How to Set and Achieve Your Job Search and Career Goals

Goals are important because they act as the milestones along the roadmap of your career. Setting the wrong goals can lead you down the wrong path. Fortunately, a little forethought and check-ins with yourself can help you set the right goals and course correct when needed.

Michael Bungay Stanier, who is an author and the founder of Box of Crayons, literally wrote a book on setting and achieving your goals. He recently sat down with LinkedIn News Editor Andrew Seaman for the latest episode of the #GetHired podcast. Michael shared best practices for setting and achieving goals in your job search and career. 

You can read a transcript of the conversation below. You can also listen to the episode above or on Apple Podcasts by clicking here.

BONUS: Michael will join Andrew again on Monday, March 13, at noon ET on #GetHired Live to answer your questions about setting and achieving goals in your job search and career. You can RSVP for that broadcast by clicking the image to the side or by clicking here.

TRANSCRIPT: How to Set and Achieve Your Job Search and Career Goals

Andrew Seaman: My goal for today is to help you set good goals for yourself when it comes to your job search and career. Seriously. We're talking all about goals on today's episode. From LinkedIn News, this is Get Hired, a podcast for the ups and downs and the ever-changing landscape of our professional lives. I'm Andrew Seaman, LinkedIn's Managing Editor for Jobs and Career Development. I like to talk about setting goals because I didn't realize how bad I was at setting them until I learned what a good goal is. I know it may seem silly to some people, but setting good goals is really important when it comes to your job search and career.

Luckily, we're joined today by Michael Bungay Stanier, who is an author and founder, but he's much more than that. In fact, he's kind of the guy coaches go to to learn how to coach. He's going to tell us how to set good goals and what we can do to achieve them. Before we get to the conversation though, I want to let you know that Michael will join me on Monday, March 13th, at noon Eastern Time on Get Hired Live to go deeper into this topic and to answer your questions. You can find the RSVP link for the Get Hired Live show in the show notes. Now, back to today's conversation. First, let's hear a bit about how Michael became an expert in helping other people achieve their goals.

Michael Bungay Stanier: I grew up in Canberra, Australia's national capital. I studied at university there and actually did a law degree, so I'm on the cusp of becoming a lawyer, which was going to be bad because I literally finished law school being sued by one of my own professors for defamation. So I wasn't sure it was going to be a great fit. And I had the good luck to win a Rhodes scholarship that took me to England. I fell in love with a Canadian 30 years ago. So I started an accidental career. And I spent time working in the world of new product development coming up with new products and services based on conversations with consumers about what they really wanted. I spent some time in the world of change management, trying to think about how organizations change and evolve and grow. And then about 20 years ago came up to Canada and shortly afterwards started my own company, which kind of drew on a bunch of all of that stuff, but really became a champion for coaching as a force for change in organizations.

Andrew: It's funny because when I started really getting into the world of work and the career space, I knew I needed an education on coaching, and Dorie Clark, who I'm sure you know, I reached out to her and I sort of said, "Hey, listen, I kind of need to dive into this a little bit." And the first two books she recommended were yours. And then I had the good fortune of signing up for a management course here at LinkedIn and we took your online course, The Coaching Habit, and it really took everything from the book and really transcended what I thought I already knew. So I'm a big fan.

Michael: Oh, I appreciate that.

Andrew: I think you're such a great person to talk about this because coaching really, from my understanding, is basically you're not telling a person what to do, but you're really trying to enable them to get to where they need to go on their own, to really figure things out. I guess the first question is, for people out there who say, "Okay, I need to do something, but I'm not really sure really where I should aim, there's so many things that I could pick from," how do you go about actually setting goals for yourself?

Michael: So one of the most powerful things you can do is to say to somebody, "Let's figure out where we direct your attention. That is both about having impact, so it's in service to the team or the business unit or the organization, and it actually lights you up, is thrilling for you." So in the How to Begin course, I talk about this shift away from the tyranny of SMART goals to something called a worthy goal. And a worthy goal is something that is thrilling and important and daunting. Thrilling, lights you up, gets you excited. Goes, "Yep, that speaks to who I want to be and who I am now." Important, actually contributes to what's required. And daunting takes you onto your learning edge so you continue to stretch and grow and learn and expand and become the next best version of who you are.

