Goal Setting

This activity is optional unless otherwise required by your Program Administrator or you decide
to utilize this resource with your mentorship connection.

Goal setting can be overwhelming. We have curated a step by step guide to setting, achieving,
and reflecting on your goals and progress throughout your program. Whether you utilize this
resource in its entirety or use parts of it is totally within your discretion. However, you must still
include your goals in the Goals Section of the Platform. This will help your Program
Administrator and the Qooper team support you and future cohorts within your program.

Let's get started!

Goal Setting Guide

Introduction to Goal Setting:

Goal setting is an essential part of any mentoring connection. Without goals, how do you know
where you're heading? How do you know what your connection wants to accomplish within their time
with the feel free to use this activity within its entirety, or select different pieces of the activity to use
to guide you through the process of setting goals. I do want to quickly note, it is so important that
whether or not you are completing this activity, you still input your goals into the Qooper platform.
I will include a quick introduction and step-by-step in how to do that for your ease, um in a few
components, but make sure that you do take the time to upload those whether or not you actually
come complete this activity, as it does help your program manager create the best experience and
support you
in the best way that they can. In this activity, we have five different areas that we're going to focus
on.

First is to identify areas where you want to go to grow or find success. We will explore the grow
method to help you set goals, detailing what you want to achieve, and then learn how to add those
goals into Qooper, like we just discussed.

Then compile a list of action items and steps to achieve your goal. Once you identify those steps, we
will break those down into groups.

Then we monthly checkpoints to address with your mentor at each monthly meeting that you have
with them.

How to Set a Goal:

Goal setting can be extremely overwhelming. What we'll do through this activity is give you a
few starting points and a few questions to ask to help get your thought processes rolling a little
bit better.

A few questions and a few areas to consider when first crafting your goal are here in our first
section. How is your professional journey going?

Maybe what would you like to see happen differently within your professional journey? What do
you want to accomplish in your role?

Is there a new project that you want to start working on? Are you working toward promotion? If
so, what steps are you taking?

Or, do you need help in figuring out what first step you need to take? What skills do you want to
work on one year from now?

What do you want to be doing? And do you know what steps to take to actually get to your next
level, whether that be within your company, within your department, whatever that looks like for
you.

Take a moment, think through these different questions, and then you can use this space to
reflect on some of those questions.

You can answer one of them, or all of them, or somewhere in between. Once you've reflected on
these different areas, start thinking about the steps required to achieve these items, be
reasonable, and try not to achieve everything at once.

Rome wasn't built in a day. You can't expect to join a mentorship program, and next thing you're
a VP. It will take time, it will take a lot of, you know, growth and um intentionality with building
and developing some of these skills, but it will all be worth it.

You can pick one of two achievable and measurable goals from some of these areas that you
are considering, and then from those two goals that you're thinking about, we'll actually build a
goal-setting plan so that you can actually take steps to achieve some of those goals.

You can think in both shorter and longer term whenever crafting some of these ideas, and so
think for now, by the end of this program, what change do I want to see in myself, in my skills,
and that will give you a really good starting point for your for actually setting these goals and
creating a plan.

Next, let's explore the GROW method. I really like these frameworks because it's not as
overwhelming, you don't have all of these different criteria that you have to fulfill that seem just
really complicated.

Rather, GROW asks you a few simple questions and again, this will help you fine-tune those
goals just a little bit more.

So within the G, that stands for your goal, what do you want to do? What is your ultimate aim? R
stands for reality.

Where are you now? What are some of the barriers preventing you from achieving your goal?
And how will you overcome these different barriers?

O stands for options. What could you do? What resources are available to you? And what
changes can you make to your own behavior to overcome some of these barriers?

Sometimes we can get in our own way, so this is an opportunity to reflect on that a little bit. And
W stands for will.

What will you do? How can you start making changes or tapping into available resources to
achieve your goal? Based on these questions, you can write a short reflection for each of the
goals that you have.

Kind of floating through. Floating in your mind at this point, um just waiting to be fully fleshed out
and adopted as your goal.

And then from here, we will actually explore how to input your goals into Qooper.

Add your Goals to Qooper

Logging Goals and Milestones in Qooper:

Done so much reflecting, now it's time to actually put your summarized goals into CUPR so you
can look at that last reflection and summarize it with 1 or 2 sentences. Once that's ready to go,
you'll log into the CUPR platform, mentoring.cupr.co, sign into your account, and then walk with
me through these steps.

