The SMART Framework for Achieving Your Career Goals

This transcript has been generated by AI and may contain slight discrepancies from the audio or video recording.

Terence Davy: [00:00:00] I'm very against this notion that you need some title or some promotion to be viewed as a leader. Uh, the thing about being a leader is if you want to do it, all you have to do is start leading.

Anne Sparaco: It is officially 2026 and New Beginnings and New Years means. New resolutions or maybe just general goals for this year. You might have ambitious aspirations in your job, a list of accomplishments you really wanna achieve and hopefully a vision for your future, but translating those into clear actionable steps.

Can really be a big challenge, especially for people like me who, you know, give up on some small goals a little too easily. So from navigating company priorities to overcoming personal roadblocks, the path to effective goal settings is full of those twists and turns to down that path. So if you're tuning into this episode at the start of the year, it's a perfect time to goal set.

But really [00:01:00] this is just great practice for. Any time of the year. It doesn't have to start in January. So today we're joined by Terrence Davy, a leadership coach, and the founder of Proactivity. He has spent years helping professionals tap into their potential through strategic goal setting. So together we're gonna break down some of the common obstacles to setting goals at work.

Explore the smart framework for doing so, and those practical strategies you can use to align your ambitions with your. Organizations, bigger picture. This feels like even a coaching session just for myself. So welcome to all things work. Terrence,

Terence Davy: thank you so much. I'm excited to be here, especially talking about one of my favorite topics.

So

Anne Sparaco: yeah, we're so excited to have you. We know you, you have such wonderful experience. You do a lot of great work. Uh, you know where you are and so let's dive into it. You've been in the executive seat in previous roles, and you currently are in your own coaching business, as we mentioned. So in all of your [00:02:00] amazing experience coaching, what are some of the, let's say, most common obstacles professionals, maybe like me have with setting goals?

Terence Davy: Yeah, absolutely. There's a, a ton of different obstacles that we could go through. There's, uh, folks setting too many goals, uh, not measuring progress and not making their goal measurable at all. Mm-hmm. Uh, not setting goals that are meaningful enough. Uh, but I would say the, the number one cause of not following through.

Achieving goals is not spending enough time in the planning and setting phase, actually, right? Uh, that's actually when execution starts, is when you set a goal that's meaningful to you.

Anne Sparaco: So. I would love to dive into a little bit more organizational goal setting and how we can align here as the average employee.

So during organizational goal setting, employees are often asked to align their individual goals with those broader business objectives, which. And, and honestly I think a lot of us feel this way. It can feel a little [00:03:00] abstract or high level, like this is above my pay grade kind of situation. So what advice would you offer employees on effectively mapping those specific goals they might have for themselves in their career to these larger priorities with the business?

Terence Davy: Yeah, absolutely. I know that's, uh, the bane of a lot of folks' existence is the, the goal setting process for work. Uh, the first. Key that I would give, and this is regardless of level in the organization, is to check for understanding, uh, either with whoever you're reporting to or your peers, what are the actual broader organizational goals.

And to make sure that it's not just that you can repeat them, but you understand truly the intent behind them.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, 'cause that will give you a lot more purpose to work with in aligning your own individual goals. And then I would also say. Uh, in that same conversation, make sure you understand the intent of your personal goals and that you can actually measure and track them.

Uh, it's surprising to say, but most companies still have really poor measurement on the things [00:04:00] that are super important to them. Mm-hmm.

Anne Sparaco: Uh,

Terence Davy: and so you're kind of starting off on the back foot if you're not able to do that. Right.

Anne Sparaco: Oh yeah. You're work, I mean, you're working a full-time job and, and trying to achieve your own goals.

So it's like, it's a, it's a balance, right?

Terence Davy: Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, advice that I would give to anyone that wants to do this super well, especially if they're trying to stand out in their career mm-hmm. Is once you have that alignment, you understand your own goals, you understand the organization goals, you've narrowed down on how you're going to measure it.