Andrew: I think that is a really good thing to aim for because I used to tell people to set SMART goals and then I learned what actually SMART goals were, and it's a very rigid structure to actually set goals. Can you give us some ideas on, for people who out there who are job searching or they're trying to level up in their career, can you give us some ideas of how you would apply that and select a goal for yourself?

Michael: So for a smart goal, for a worthy goal in terms of your career and the work you want to be doing. So I would guess there's two kind of places you might find yourself as you think about your career. One is you're in a role and you're pretty happy, but you want to be having more impact in that role. The second place might be you're in a role, you're not happy. You want to be thinking about what's next for you and how might you move or how might you shift around that. If you're in the former, you think to yourself, "What are my opportunities for something that is thrilling and important and daunting?"

And what I've learned through teaching this over the last number of years is a great place to start is to take your very best guess of what a worthy goal might be for you. And it's different for everybody because we're in different jobs, different parts of our career, different areas of specialty, but you want to be thinking of all the stuff that's a potential for you to be working on. What would most light you up, speak to who you are, get you excited, make you go, "That would be cool to be working on. That's thrilling." Then you want to be looking around and going, well, the way I think about it is, "What does my boss's boss care about?" Knowing what my boss's boss cares about is really smart because what you are doing is you are becoming more strategic.

One of the ways you become more valued and more senior in an organization is you become smarter about the big picture, smarter about the stuff that matters. It's very easy to get overwhelmed by all the stuff that needs to get done at your level, but if you can think to yourself, "What does my boss's boss really care about? What would success look like for her?" Then now you're getting a clue as to what's important for your part of the business.

And then daunting is what allows you to go, "How do I stretch and grow? How do I find the edge?" Because it's as you expand your skills and your experience and your lessons learned and your points of wisdom that you become more enriched and more easily promotable. So if you're in a role and you're like, "This is pretty good. I want to find out what the next big thing is for me."

If your next big thing is a new role, well, then you can do something similar. But this time you're thinking to yourself, "What's the stuff that I want to work on for me? What will light me up? What speaks to my values?" Secondly, "What's the impact I want to have on the world? Is there a different role within this team, or within this organization, or am I looking for a different role in a new organization, one that has more alignment with the impact that I want to have?" And then you want to be thinking about, well, where's your edge going to be and do you want to have an edge in this new role?

Andrew: When it comes to those goals, so if you do say, "Okay, I do want a new role," and you decide that maybe you are in sales and now you want to go into a more creative area of the business, or you want to just go into a new field altogether because you think it is maybe more sustainable and you have a family, how do you say, "Okay, I have something to shoot for, but how do I get there?" Because I think a lot of people, they can immediately go off track and they'll think the goal is just unreachable because it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. What is the next step then, once you have that goal?

Michael: First is to say, "This won't be a straight journey. This isn't going to be like me just tapping in an address into my GPS on my phone, and it's going to say, 'Turn left, turn right.'" Think of it more almost like a video game. You're standing there in the jungle, you can see a misty valley before you, there's a peak on the horizon. You think that's the peak you're going for, but you're not entirely sure. You do know that you're going to have to navigate through this valley. And when you're navigating like that, you don't just aim for the peak and start walking in a straight line. You go, "What's the next milestone I need to get to?"

So you may go, "Look, I can see a peak in the valley." Let's call it a marketing job. You're like, "Okay." Step number one could be go talk to people who are in marketing jobs and actually find out the reality of what that's like. It could be repurpose your resume or your CV so that it speaks to marketing skills. It might be get onto LinkedIn and do some real searching around what roles are available and what they're looking for. But it's design the next step, the next process of things you can do in a small way. Lots of small steps.

Second principle is don't travel alone. So who are your people? Get them around you. And I think there are four kind of energies that you might want to call in and actually have around you. Some of these energies you'll have yourself in abundance. You don't need support. Some of them you may go, "I wouldn't mind somebody else bringing some of that to me."

The four energies are first of all, a warrior, fierce energy. It's like having courage, being brave, stepping out, drawing the line, pushing back. The second energy is kind of a healer or a lover energy. It's a place of nurture, a place of care, a place of being soft. It's kind of sanctuary. The third energy you might want to have is that of a teacher, sometimes called the magician energy, which is like it's about wisdom, it's about learning. It's about gathering new information. It's about discovering what you don't yet know.

