Using reflective goal setting

Reflective goal setting is a five-stage process created to support personal development (Travers, 2022). This provides a structured, evidence-based framework for setting and achieving goals.

The five stages are:

1. Enhancing self-awareness: bring together relevant information about yourself and your strengths and weaknesses gleaned from appraisals, feedback, personality tests etc. Document these insights and reflections in a Reflective Goal Setting diary.

2. Setting suitable goals: focus in on a relevant, specific and challenging goal area, that resonates with your personal and professional values. Identify current situations and behaviours that need attention and document your findings in your diary.

3. Visualising successful goal behaviours: visualise your desired outcome, imagining how achieving the goal would look and feel. Drawing inspiration from best practice and role models, identify any performance gap between how you do things now and your future goal success. This will help you generate ideas for how to measure your progress. Record this information in your diary.

4. Formulating a goal statement: write out your goal in detail, including specific actions, techniques to apply, relevant scenarios, progress measurement, the anticipated impact on yourself and others, and the support you require from various sources. This statement will be your roadmap for progress that should be documented in your diary.

5. Putting goals into practice: identify ways to test your goal, adapting it if necessary, continuing to record your goal-related attempts in your diary.  Regularly review and evaluate your progress and feed this information into your future goal setting attempts for continued growth and progress.

For more information on using this approach to goal setting, see here.