Communicate progress proactively. Mm-hmm. That means, uh, if you don't have a one-on-one with your leader set up already, first of all, bad on your leader, you should have a regular one-on-one set up. Uh, but set that up. Uh, and then in those one-on-ones you prepare before, don't, don't put the onus on your manager.

You prepare your progress against target. What's going well? What's not going well, and what are you gonna do about it?

And then

you come and talk [00:05:00] about that plan and tell them where you need help.

Right,

right. Leaders love for their teams is to be autonomous and to have real connection in their own intrinsic motivation, and that's how you demonstrate it.

Anne Sparaco: Yeah, you, you kind of, you have to be proactive. You can't just let others, you know, try to help you figure out your goals For you. It's, it's something you really gotta be proactive and it helps you almost maintain a little more control into, you know, how you want things to phase out while also trying to align with those company goals.

Would you say that also helps that, uh, persons like, uh, not only their goals, but just their overall, just the work that they're doing. Be more visible to the higher ups and, and leadership.

Terence Davy: Absolutely. Uh, more visible and it. It helps you create opportunities for yourself as well. If you're seeing challenges in your own work, there's a chance that other folks are having a similar challenge.

Yeah. And if they're not proactively reporting them, your manager might not know about it. And you know, I've seen a lot of opportunities open up for [00:06:00] you to help solve that problem more broadly.

Anne Sparaco: All right, so let's move on to a mini coaching session for our next segment. Um, so there are several different methods for setting and achieving goals at work, but the ones we're focusing on today is the smart goals framework.

So, Terrence, let's break down this approach. Uh, so can you start off by explaining what SMART stands for?

Terence Davy: Yeah, absolutely. And hopefully a lot of the listeners have heard of this as one of the more popular goal setting methodologies, but uh, it stands for specific meaning who, what, when, why, how. Mm-hmm.

Like, get super clear on what you're trying to accomplish. Uh, measurable, going back to that piece of, of having clear metrics of success and knowing when you succeed or when you fail, uh, attainable, which means the goal is. Something that's possible given your resources and current constraints. Uh. Mm-hmm.

So I like to give this example, like, if you've only ever [00:07:00] played middle school basketball, you probably don't need to set a goal of making it to the NBA as a 30-year-old, you know, but, uh, so making sure it's attainable.

SHRM VO: Yeah.

Terence Davy: Um, and relevant, which I think, uh. Uh, these things are put in this order because it sounds catchy and cool, but I actually think relevancy is perhaps the most important piece of the smart methodology, and that's making sure that the goal is important to you and that it's relevant to broader organizational or life goals.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and then finally time bound, uh, having a clear space where you'll check and say, I succeeded, or I felt,

Anne Sparaco: so, I would love to, uh, um, would love if you could walk me through the process. Of just creating the smart goals. We talked about what they stand for and what to remember, but it can be easily overwhelming when somebody really just wants to accomplish so much, especially those like maybe slightly overachievers, go-getters kind of people, uh, and get the case.

They kind of get the case of what we [00:08:00] call analysis paralysis for even deciding. What goals they wanna do. Um, I am a victim of this. I do this to myself probably every year, if not every week. Um, so if you were coaching me on how to get started and to begin mapping these out, what would be step one I should consider?

Terence Davy: Yeah, absolutely. And uh, before that I love that you called out the analysis paralysis people or like super optimistic or driven. 'cause that's me as well. My, I have to slap my own hand. I know because I have like two pages of things I want to accomplish.

Anne Sparaco: Me too. It's overwhelming.

Terence Davy: Exactly. So, uh, step one, uh, going back to what I was saying about the r uh, the relevant piece being, perhaps the most important part of this, uh, step one is really spending a lot of time envisioning the future that you're trying to create.

Mm-hmm. So ultimately what a goal is, is you're making a statement about something you want in the future, and you're making the statement that doesn't [00:09:00] exist right now. And so getting really deep into what you really want. I mean, what you want, not, not what society tells you you need to have. Yes. Uh, not what you're, you're saying online, not what you're saying on Instagram.

