How to guide: Setting Goals and Development Planning

Setting clear goals is a key step in shaping both your impact and your professional development. It allows you to focus your efforts, understand what is expected from your role, and contribute meaningfully to your team and to the mission of World Scouting.

In line with the One WSB Performance Management Process,, goal setting should help every staff member to:

👉 Understand how their work connects to organisational priorities
👉 Have clear expectations on both what they should deliver and how they should deliver it
👉 Focus their time and energy on what matters most

To do this effectively, it’s essential that individual goals are aligned with your role responsibilities, your team’s priorities, and World Scouting’s strategic objectives.
This guide offers step-by-step support for preparing your goals for the new cycle and developing your personal development plan.

Principles of Goal Setting at One WSB

💠 You own your development. You propose your goals based on your role, team, career growth and World Scouting Strategy, while your line manager support the process and approves them.

💠 Dual accountability applies. If you report to both a Line Manager and Dotted Line Manager, both are equally responsible for guiding and supporting your development. As well approving and reviewing your goals.

💠 Goals can evolve. A official mid-year review is part of the process but informal reviews build a strong process. These reviews are the opportunity to evaluate the relevance of the goals they may be adjusted if priorities shift or roles evolve.

💠 Goals should meet quality standards. They should be clear, measurable, and focused on impact to allow for ongoing monitoring and meaningful reflection.

Steps of Goals Setting

1. Start with a Career Conversation

The goal-setting process begins with a conversation. Before drafting your goals, take time to meet with your Line Manager and your Dotted Line Manager if applicable,  to explore your role’s priorities for the 2025–2026 cycle, as well as your own professional aspirations.

This is a moment to reflect together on what matters most: where your work can have the greatest impact, how your role is evolving, and what opportunities you see for growth. Use insights from your recent performance review or competency self-assessment to guide the discussion, and agree on the focus areas that should shape your goals.

Even if you’ve already had a similar conversation as part of your performance review, it’s worth reconnecting to ensure you’re aligned on expectations as the new cycle begins.  

Note for Line Managers: Find inspiration in the Guide for Line Managers: Having a great career development conversation.

2. Prepare your goals proposal

From the clear expectations and looking to ensure prioritization and therefore efficiency in the expected results you are encouraged to propose up to 6-7  goals, structured as follows:

• 2-3 Team Goals
• 2-3 Role Specific Goals
• 1-2 Development Goals

💠 Team Goals

Team Goals are designed to translate collective priorities into individual contributions. These goals are defined collaboratively, guided by the team lead, and ensure that every team member understands how their work connects to the broader objectives of the organisation.

The purpose of setting Team Goals is to create a shared direction, one that unites the team around common outcomes while recognising the diversity of roles and responsibilities. Once the overall team goals has been agreed upon, each member should formulate their individual goal in alignment with it, reflecting their specific contribution based on their role and scope of work.

In many cases, staff members holding the same position will share the same goal, but their targets may differ depending on each person’s responsibilities, areas of work or projects.. This allows everyone to contribute proportionally while maintaining coherence in how the team works toward its collective achievements.

Note:  For service-oriented teams like Member Support PT,  a Service Level Agreement (Service Proposal) can help clarity expectations for responsiveness, completion timeframes, quality standards, and learning capture. If your goal includes service delivery or pilot coordination, consider referencing the Service Plan and tracking performance against it.

Example:

 * It is possible that for one team member the target is 3 and for another 5 because the sub-areas or clusters to which they belong have more or less impact to the objective.

💠 Role-Specific Goals

These goals reflect the key deliverables and responsibilities specific to your role, aligned with both team priorities and broader organisational objectives. They should focus on the strategic projects, operational functions, or coordination responsibilities that are assigned to you individually in addition of the common goals with your team members.

Even if your role includes multiple areas of responsibility, your goals should prioritise those functions that will have the greatest impact on collective results or in the team priorities. Clearly articulating what you are expected to achieve and how you will contribute, is essential for meaningful goal setting.

While Team Goals aim to align common efforts, Role-Specific Goals are more tailored and may vary across individuals even if they share the same job title, especially when assigned to different projects, support centres, or areas of work.

For roles with dual reporting lines (those supporting both a Support Centre and a Practice Team) it’s important that your goals reflect expectations from both sides. You are encouraged to discuss priorities and objectives with your line manager and dotted line manager, ensuring that your final goals are jointly validated and support both streams of work.

Note: These goals form the backbone of your individual performance expectations and should be framed to allow regular monitoring, feedback, and mid-year adjustment if needed.

Example:

💠 Development Goals

Development Goals focus on strengthening specific competencies or professional skills that support your current role and long-term growth. These goals are closely linked to your competency self-assessment and career aspirations, and are a key element of your overall performance and development journey.

Start by reflecting on the results of your most recent competency self-assessment. Identify one or two competencies where you see an opportunity to grow, either by improving your overall score or by focusing on specific behavioural indicators that are particularly relevant to your role. For this process follow up the article: Making the most of your Competencies Assessment

A good Development Goal should:   

👉 Be clearly stated and measurable.
👉 Be aligned with one or more of the competencies in the WSB Competency Framework.
👉 Be supported by a Personal Development Plan (PDP) that outlines specific actions you will take throughout the cycle. This process is explained in other section of this guide.

For inspiration, you will find examples of Development Goals and related actions in the table below. These are just examples and should be adapted to fit your personal development needs and the context of your role.

