5 Ways to Incorporate Stretch Goals into Your Performance Planning for Career Development  

The annual performance review: it’s the time of year when your strengths and weaknesses are scrutinized the most. If you’re lucky, this yearly assessment won’t contain any surprises, since you should be having ongoing conversations with your manager throughout the year. But, the performance review may highlight information you wish you had known sooner — where could you have dug a little deeper on your work, or adjusted it to better suit your team’s priorities? Performance planning, setting goals, and analyzing the outcomes can cause significant stress and anxiety, more than most other work-related activities.

So what steps can you take now to improve your outcome next year? Incorporate “stretch goals” into your career roadmap. Stretch goals are goals that fall a little (or a maybe a lot) outside of your normal job responsibilities and/or skillset. Stretch goals give you the opportunity to take advantage of those “I wish could just do <fill in the blank> as part of my job” daydreams. Stretch goals will require you to put your skills to the test (i.e. to stretch your abilities) to reach your objectives. The best part about stretch goals? They can be really fantastic resumé-builders, even if you end up falling short of your target (i.e. stretch goals may sometimes be more about the process than the outcome).

That said, here are five ways you can build stretch goals into your immediate career action plan:

1. Think About a Function You’d Like to Do or Try, and Apply That to Your Current Role
Let’s say that you work in finance, but you’re really interested in marketing. Why wait for an opening in the marketing department to start thinking like a marketer? Take some time to investigate what marketing skills you can apply (or develop) in your finance work. For example:

• • • Perhaps there are some useful marketing insights lurking in your financial reports.
    • Or maybe you can translate your most recent department update into “marketing speak” to showcase your burgeoning cross-functional understanding.

Even if your current function is completely unrelated to what you’d like to do, a little creativity can create an outlet for you to start building new skillsets. By adding a new functional twist to a core goal, you might even be acknowledged and/or rewarded for your out-of-the-box thinking. This strategy is particularly good for functional interests that are rooted in fundamental frameworks, such as marketing and product management.

2. Base a Performance Goal on a Skill You Wish to Develop
This is a great strategy if there is a specific skill you would like to learn. For example, if you really want to improve your project management skills, set a core goal of leading and managing a specific project. In many organizations, the goal-setting process allows for enough breadth and scope with your goals that it shouldn’t be too much of an ask to designate one as a stretch goal. It is certainly worth the conversation with your manager to see where you can add a bit of a test to your goal mix.

3. Think Outside of your Team
Dreaming up your own specific stretch goal could be a stretch, in and of itself. As an alternative, scope out opportunities to collaborate with another group within your organization.  Something as simple as volunteering to represent your team as part of a planning committee could open up opportunities to really put your thinking cap on. Not only will you get to work with new faces, you will likely gain a better understanding of how you and your team add value to the organization (which definitely helps with setting new goals!).

4. Pitch a Project…and Lead It!
Your team or organization likely has an unmet need of some kind. Oftentimes, these are defined projects with specific, expected outcomes that might be handed off to an intern, or possibly even an outside consultant. Solution: schedule a meeting with your manager and discuss the feasibility of your tackling some aspect of that need. This will be a great opportunity to test your leadership and strategic planning skills. Remember, this is an opportunity you are stepping up to volunteer for, and not a request for a promotion (though if all goes well, the experience can provide great leverage for increased official responsibility). Provided the opportunity won’t hinder your regular duties, your manager will likely be supportive of your display of initiative.

5. Go Bold
Just like an unmet need, there is likely at least one thing to which your manager wishes s/he could devote more time. This would be the type of project that, due largely to a lack of time, your manager hasn’t even begun to review, let alone act on. Or perhaps you’ve heard your manager complain about a particular pain point in your area of business. Such projects are the perfect opportunity to flex your problem-solving abilities. Keep in mind that these types of projects tend to have a much longer timeline in terms of outcomes, so your focus here is on strategy. Your manager will likely welcome the help in tackling a challenge that more than likely has been plaguing them for a while, but wasn’t urgent or material enough to assign a high priority.

When all is said and done, taking advantage of stretch goals allows you to build your resumé and tout new skills that you can put to use, both inside and outside of your organization. This is a great benefit whether you’re seeking a promotion or new opportunity, or just needing to breathe new life into your current role. So do yourself a favor and get out there and stretch!