growth
- Increased focus and productivity
- Greater self-awareness and understanding
Assess Your Areas of Improvement
- Develop new skill sets to enhance opportunities
- Channel strengths to your advantage
How to set a Personal Development Goal
Crafting your personal goals can have a significant impact on you, your career at your company, and beyond. There are many kinds of goals that you may want to achieve personally, and here are some examples to get you started.
Develop emotional intelligence
While there is a lot of data to help us navigate the decisions we make, it’s also important to have a human experience perspective when building features and products.
For example, when you’re building an app feature for a Delivery Partner, you have to think beyond the digital parameters of the users — how does a partner feel about the features, how easy is it for him or her to execute and use the features? What are some of the daily challenges he or she faces when making deliveries?
To find answers to these questions, step into the Delivery Partner’s shoes, reach out to them, and understand their world view. Start obsessing over their problems to get a better sense of how you can help. Speaking and interacting with these key stakeholders, can also help you nurture how you approach problems at work as well as in your personal life.
Network More
The first step in building your network is to know the people you work with. Working in isolation and not building those connections at work can not only hinder the progress and learnings you will gain in your current role but also limit the opportunities that may come your way in the future. This does not mean you become transactional in your interactions with your colleagues, but getting to know them beyond what is required can lead to a lot more support and productivity.
For example, if you’re stuck with a problem at work, speaking to your peers and senior colleagues can be a great source of support and help you work through a situation they may already be familiar with. Asking for help is a great way to build a meaningful connection and foster trust among team members.
Here are some helpful tips from the Dunzo team
Improve your time management skills
When you have an important deadline for a goal, don’t wait until the last minute. Having a million ad-hoc to-do’s and a hundred unread emails can get overwhelming very quickly and also lead to you not being able to fulfill your goals. Prerna Thakur has been there and has this to share about how she powered through.
“Managing your time is all about being organized. I like to keep my inbox clean, archive all emails that I’ve read and mark/categorize the emails where something needs to be done. I also maintain an exhaustive to-do list or tracker but take your to-dos one day at a time. Additionally, for workstreams that require inputs from other teams, it’s better to prioritize those and send out requests to other teams before starting on the rest of your workstreams. This also helps you rank your to-dos based on priority/urgency. These maneuvers have helped me manage my time and helped me stay on track for my personal and professional goals.”
Be more action-oriented
At work or in life, you will face tough choices. How do you develop better judgment and make the right decisions? The best way to know what is good and works for you is by taking a course of action and finding ways to make it work.
“The biggest challenge in being action-oriented is navigating situations in which multiple stakeholders are involved. One has to be empathetic towards their workload and yet be persistent. It is also extremely important to back your suggestions with logic that is clean, easily understandable, and succinct. Being action-oriented allows one to move quickly from one task to another. One also realizes, particularly in a logistics setup, your subsequent problems become a lot easier to solve as the experiences of previous solutions weigh in on the problem,” explains Shikhar Baveja. “I’ve always felt that the most important trait that a manager can possess is to know the situations in which one can afford to be vaguely right and those in which one has to be precisely right. The nature and speed of action depend on the two scenarios mentioned. This becomes all the more important in a multi-functional organization like Dunzo where for a single output, one would get multiple inputs. Selecting and actioning upon the right inputs is essentially what one should strive to do well. It has been very rewarding to see and learn from some of my colleagues who have been consistent with this.”
Become a better communicator
“Communication isn’t just about speaking but also about listening. As you grow in your role, listen, and communicate more actively with your peers and team members. Keep your team updated on your deliverables and let your team members know what needs to be done,” says Ruchika Pillai. “Having a clear timeline on the deliverables you expect from your team, positions you as a more effective communicator when you create channels that keep your team informed and engaged. When you start making this a habit, you also develop greater clarity of thought and start being on top of your goals. This also makes things more trackable and transparent to avoid any discrepancies.”
PRO BOSS TIP
Develop a reading habit
Reading emails and Tweets don’t count! Apart from expanding your knowledge, developing a reading habit can also help you switch off from the world around you.
“Books have always helped me recharge from the redundancies of BAU. Apart from running, reading gives me the mental space I need to think clearly and effectively,” says Kabeer Biswas. “Reading interesting books also just makes for good conversation and are generally super useful in building connections in the workplace. I am currently reading The CEO Factory: Management Lessons from Hindustan Unilever, and I wholeheartedly recommend it if you’re striving to be a better manager.”