And then the final energy is called the visionary or the ruler energy, and it's about ambition. It's about heading to the horizon. It's about the big picture. And if you're going for a new job, you're going to need all of that. You're going to need some fierceness because it's a bit of a battle to find the job. You are going to need to have a place of solace, because it's miserable getting nos. You're going to need some wisdom, which is I need to learn some stuff about me, about job, about the process. And it's about that ruler to go, "What should I be going for? What's the ambition that I might have?"

So that's the second of the three principles I have around when you start this stuff, how do you do it. Number one, take small steps. Number two, don't do it alone. Number three is know how to get back to your best. Because when you take on a worthy goal, whether that's a job search or whether it's something else, there are just times where you're like, "I feel battered down a little bit. I feel a bit beaten." So if you can find a path back to who you are, then that's a really good place to be.

Andrew: They're all such great principles, but especially the part of not going it alone, because what I find in dealing with people who are job seekers or people who want to get ahead in their career, there's this inherent competition or sometimes shame. There's a lot of emotions tied up into it. And for some reason they pull people toward being insular. And the reality is is that doesn't help anyone and you don't get anywhere alone. And your description of those four energies, what I really like about that is that people may think, "O God, I have to go find a teacher." In reality, if you look around to your mentors, to your friends, they all have different strengths and weaknesses, and you likely have these people around you. And they're the people that you turn to for compassion. They're the people that you turn to like your hype man kind of.

Michael: Exactly. Sometimes you just need a cheerleader. Someone's that's going, "Look, you're awesome. You're doing great. Carry on."

Andrew: We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Michael Bungay Stanier. 

Andrew: And we're back, talking about setting and achieving goals with Michael Bungay Stanier. The next question is, if you feel like you are getting off of the path that you should be on, so maybe you say, "Okay, listen, I have this goal and I still want to get there, but I feel like I'm spinning my wheels and I'm not moving forward. I took a different path that led me down maybe the wrong road for a little bit." How do you course correct or how do you get back on track?

Michael: Yeah. Well, first of all, everybody goes off track. That picture, the misty valley, the mountain on the horizon, you going, "How do I get there?" It's like there is no route. You are making this path up as you travel. So expect to get off the route. That's part of the process, part of the learning. The equivalent, if you're a writer of writing a crappy first draft and a crappy second draft and a crappy fourth draft, it's like that's just the way you get to a good draft is you have to wander off the route and write a bunch of bad things before the good things appear. So how to get back on the route, well, it's helpful, Andrew, if you've got those people around you so you can kind of go, "I'm feeling a bit lost. I'm feeling a bit stuck."

I find it helpful if you spend just a minute or two journaling each morning because that's an orientation. I've got three questions that I ask myself each morning, and I spend typically less than a minute answering these three questions. The first is, what do I notice? In other words, what am I noticing in myself? What am I noticing that I'm worried about or excited about? Second question I ask is, what am I grateful for? Because that is helpful just to feel positive. And thirdly, I ask, what's the one thing today that's the most important thing for me to work on? And I find those are good daily prompts to get me oriented to what matters. And then ask for help. Just ask for help. It's a secret to success is asking people for help.

Andrew: And I think a lot of people, they put too much emphasis on the idea of, "Well, no one's helping me." And a lot of times when it comes to job seekers or people who are working on their careers, they'll say, "Well, did you ask anyone?" And the answer is usually no, because they're embarrassed for some reason. And I'll always say, "How do they know you need help if you don't ask them?"

Michael: One of the most powerful frameworks I have in my life is to say, "I want to build adult relationships with the people with whom I work and whom I live." And when people go, "Well, what does that actually mean?" I go, "It's the ability to ask for what you want knowing that the answer may be no." Look, they don't have to say yes. They could say no. But just making the request is a really powerful step.

Andrew: And I know on this podcast and other things that we've done for the Get Hired franchise, we've talked a lot about sort of clarity and specificity. So when you make those requests, make it easy for a person or just making the ask, like you said, is really the key step.

Michael: Yeah. What I do when I'm making a request, this is very tactical, so this may be helpful for some people, I make a really clear request and I make it really okay for them to say no. I really make it explicit so that there's no damage to the relationship by them saying no or feeling obliged to say yes.

