Setting personal development goals for your professional or personal development and making those goals desirable, feasible, measurable and written is perhaps your most difficult task in establishing your mentoring partnerships.

Mentors tell us that their mentees often come to them with only a general idea about how they want to improve. This vagueness frustrates many busy mentors, and it wastes your and their valuable time hunting for purposes on which to concentrate.

Many mentee development goals are too large or too small. Some are the right size but aren’t particularly important or motivating. Almost none includes a way to measure success. Very few are written down, and some goals exclude personal development in favor of only professional growth. In this two-part article, you’ll learn some ides for doing this important work and have an opportunity to review some examples of goals.

Make sure the goals you propose to your mentor meet the following criteria:

1. Desirable

What do you feel passionate about? What makes you want to get up in the morning? What can be enhanced to keep this powerful motivation going? Conversely, what’s keeping you up at night because of fear or worry? What must change?

Within four months, reduce my work week from ___ to ___ hours.

Your development goals should focus on the top priorities in your life. If you put care into crafting your own compelling personal vision (See Archive), several priorities will emerge. It makes sense to choose goals that impact your most important priorities.

2. Feasible

Mentees tend to think big, so it can be challenging to create goals that are realistic and attainable—without being too simplistic. At most, you should manage three goals at a time. What’s do-able given your schedule, energy, resources, your mentor’s availability, and the months set aside for your mentoring partnership?

By the end of four months, deliver an outstanding presentation to a large, somewhat hostile audience.

Can you really reach this goal in only four months? Would adding a longer timeframe help? Or do you need more resources and time? In this example, should you start with a smaller, friendly audience?

Before the end of the year, start a new business and break even in costs.

Do you have the time, expertise, and resources to pull this off? It's an audacious goal! In the above example, might you change the financial expectation?

3. Measurable

How will you and your mentor know when each goal is reached? What will success look like? What will you have, do, feel, or know as a result of attaining your goal?

A technique used by many mentees is to assign a number (on a scale of 1 to 10) to represent where they are now, and a second number for where they would like to be at the end of a mentoring period. For example, if you want to be “more assertive with people,” you might start as a 3 and aim for an 8. Try to list some observable indications for various ratings on your 10-point scale.

Here are examples of success indicators:

I feel more confident when I ___.

I receive a score of 85% or more.

My coworker mentions a positive change in how I ______.

My weigh scale says I’ve lost ___ pounds.

Next month you’ll learn details of two more mentee goal criteria (written and a balance of work/nonwork), other factors to consider, and several more goal examples.

For more ideas on being an effective mentee, see our Archive and Products.