* It is possible design one goal to develop more that one competency

3. Carry out the cross-validation of goals.

Once your draft goals are ready, review them together with your Line Manager and, if applicable, Dotted Line Manager. This ensures alignment with expectations from both reporting lines.
For projects involving a second reporting line (e.g., temporary assignments or special projects like cluster coordinators, Co-leads of projects), that stakeholder should also validate any relevant goals.

After final agreement, your goals must be uploaded to Zoho People following the Goal Setting Process steps.

4. Build your Action Plan

Every staff member is expected to complete a development plan dedicated to improving the competencies or specific skills required to achieve their established goals.

Using a Personal Development Plan (PDP) provides a structured framework to help you identify the small steps and key elements required to reach your goals and develop areas of improvement, both professionally and personally. This process serves as a practical tool to support the achievement of goals: when objectives are broken down into specific actions, it becomes easier to track progress and more feasible to reach the desired outcomes.

Development plans help outline the concrete steps needed to achieve the defined development objectives. These plans may include various learning opportunities such as training programmes, mentorship, new project assignments, participation in senior-level meetings, facilitation of specific programme sessions, or reviewing educational materials such as videos, books, and articles on relevant topics.

The process of creating a plan helps establish a clear vision of how the proposed goals will be achieved by aiming to:

👉 Break down the objectives into actionable steps.
👉 Identify learning and development opportunities, both within and outside the organisation.
👉 Create small opportunities to apply and strengthen competencies through practical experience.
👉 Build in regular reflection and feedback opportunities to ensure a continuous learning approach throughout the plan.

Explore in this articule how to create your Personal Development Plan and some tools related.

Tips for Writing Meaningful Goals

Goals should be stated in such a way that they are understandable to everyone and fulfill their main purpose, which is to establish a target to reach. Therefore, following the usual structure:

A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. It provides a structured approach to formulating objectives in a way that ensures maximum clarity, feasibility, and accountability.

👉 Specific: You pin down precisely what you want to achieve. Instead of saying, “I want to do better quality in my services,” specify, “I want to increase the quality of my services by 10%.”
👉 Measurable: You decide how you'll measure progress. Have metrics means you’ll know exactly when you have hit your target.
👉 Achievable: You ensure your goal is realistic. Aim high, but also ground your objectives in reality.
👉 Relevant: You align your goals with broader objectives, such as team or strategic objectives. Ask yourself, “Does this goal propel me and my team toward our World Scouting mission?”
👉 Time-bound: You set a realistic deadline. When do you want to achieve your goal? This deadline keeps you focused and motivated. Not all the goals need achieve at the end of the fiscal year, you can establish goals for next 4 or 6 months and then establish new ones, some times short deadlines helps to keep focus in the priorities.

How do write a SMART goal?

The following five tips will help you compose SMART goals effectively:

💠 Start with a general expression of a goal, such as “We need to increase our impact services.” Then, weave in the SMART criteria one by one, as demonstrated in the examples below.
💠 Be clear and concise, and use specific language. Instead of “I want to network more,” say, “I’ll attend two partner meetings per month.”
💠 Make your goals practical by starting with action verbs. “Implement a new communications strategy” is more actionable than “We need a new approach to external communications.”
💠 Align the goals with larger objectives so that they fit well into the broader team objectives or strategic priorities.
💠 Use this helpful SMART goal template:  “By [time], I will [specific action/achievement], measured by [measurable criteria].”

Examples of SMAT goals.

🎯 By the end of the period, we will increase our online followers by 15%, measured by our social media analytics dashboard. ➔ Achieve a 15% growth in online followers by the end of the period, using data from the social media analytics dashboard as the measurement source.

🎯 By September 2026, the number of services to NSOs in External Relations will increase in 5%, measured in the Services Platform as services completed. ➔ Increase in a 5% the number of services of External Relations we deliver to the NSOs registered and completed in the Services Platform by the end of September 2026. 

🎯 By Q2 of the Fiscal Year we will report 10 projects in NSOs advancing according their timelines measured in the reports from Grants Management. ➔ Ensure the implementation of 10 MOP projects in NSOs with reported progress by the end of Q2, in accordance with their planned timelines and fully recorded in the Fluxx platform.

🎯 By September 2026, we will have the 90% of the fees collected measured in the annual report. ➔ The Annual Report indicates that 90% of membership fees had been collected by September 2026.

🎯 By May 2026 we will have a 80% of satisfaction of the OneWSB members measured by the annal satisfaction survey. ➔ People and Culture reports an 80% satisfaction rate among OneWSB members obtained in the organizational climate and satisfaction survey.

🎯 By the annual performance review in 2026, I will have an increment of  5% in the score in my competency of Collaborative Work measured by the competencies assessment. ➔ Increase my Collaborative Work competency score from 3.7 to 4.0 in the competency assessment at the end of the 2025-2026 cycle.

🎯 By the annual performance review in September 2026, I will get an Outstanding result for first time. ➔ Demonstrate consistent high performance throughout the 2025–2026 cycle in order to achieve, for the first time, an outstanding rating in my annual performance review.

Setting goals and development plan are an opportunity to invest in your own growth. When you take the lead in shaping your path, you gain more clarity, purpose, and motivation in your day-to-day work.

Let this be the start of a meaningful cycle of reflection, learning, and action, one that helps you grow both in your current role and towards where you want to be next. 💟                              |