Anyone can set goals and make plans, and in the end the results decide. A plan for the future that holds also looks at mindset, behaviour, focus and what you have learned from the past, alongside vision and role. Those are the parts most people skip.
Goal setting works more reliably for leaders when you look back first and plan concretely afterwards. A process in five steps has proven itself: Review, vision, focus, goal setting and planning.
The process takes in what often gets lost in goal setting: Vision and role, your own mindset, your behaviour and what you’ve learned from the past. It sharpens reflection and self-management. In my experience, that self-knowledge is the basis of every success.
To take stock, ask yourself first: What have I achieved over the last twelve months, and what have I overcome? Look at your reputation and your communication, at work and in private life.
Then reflect on your biggest disappointments over the same twelve months. If you want to reach your next goals, look especially closely at the setbacks. Ask yourself, too, how your leadership role would develop if you kept putting things off.
What could you have done to avoid a failure? Turn the answers into short pieces of advice to yourself, and derive the three most important resolutions for your mindset.
A vision that holds starts with the thoughts that limit you most. Where are you standing in your own way, and how do you explain that limitation to yourself? Check, too, which habits or beliefs block you.
Pick the thought pattern with the strongest negative influence on your leadership work. Recast it as a simple, motivating attitude: Your personal guiding principle.
Next come your core values and motives: What matters to you, and what change drives you? That could be a promotion or a project close to your heart. Which values connect with which goals forms the core of your vision.
Think about the roles you play and the tasks you have as a leader. What motivates you in them? Is it the motive of power, curiosity, recognition, independence, the need for structure, fairness or status?
Give each role its share of time and typical activities, and compare the roles with the values from your vision. That gives you your main role, the one in which you want to reach your most important goals. Choose the roles carefully, because they form the basic structure of your plan.
Now the goals for your leadership role get concrete. What result do you want to achieve in this role, and what would the best possible outcome look like if next year turned out to be your best? Phrase the answers positively and set goals that are ambitious but realistic.
Define your five most important goals and rank them by your values and your motivation. Then be honest about which inner obstacles stand in the way and how you’ll clear them.
In her research, psychologist Gabriele Oettingen has shown that wishful images mainly get people moving when they deliberately contrast them with their own obstacles. Good goal setting therefore means picturing the result and then looking closely at what lies in between.
Pull your resolutions and your new guiding principle together into a master plan. For this, write a concrete if-then plan: “If obstacle X comes up, I’ll do Y.” From the 1990s onwards, psychologist Peter Gollwitzer studied how such resolutions work and called them implementation intentions.
Then draw up an action plan: What’s the next concrete step, by when do you want to reach your goals, and which people or resources will help you? Write down, too, what motivates you most while you put it into practice.
Finally, self-management needs reflection, for example with a success journal. Interim results and targeted feedback show you whether you’re on the right track. How to keep routines like these going even in packed weeks is covered in Forming good habits when you’re busy: 3 hacks that hold.
I see the biggest effect in the first step. If you look back honestly at your disappointments, your goal setting changes afterwards: Usually fewer goals, and better ones.
My doubt concerns the effort. Going through five steps thoroughly takes a few hours, and under pressure people like to cut corners. If you’re short of time, do the review and the if-then plan properly and add the rest later.
Keep at it, and keep paying attention. Ask yourself regularly what moves you most at the moment and what that has to do with your success.
Concentrate on your main role and on five important goals at most. For each goal you need a next concrete step and a date. Everything else goes on a waiting list.
An if-then plan links a foreseeable situation to a fixed response, for example: “If there’s no free slot on Friday, I’ll block an hour for myself on Monday at 8am.” The decision is made in advance, so in the moment itself you need less willpower.
Two rhythms help with goal setting: The big review once a year and a look at interim results every few weeks. A short entry in your success journal is often enough for that.
A coach helps you spot blind spots in your review and clarify priorities before you fix your goals. More on this in Coaching for leaders: 13 ways to set priorities around your values.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: Coaching for leaders: Setting priorities around your values · Leadership coaching with Cristian Hofmann · Career progression: What leaders can steer themselves · Failure starts in the mind: How leaders interpret setbacks
Note: This article was first published on 12.04.2019 and was revised and expanded in October 2026.
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
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