Why Performance Goals Are So Important (And How to Set Your Own)

Completing new certifications is a great goal.

Ideally, your company will pay for this as part of continuing education. Before the performance review, ensure you have specific certification in mind, including the cost and time frame. Know how the certification will benefit you or the team.

Meetings can be hard, even for the confident. With the rise of online meetings, it's easier to fade into the background but that is not the best thing for your career or team performance.

Speaking up is a good goal to set and easy to track and measure. Start by aiming to contribute something to each meeting, even if it's just saying hello. Then, when you become more comfortable, start offering opinions and answering questions.

Being more focused and productive is always a great goal and something almost everyone needs to work on.

Consider carefully what increased efficiency would look like for you, how you'll track it, and how it will benefit the team. For example, if you find that you spend two hours per day on email, you could aim to limit that to one hour per day.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and work with emotions. 

Emotional intelligence is in high demand in the workplace. A goal could be to practice the skills that contribute to emotional intelligence:

• Offering support to team members.
• Offer to help mediate a conflict.
• Share your experience with a struggling team member.
• Provide positive feedback and encouragement to coworkers.