Mm-hmm. What do you really connect with? So this is a very personal process. Uh, I push people to really block time and make this a priority. Uh, and you envision that future that you want, and through that same process, uh, you can start to see some creative tension between this future you've created and what's actually occurring in your life right now.

Mm-hmm. And that creative tension becomes the field from which you can pull out and define meaningful goals. Uh, so that part, the importance of this piece cannot be overstated. You have to get really clear on what it is you're trying to create and bring into the world.

Anne Sparaco: So you probably have practiced this in your own personal life and your own personal career goals.

Can you walk us through an example of, you know, how you use this method and, and how successful it was?

Terence Davy: Yeah. [00:10:00] Not only have I practiced this, but I still practice it consistently. Uh, I would say this is something I do at least monthly. Uh, and depending on the stage in life, I might do it weekly, uh mm-hmm. A little visioning process.

Uh, and so. I'll go to one of the most powerful examples that I had. Uh, when I was a a new leader, manager level, I got this vision that if I want to do leadership at the highest level, I probably need to have the title that's at the highest level. I need to be on the executive team. And so, uh. I created that as an intention, you know, wanted to be at the executive level.

Uh, and then the process that I went through was sitting down and journaling. I prefer to do this through journaling. Other people like to just think or meditate on it. I don't have as visual of a mind, so I would like to actually write it down.

And

I just wrote down all of the things that I imagined an executive would be doing.

What are the skills that I need to have? And not only that, but how [00:11:00] does it impact my life outside of work? Mm-hmm. Uh, what would that do with my time that I'm spending with family? Uh, what opportunities would that create for my family? I just got super deep into it. And then of course realized I was very far away from all of that when I, when I had zoomed back out and looked at my current life.

Anne Sparaco: That That's amazing. Yeah. And I love how you kinda just brought up that like it's, it's a lot of psychology behind it. It's not so much. Uh, writing down what you should be doing, but telling yourself you're capable of doing it. Okay. We're gonna take, uh, things a step further with clarifying smart goals, but first, let's take a quick pause for a quick message about some exciting bonus content for this episode.

Hey everyone. We'll get right back to the conversation, but first, for sure, members tuning into this episode, we have an exclusive resource to share Smart goals made simple a dynamic goal setting worksheet. The practical online tool is designed to help you clarify. [00:12:00] Organize and track professional goals with confidence.

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If you're watching on YouTube, simply click the link above for instant access, or you can find the link in this episode's description. This is just one of the many advantages of being assure member. So be sure to make the most out of this valuable resource. Now let's get back to the episode. Okay. So for this next segment, let's dive a little bit more into clarifying, goal setting using smart goals.

I'll share some common goal examples that may be a little broad, uh, but then you can walk me through how to clarify, refine them and how to approach them using the smart method. So would you like to dive into this with us?

Terence Davy: Let's do it. [00:13:00]

Anne Sparaco: Awesome. So here's the first goal. Let's say I want to get better at my job by the end of June.

How can we improve this?

Terence Davy: In so many ways. I would say

Anne Sparaco: broad. I know I said broad,

Terence Davy: very broad. Uh, again, where I would start is that visioning process. Your visioning process doesn't have to be some broad, like, what do I wanna do in 10 years? If you're looking at this calendar year, you're trying to just get to June, uh, I would still start with why.

Mm-hmm.

What, what is the thing that's motivating you to want to get better at your job? And then getting more detailed, what will you get out of that? Mm-hmm. And what is your job? What are the, the things that demonstrate skill in your job? So you don't want to just say, get better at job. Like the, the more and more clear you can make it, break it down on a skills level, the easier you can create smart goals and actually measure and track.

So, as an example, [00:14:00] uh, I. I have a history as a sales leader, so I always go to the, that bag when I give examples. But if you're an account executive, uh, and you wanna get better at your job because you want to get promoted or because you, you need to make more money to afford some course, you want to take, uh, let's get super clear.

