SMART Goals

ByTeamMates WebAdmin

If you have a positive attitude and constantly strive to give your best effort, eventually you will overcome your immediate problems and find you are ready for greater challenges.

-Pat Riley

To reach those greater challenges, it’s important to know how to write a goal. We want to encourage our mentees to write goals that are SMART:

  • specific
  • measurable
  • attainable
  • realistic
  • time-bound

Goals can touch on anything – school, career, home life, sports, family, you name it!  By practicing writing goals, you and your mentee are developing a life skill that will stick with them and help them to remain positive through any future obstacles that may arise.  We’ve found some good conversation starters and activities that we hope will help to start the goal setting process and make it fun for you and your mentee.

Goal Setting Activities

  • If you’ve taken the StrengthsQuest or StrengthsExplorer by Gallup, try out this Goal Table Worksheet! When we recognize the things we do well, we have an advantage to reaching our goals.
  • It’s not too early to start thinking about the things you want to achieve in the New Year. Write resolutions with this Resolution Goal Setter and turn them into SMART goals.
  • Decorate this Crystal Ball with what you want your life to look like. How do you get there? What action steps are needed?  Is it attainable?  Is it specific?
  • As mentees grow older, their schedules fill up. Not only is goal setting a great life skill, but knowing how to prioritize those goals to fit into their schedule is also a great lesson. Use this Goal Priority Target to write four goals and shade in the priority level – 1 being lowest.
  • This Fortune Teller Game is a great way to start a conversation about goals if your mentee is not quite at the stage of writing them down yet.