Andrew: Yeah, I think that's a really good way to go about it. And they don't feel burdened sort of by the no. I kind of want to go back to the idea too, that if you feel a bit lost. Because I think there's some people, they'll get a quarter way, three quarters of the way or very near their goal, and they'll realize they've changed and they kept the goal the same or something has changed and the goal doesn't align with what they need or what they value anymore. And I'm going to assume that not all hope is lost because you've still made progress towards something. You just have to find a new goal, right?

Michael: Yeah. I mean, I think this is called welcome to the human condition. When I started my company, I was a hundred percent sure that I was going to build a coaching company, a company where I coached people, because I'd done the training, I'd become a coach, plus I had about 20 years of informal experience of coaching people. So I'm like, "I've been doing this all my life. It feels like this is what I'm called to." So I started a coaching company. I grew it. I had a whole bunch of clients. And about a year into it, I'm like, "I am not enjoying this." I was so surprised. I was like, "How is it possible that this thing that felt like manifest destiny for me has turned out not to be a thing?" But it's like it turns out for me, I like a degree of performance. I like a degree of being in a spotlight and coaching is a bit anonymous, and that's why I turned out to be a writer and a facilitator and a teacher and a designer of courses rather than a coach.

Andrew: I had that moment too. Growing up, I always wanted to be a political journalist, and I did everything I could. I plotted my path. And right after grad school, I was covering the Affordable Care Act in the White House, and I was like, "Wow, my dream." I didn't like it. I was sitting in the White House and you just waited for something to happen. And then when you go to listen to a speech, you sort of say, "Oh wow, this is boring. And I've heard this already." And then I knew, "Okay, well, this isn't for me, but I still really like journalism." So I was able to sort of pivot, and I've found that sort of throughout my career that I've learned, and I could just sort of make those tweaks to find my next step.

Michael: Well, that's right. I mean, even if you're in something that you love for a while, then you get to this place where you are consciously competent and unconsciously competent, and you're like, "This is great. I'm having impact. I'm gaining mastery. It's super exciting." But then at a certain point, you start to plateau off. You're like, "I've kind of mastered this domain and it's no longer bringing me the joy because there's no longer the edge to that." And that's where you've got to kind of find the next thing to leap to. And sometimes if you're lucky, you have that moment of realization that you and I had, which is like, "Ah, I was so sure this is going to be right, and it's not right." So I now need to go, "What's the next possible thing?"

Andrew: And before I let you go, is there anything that I didn't ask that you think I should have or anything that maybe I sort of missed in our conversation?

Michael: The first thing that I would encourage is that people should be ambitious for themselves and for the world. You should actually own ambition for yourself, and that's totally okay. And I say claim ambition for yourself, but also claim ambition for the world. Jacqueline Novogratz has a phrase where she says, "What if you could give more to the world than you take?" And I think if you can find the balance of being ambitious for yourself and at the same time giving more to the world than you take, that that's a path for meaning and impact and happiness.

The second thing I would say, just to reiterate something that you and I talked about earlier, Andrew, is to say, don't do this alone. Nobody likes to say hello, but everybody likes to be greeted. So you could be the person who reaches out to say hello, to pull people in, to host, to gather, to start a conversation, to ask for help. And one of the things that you can do that will benefit you but will be a gift to the world is to be the person who reaches out and invites people in.

Andrew: Yeah. It's also just important because it helps you, but it really helps others at the same time. Well, thank you so much, Michael. I really appreciate this conversation.

Michael: It's a pleasure, Andrew. Thanks for having me.

Andrew: That was author and founder, Michael Bungay Stanier. Remember, it's up to you to put our advice into practice. Still, you always have a community backing you up and cheering you on. Connect with me and the Get Hired community on LinkedIn to continue the conversation. In fact, join Michael and me on Monday, March 13th, at noon Eastern Time on Get Hired Live. You can find the RSVP link in today's show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, leave us a rating on Apple Podcast. It helps people like you find the show. And of course, we'll continue this conversation next week, right here, wherever you like to listen. Get Hired is a production of LinkedIn News. . This episode was produced by Alexis Ramdaou. Lolia Briggs is our associate producer. Assaf Gidron engineered our show. Joe DiGiorgi mixed our show. Dave Pond is head of news production. Enrique Montalvo is our executive producer. Courtney Coupe is head of original programming for LinkedIn. Dan Roth is the editor-in-chief of LinkedIn. And I'm Andrew Seaman. Until next time, stay well and best of luck.