I want to improve my close rates

mm-hmm. By

5% by June. So that's a, that's a more solid, smart goal. It's really specific, you know, what part of the funnel you're focusing on. Yeah. And then you can start to work on how you actually do that.

Anne Sparaco: Mm-hmm. Yeah, being specific is, is super important with that kind of goal.

So the next goal, let's say I'll be, I wanna work on, you talked about this a little bit, but let's say I wanna work on stronger relationships with my team. So what do you think about this? How to approach this?

Terence Davy: Yeah, I'm gonna sound like I'm repeating myself a lot and know it's, it's okay. This is what I truly believe.

Uh, you need to start with why and what is motivating you to want to build stronger [00:15:00] relationships. What will that do for you? What will that do for your team? What will that do for your family? And then what does it mean to build a stronger relationship? If you ask 10 different people what it means to have a stronger relationship, you might get 10 different answers.

Does that mean you're talking more? Yeah. Uh, does that mean you're collaborating on projects more or is it you're going out to have a beer more often?

Mm-hmm. Uh,

so get super clear on that. And again, they put it into a smart goal.

Anne Sparaco: Yeah.

Terence Davy: If that's what works for you

Anne Sparaco: and define the type of relationship you want.

You know, like, like if you want more of that, very professional. Strict relationship. Maybe don't go to happy hour with your coworker afterwards or your, your boss. But if you feel comfortable and you think you wanna get, develop a mentor kind of relationship, you know, you can ask somebody out for coffee.

Like just get that kind of more casual setting. Like those are, those are different ways to approach it. You just have to ask yourself, what, what do you want out of that? Right. Exactly. Yeah, [00:16:00] so I'll, I'll, I'll give the final example, and you kind of touched on this with your own personal example of how you grew into your executive position.

So let's say I plan on being seen as more of a leader of my department. I'll need to get promoted this year in order to achieve that. But that's such a, like, that's a big goal. And it can be a little tricky if, especially if the organization isn't looking to promote people. Maybe it's not in the budget for this year.

Terence Davy: Yeah. Uh, I know this is just an example, but the first thing I'll say is. I'm very against this notion that you need some title or some promotion to be viewed as a leader.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, the thing about being a leader is if you want to do it, all you have to do is start leading.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and so letting go of that idea of I want to get promoted because that's out of your control anyway.

The, uh, some of what you said there, you don't know if there's gonna be a role available that might, might not be aligned with company priorities. And so. If you're waiting [00:17:00] to be a leader until you get promoted, you might be waiting forever.

SHRM VO: Yeah. And

Terence Davy: so instead, get clear on why you want to be a leader, why is that important to you?

And then what does being a leader look like? Are there opportunities in your role to start demonstrating some of the things that leadership is?

Anne Sparaco: So we talked about mindset being a big part of goal setting. I'd love to integrate. Your expertise around this with a, a couple of scenarios that address those mental barriers like we slightly addressed already that people might face and we will address how to work through those issues.

So the first issue, um, you know, a lot of people run into is. Focusing on adaptability. So an employee's project goal, let's say, is deprioritized due to sudden organizational changes. We know this can happen often, and this can leave people feeling frustrated and uncertain. So how would you [00:18:00] suggest this person or the people going through this.

Move through this effectively.

Terence Davy: Yeah. First, I love that you're asking about adaptability. Uh, I think it's always been important in leadership, but especially with the insane technological advances and

mm-hmm.

Uh, the decisions that, that's making leading companies to make and trying to do more with less and cutting expenses.

It, I would say it is the number one skill that you need to have as an employee, as a leader right now. Uh, and so. Thinking about adaptability, uh, if your project gets cut, of course, that, that might be frustrating. It might bring up a lot of uncertainty. Uh, and I would say the first step of the process is to sit with those emotions.

Mm-hmm.

And, um, this is coming from someone who just started to pay attention to my emotional experience like two years ago. So I might have given you a very different answer a while ago. But, uh, those emotions are there for a reason. Uh, and if you try to act before [00:19:00] you actually sit with them and get curious about why they're there, uh, it's pretty likely that you'll do something that isn't aligned with what you actually want or intend.

