When a manager asks for your goals, how personal should they be? Should you mention wanting better work-life balance, a career change, or running a marathon? The answer depends on the goal, but there is a sensible line.
Three types of goals
Business goals focus on results for the organisation: sales, quality, efficiency, customers.
Professional development goals focus on your skills and career: qualifications, experience, new responsibilities.
Personal goals focus on life outside work: health, family, hobbies, finances.
Work goal forms are designed for the first two. Personal goals mostly belong elsewhere, with some exceptions.
When personal goals belong in work conversations
Some personal goals affect how you work, and sharing them can help:
- Work-life balance: "I want to stop working most evenings" can become a goal about prioritisation or delegation.
- Wellbeing: if stress is affecting performance, a goal around workload is legitimate.
- Career direction: wanting to move into a different area is useful for your manager to know.
You decide what to share. Frame it in terms of how it affects your work, not the private detail.
Did you know? Researchers Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton coined the term "job crafting" in 2001 to describe how employees reshape their tasks, relationships and view of their work to fit their strengths and interests. People who craft their jobs this way tend to find their work more meaningful.
The balance between business and development goals
A healthy set usually looks like:
- Two or three business goals that deliver results the company needs.
- One development goal that builds your career.
If all your goals are business-focused, you risk stagnating. If most are about your own development, you risk looking disconnected from the team. The best development goals also help the business; see how to align personal and company goals.
Keep a private list too
Your formal goals are a shared agreement. Your private list can be bigger and more personal: salary targets, a future role, skills for a side project. Reviewing both helps you notice when your job is no longer moving you towards what you want.
Examples
| Type | Example |
|---|---|
| Business | Reduce invoice processing errors by 50% by Q3 |
| Development | Complete a management course and lead the new starter programme |
| Personal, framed for work | Finish on time four days a week by delegating the weekly report |
The bottom line
Put business and development goals on the form, share personal goals only where they affect your work and keep a private list for the rest. The strongest goals serve you and your employer together. For a framework to plan both, see our Business Planning and Goal Setting course.