Why You Should Share Your Leadership Development Goals With Your Direct Reports

At every point in time, every leader should have at least one leadership development goal.

Leadership development goals differ from team/company goals (often referred to as OKRs or business goals). Team/company goals are about the work output of the team or company, for example: “increase the number of paid users on a new product line from 20,000 to 45,000 by the end of the year” or “reduce the number of high severity bugs in the product from and average of 18 per quarter to 5 in Q4.”

Leadership development goals are focused on you growing as a leader. Growing as a leader will improve your team and have an impact on team/company goals while also creating lasting change for you that will help you even years down the road when you’re in a different role or company.

Some common areas that leaders set goals to develop in are: delegating more effectively, setting clearer direction, improving accountability with their leadership team, using their time in a higher leveraged way, leaning into difficult conversations and making them effective, and getting better at growing and coaching their direct reports.

One of the best ways to make rapid progress on a leadership development goal is to share that goal with your direct reports. There are three major reasons for this.

1) It helps you get feedback and enlists your direct reports in your growth

Ultimately a leaders’ success is measured by the success of their team, which is difficult to fully measure with one numeric score. Even if you could boil success down to one number it can take time for that number to materialize when managing a larger team. Also, many success factors could be out of your control for a particular goal.

A great way to get better at something is to ask people for feedback on that specific area, not just once but over time. Often feedback from your direct reports is more relevant, informed, and effective than feedback from anyone else.

Opening up the feedback channel on something specific instead of giving a vague and unexpected “any feedback for me?” gives your direct reports the encouragement and focus to actually give you real feedback to help you adjust.

Additionally, sharing a development goal with your direct reports enlists them in your growth and makes them a direct collaborator on you becoming a better leader. Think how great it would feel to have your manager ask you to give them feedback on how they are doing and how they could improve in a specific area.

2) It holds you accountable

The second reason is that it helps hold you accountable to your goal. If you’ve told your direct reports you are trying to improve on something, then you’re more likely to actually improve. I’ve found that I am often more motivated by my direct reports holding me accountable than my manager holding me accountable. An accountability system for yourself involving your direct reports is a great way to keep you on track. 

3) It models behavior

Lastly, telling your direct reports about your development goal(s) models behavior that your direct reports can use with their teams. Not only does this model the behavior of asking direct reports for feedback, it models the behavior that leaders should have goals to improve themselves, instead of focusing only on a deliverable such as hitting a metric or shipping a project.

As Abraham Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” Working only on the job at hand instead of also on yourself directly limits your effectiveness now and even more so in the future.

Yes, you’ll get better over time from doing things, but by placing a conscious effort on your own growth you will supercharge your leadership and impact.

How to share your goals in practice

You may have several goals you’re working on developing as a leader. For example, if you’re a CEO, one of your goals might be to get out of the weeds with exec team members while setting clear accountability on high level outcomes. Another goal might be related to more effectively managing your relationship with the board of directors.

It might not be very useful to tell your direct reports about the board of directors goal since most of them may not be able to give you feedback on it. So it may make sense to just tell them the goal about getting out of the weeds.

An example of how to tell your direct report about your goal:

“One of the ways I am working to develop as a leader is to give you more autonomy to run your organization. I know I have a tendency to dive into the details and dictate solutions to you since I used to have to manage this area directly. I’ve hired you because of your expertise and I want to make sure that you have the autonomy to run your team. As part of this, I want to make sure to give you more context and high-level direction on the outcomes we need as a company so you can know what I am expecting of you. As part of our 1:1s, I’d like to check in with you monthly for the next six months to see how I’m doing at giving you autonomy and high-level direction. How does this sound to you?”

You don’t always have to tell all your direct reports your goal. Depending on the goal, it may make more sense just to tell a few. For example, if your chief of staff works with you often on materials to be used in board meetings, it could be helpful to tell them about your board goal.

Other ways to make progress on your goals

This article is scoped to one very highly leveraged and effective way to make and measure progress on your leadership development goals. It’s important to note that there are several other key parts of making as much progress as possible on your growth as a leader. This includes understanding your blindspots, defining your goals and making them specific to you, creating measures of success for your goals, building a strategy with steps towards achieving your goals, setting up additional accountability, and understanding what challenges may get in the way for you. Working with an executive coach who is experienced with creating leadership development goals and strategies who also does a 360 review is the most comprehensive way to make sure you’re developing as a leader as quickly as possible.

Insight and Action

I coach leaders to help them gain insight and take action. Answering these questions will help you generate insights and actions that will help your growth and impact as a leader.

• What is one key insight you gained from this article?

• What is one of your leadership development goals that could benefit from being shared with some or all of your direct reports?

• When you think about sharing this goal, what hesitation or fear comes up, if any?

• What story are you telling yourself about that hesitation or fear?

• Who specifically will you share your goal with and by when?

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