And so sit with the emotions, get curious about what they're trying to tell you. Like, uh, what is this uncertainty? Are you worried that you're gonna lose your job? Yeah. Uh, do you have a lot of sunk costs? Uh, is that why you're frustrated? Uh, and then the next step is to try to understand. Uh, get yourself out of your own perspective and understand why the company might be deprioritizing this or what's happening, right?

And get connected to the broader goals. And this is a great time if you have, if you're in an environment where there's a lot of psychological safety, you trust your manager and you can go and have real conversations. Uh, and again, those are a lot of qualifiers because not everyone is in a psychologically safe environment where they can go and have a real conversation with their mentor, unfortunately.

But if you can. Go and talk about what you felt [00:20:00] and yeah. What you're envisioning and how you would like to, to recommit.

Mm-hmm. And

you need to understand how to do so. Mm-hmm. Uh, and then recommit

Anne Sparaco: and, and you can even take what, what made you so passionate about that project and even find a new way to reinsert it into a different project.

Through that, um, through talking to your manager, especially if you feel psychologically safe. Um, and this transitions well into the next situation, which focuses on communication. So let's say an employee is tasked with improving team collaboration, but has not really received clear metrics or guidance from their manager.

They're not really sure what the manager wants it to look like. Um, you know, how, how do they handle that kind of situation?

Terence Davy: Yeah. The first step that I always point at is go and try to establish understanding by talking to your manager. Um, and great. I want to help improve team collaboration as well. What does that mean?

Why are you asking me about this? Yeah. What are you, what are you seeing that shows that we're not [00:21:00] collaborating well?

SHRM VO: Mm-hmm.

Terence Davy: Ideally, you have a manager that. Actually cares about this thing they said, and they can give you some direction. Uh, and that'll be great. You'll, you'll know where to focus. But again, that's not always the case.

If you don't, and they're just like, ah, just, just do it. Uh, yeah, of course that's not ideal. But it also gives you the opportunity to go and define what success looks like with improving team collaboration. Mm-hmm. And so, uh, do a couple of things there. First, gather some data, talk to your team. Like, what does team collaboration look like to you when it's going well and do you think we're doing it?

Uh, and then you create your own me measures of success and then proactively communicate them like we talked about before.

Anne Sparaco: Yeah, I think that's, uh, it can't hurt to ask questions. There's no dumb questions, so I love that. Um, so this is something we love to do. Each week we ask our audience to submit questions they might have on the topic for an upcoming episode.

We had some really great ones for this one, for goal setting. So [00:22:00] let's do a quick q and a. Um, so to our audience tuning in today, be sure you're subscribed. You'll find the signup link in our episode description. Your responses to our question of the week could even be featured in an upcoming episode. So let's start with our first question, Terrence, this is from Tara.

From Minnesota. So Tara asked, she said, I would like to learn how to create goals that align across all levels, individual team, organization, and community. So how can we embrace and apply systems thinking approach to better understand the upstream, downstream, and the overall impact of our work?

Terence Davy: I love this question.

Thanks so much for submitting it, Tara. Um, first I'll say we, we focus this conversation on the smart framework, uh, which is super effective, especially for, for smaller individual goals. Uh, I will say one of the limitations. That comes up is [00:23:00] when you start thinking on a broader scale across multiple levels of stakeholders, across longer timeframes.

Uh, there are systems that help, like the OKR system or BHAG, like big hairy UD audacious goals. Uh, those are some systems that can work a little bit better. Uh, but actually I want to talk about the, the overall approach a little bit more, um, before applying this system. When you're thinking about all these different levels of stakeholder and investment, and it sounds like, uh, when I say the word, uh, longitudinal, we're thinking about a long timeframe as well.