First, you'll click on "mentoring," select your connection, and then in the goals section, you can
click here, and then to set a goal, you will open this window.

You can title your goal, so for this, I'll say, "I want to gain confidence." Your due date could be at
the end of the program, it could be halfway through the program, just kind of depending on how
long you have and your goals through the program.

I would recommend setting one or two goals for the duration of the program. So let's say that
ours ends in December. Here you'll add a tag as to what the goal is: professionalism. You would
write down your one to two sentences of your goals here, and submit.

Once you have this set, you'll also go back to the goal setting activity, and that will walk you
through a process of breaking down those bigger goals into smaller action items for each
month.

So here, you will create a list of steps needed to achieve your goal. Once you have the full
steps, you'll be able to break it down into monthly checkpoints to include with your connection.

At month 4, we also have the goal setting reflection, which is included later in this module, and
at month 9, we have a goal setting reflection as well.

If your program is a longer duration, all you have to do is add a few columns here, and you'll be
able to continue your goal setting process through the entirety of your connection.

You can also use these different months and these different checkpoints as milestones within
the Qooper platform. So within the Qooper platform, to set a milestone, you can see it here
under your goal. There's an option to set your first milestone. You can click there and then add a
title. So maybe within gaining confidence, I want to lead a presentation within my role. We'll say
I want to complete that within the first three months of my program. So I will put that due date at
the end of October, and then I can write a description on how I will go about starting that
process or what that will help me achieve within my goal, and submit.

You can do here is view the milestone, and you can set another one or complete this milestone.

Once you have completed that action item, maybe I have many milestones. Maybe I want to
add all of the different sections within that monthly breakdown into milestones so that I can see
that progress. Then you can absolutely do that. Maybe another one is "I want to attend a
networking event." And for this one, I know there's one coming up in August, so I will go ahead
and add that in. Maybe talk about the networking event and what it is and what I hope to gain
from it, submit. And then once it's complete, I can go in and say, "Alright, I completed that." And
it shows as well completed and sends your mentor a notification about that as well.

This is a great way to kind of track your progress. As you can see here, there is a bar that fills in
as well as you complete those different milestones.

So it's definitely a pat on the back as you walk through this process and complete those action
items. This is a great feature for you to utilize within the Qooper platform.

And we strongly encourage you to make sure not only to set your goals, but also to set those
milestones and keep track of those as you continue throughout your connection.

For a step by step guide to setting your goals in Qooper, check out this article.

Mid-Point Goal Reflection

Midpoint Goal Setting Reflection Introduction:

After you set your goals, it's really important to continue to talk about them each meeting with your mentorship connection. So around the midpoint of your program, here is a really great resource to walk you through a few questions to ask as you're reflecting on those goals and your progress.

Once you open up this file, you'll see a prompt to reflect on progress you've made since actually setting these goals in the beginning of the program.

First thing, you can input your goal and then answer these guiding questions for reflection. What were the milestones you identified to make progress towards your goals? Did you complete these? So on and so forth. There is space here to reflect on some of these questions, and if you have any other questions that you would want to address or things you want to include in your reflection to share with your mentor, this is also a great space to do that.

You have space for not only goal one, but also goal two. And this activity is completely optional. It's really dependent on your program administrator and your mentor connection. If this is a resource that you feel is going to be helpful in kind of guiding this conversation, feel free to use this however you would like.

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Goal Setting End of Program Reflection:

Congratulations! You have reached the end of your program and thus time for reflection on your goals throughout the course of your program.

Here is another guide for you. This again is totally optional unless otherwise noted by your program administrator or your mentor connection.

So basically here are a few questions to kind of guide you through your reflection process as you review the goals that you set at the beginning of your program so here you just have a few questions to ask and you do have some space to write so you can use this as like a PDF writer.

You can include your response here or you can print it out write your response however you best reflect and can best review this material is the best way for you to complete the activity.

The best practice for this activity would be for the mentees to complete it ahead of the meeting and then send it over to their mentor for review.

So as a mentee I will answer what my biggest takeaway or success from this program is, did I achieve my goals, and more questions as you scroll down.

And then I'll send it over to my mentor. My mentor will review all of my answers and then hopefully have a little bit of feedback as well.

They can share with you how you grew, the the progress that they saw along the way. So this is just a really great way for you all to wrap up your connection and really celebrate the amount of progress that you both have made as mentors and mentees along the way.