Category: *Books by Heat Level

SMART Objective Setting for Managers: A Roadmap by Irial O'Farrell

Objective-Setting season is fast approaching. There’s a knot in the pit of your stomach. As time ticks closer to having to set objectives with your team, you can feel the knot pulsing, getting bigger. It has to be done but what’s the point?

Unfortunately, this is how many managers feel about objective-setting. Often due to lack of training or through their negative experiences with their own manager. It often feels like a box-ticking exercise. It doesn’t have to be this way. Actively developing each team member has huge benefits, of the individual, the team, their manager, the company and clients.

SMART Objective Setting for Managers has been written specifically for managers. It sets out the relationship between job description and objectives. It deconstructs the SMART framework. It then works through practical examples of how to design objectives that will really deliver the desired outcomes. It focuses on both target-driven “what” objectives alongside behavioural “how” objectives. It also takes some time to explore both the employee’s perspective and the manager’s mindset, in relation to performance and their role.

Summaries and prompts, at the end of each chapter, recap on each chapter’s main points and allow you, the reader, to think about the points in relation to your own team. Free template downloads are also available, to help you apply the learning.

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SMART Objective Setting for Managers by Irial O'Farrell

Every year, millions of managers sit down with their staff, to set objectives for the coming year. Every year, the vast majority of those millions of managers dread the prospective of having to sit down with their staff, to set objectives. If this sounds like you, then meet your new best friend – SMART Objective Setting for Managers.

This book unpacks the 4 main challenges that most managers grapple with, when setting objectives:
– Defining the desired outcomes of performance
– Diagnosing team members’ individual starting points
– Defining tangible objectives for “soft” behavioural performance issues (e.g., poor communication or influencing others)
– Understanding what goes wrong during the communication of agreeing objectives

As you read through the book, your understanding of SMART, developing performance and communication builds up, culminating in Chapter 8. This chapter explores how to identify soft performance issues and how to diagnose what the real underlying issue is and provides a framework to design an objective that will deliver real performance improvement.

Reviews on Amazon rave about how easy-to-read and concise the book is while providing a whole new way to look at objective setting.

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