Mm-hmm. Uh,

this is one of the most important times to not rush through the goal setting process. Uh, some of the things that you need to do is make space for dialogue about the future that you're trying to co-create with all of these stakeholders. So that could look like, uh, having a series of conversations with your community, having a series of conversations with different levels within the organization and getting really clear, [00:24:00] like what timeframe are we looking at?

What are we trying to accomplish? Mm-hmm. Uh mm-hmm. When you feel like you have sufficient alignment on the. Uh, vision in the future you're trying to create. Now you can start to apply some of those other frameworks like the OKR method or the BHAG method.

Anne Sparaco: Awesome. Yeah, that was a great question, uh, from Tara.

Sarah from Florida also weighed in. She said, I'm interested in goal setting strategies that go beyond the checklist and honor the human behind the human being behind the goal. So she asked, do you have tips for setting goals that are aspirational yet attainable in those fast-paced environments along with guidance on recalibrating without feeling like you've failed or.

And celebrating the progress that maybe isn't always visible.

Terence Davy: Mm. Really good question. I like

Anne Sparaco: this one, but it's a big, it's a little deep question, but I like this, Sarah.

Terence Davy: Absolutely. And I have to split [00:25:00] this into two separate areas, so Yeah. Uh, goal setting strategies that go beyond checklists. I think we've talked about this a lot, like getting to the, the human behind the goal that starts with understanding what is the human trying to accomplish at a broad level.

Mm-hmm. Um, and. Maybe we didn't get into this too much, or I didn't say it super clearly. Um, in almost every case, I'm, I'm somewhat anti compartmentalization between work and personal life.

Yeah.

Uh, I preach the exact opposite, like integration. Mm-hmm. Uh, because in thinking about how your work impacts your broader life, you can find true motivation and true purpose.

Yeah. So start there, like, think about your life and what you want to impact and think about it holistically, and then your, your career and your work is just one aspect of that. So that's, uh, bringing the human in. Uh, and then, yeah. The fast pace [00:26:00] environment piece, uh, setting a sufficiently large goal with a long enough timeframe actually provides some sense of stability.

Mm-hmm. Right?

Mm-hmm. Uh, so you can understand if you have misses or setbacks in the short term, you're still making progress towards this larger goal, especially if you're measuring Yeah. Your progress. Uh, so that's a tip for that. But I actually wanna really get into this piece about, uh, recalibrating without feeling like you've failed.

Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the most common challenges, especially with New Year's resolutions, is that, uh, folks have one small setback or one failure, like you're trying to lose weight and you, you eat a cupcake instead of a piece of broccoli or whatever people are doing to lose weight. Uh, and then you let that cascade into a series of failures, like, well, I ate a cupcake yesterday.

I'm gonna have pancakes for breakfast now. Um, clearly I'm just mentioning my favorite foods.

Anne Sparaco: I know. I,

Terence Davy: yeah. The, the idea here is, uh, [00:27:00] you, you need to shift your perspective on what failures and setbacks mean. If you're working towards a goal, like you've gone through all the process of understanding why this is meaningful to you and why you're gonna measure it.

Mm-hmm. Then setbacks are actually more data and more information that you didn't have when you set the goal. Mm-hmm. And maybe there were additional constraints you didn't know about. Maybe you thought you had this resource of motivation that was gonna show up all the time, and in reality it doesn't.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and so how do you alter your plan or your constraints to keep moving forward? Uh, because all massive goals are built on a series of failures and setbacks and just continuing to move forward anyway.

Anne Sparaco: So, Terrence, this has been such a wonderful conversation. I feel like I'm walking away from this conversation with so much insight and I feel calmer, you know, talking to you.

Oh my gosh. You can do like therapy sessions, I swear. Uh, that's what life coaching and, uh, career coaching [00:28:00] feels like to me and to a lot of people. So thank you so much for walking us through this and thank you to our audience for sharing. Your questions. We love that you've been part of this conversation.

Keep sending them in. But thank you so much for joining us on All Things Work Today, Terrence.

Terence Davy: Thank you. This was awesome.

Anne Sparaco: All right, that's it for this week. We'll catch you next time.

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