FABULOUS Learning Goals

This content focuses on fostering resilience in leaders with the goal of mitigating burnout in themselves and their employees. The article will lead to a constructive action step that brings about employee wellbeing, work-life balance and organizational growth.

Enhancing employee wellbeing and health

Many organizational leaders today are eagerly talking about learning goal setting for building resilience in themselves and their employees. According to Seijts and Latham (2012), goals establish a safety zone for creating new, promising ideas for taking positive action. My FABULOUS Framework for Fostering Resilience helps leaders take positive action to achieve their learning goal of increasing employee wellbeing. My framework puts a leader’s strengths into practice and helps them set their learning goals, which improves their organizational wellness leadership skills.

When leaders share this goal methodology with their staff, employee wellbeing is enhanced. They may be facing several challenges (e.g., lowered productivity, retention) that are impacting the company. Having FABULOUS goals is a critical step in mitigating the impact of job burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma on employee wellbeing.

The FABULOUS goal methodology is a plan that builds personal resilience in leaders by focusing on their healthy habits and outcome behaviors. A business goal is a leadership tool that focuses on a final desired state for each employee. As you share your goals and influence those who report to you, make sure that the goal aligns with your employees’ core values. Communicate your goal and be transparent about your own issues regarding work-life balance, wellbeing, and resilience.

FABULOUS Goal Setting in the Workplace

With that in mind, here are eight pillars of FABULOUS goal setting: Flexibility, Attitude, Boundaries, United, Laughter, Optimism, Understanding job satisfaction, and Self-compassion.

1. Flexibility: a realistic and attainable goal can trigger your brain’s reward system, which can bring about resilience. Brainstorm ways to reframe your thinking to achieve your goal to lessen burnout and build personal resilience.
2.  Attitude: explore a mindset of looking past your bias, fears, and self-sabotaging habits while maintaining a positive attitude enhances your ability to achieve your learning goal.
3.  Boundaries: keep healthy boundaries to achieve your learning goal.
   United: come up with ideas that incorporate other people’s suggestions, views, and values to mitigate burnout. Organizational leadership’s values must match management practices, so communicate well and involve your employees.
4.  Laughter: incorporate a sense of humor into your ongoing practices from learning goal setting to accountability.
5.  Optimism: remain hopeful and have confidence in your ability to achieve your goal.
6.  Understanding job satisfaction: recognize how your goals help you to be fulfilled at work.
7.  Self-compassion: if you get frustrated with task complexity, obstacles, and mistakes, be kind to yourself. You are not the only leader who struggles with achieving a goal.

According to Callander (2020), a business goal is a desired final state that accomplishes business ambitions. Whether the learning goal is building resilience at work or increasing employee wellbeing, stay goal driven as you gather information, gain knowledge, and acquire the skills to pass along to your employees. Moreover, anticipate problems and possible detrimental effects when setting goals (Oettingen, Wittchen, & Gollwitzer, 2013).

Goal setting is a process of planning and action to manage any problems related to burnout and building resilience that come up. So, keep in mind these points:

• Write down the number of ideas I need to acquire or develop to accomplish the task effectively (Locke & Latham, 2002).
• Have a high commitment to my learning goal for it to be effective in increasing my performance (Latham & Seijts, 2016).
• While I plan my goal, I may get negative feedback and become frustrated as I search for task relevant information (Seijts et al., 2013).

Focus on actions that help your staff

By incorporating the FABULOUS Framework for Wellness into your goal setting, you create a new process that removes barriers to achieving work-life balance and employee wellbeing. The goal of mitigating burnout begins with a constructive action step: focusing on a FABULOUS action plan to achieve career resilience.

References

Callander, J.S. (2020) Business Goal Setting (BGS) bridging strategy and organisational behaviour; as part of strategy development, what elements of business goal setting contribute to employee intellectual buy-in? A multiple case-based study. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Swann, C., Rosenbaum, S.,  Lawrence, A., Vella, S.A., McEwan, D. & Ekkekakis, P. (2021) Updating goal-setting theory in physical activity promotion: a critical conceptual review, Health Psychology Review, 15:1, 34-50, DOI: 10. 1080/17437199.2019.1706616.

Oettingen, G., Wittchen, M., & Gollwitzer, P. (2013). Regulating goal pursuit through mental contrasting with implementation intentions. In E. A. Locke, & G. P. Latham (Eds.), New developments in goal setting and task performance (pp. 523–548). NY: Routledge.

Seijts, G. H., Latham, G. P., & Woodwark, M. (2013). Learning goals: A qualitative and quantitative review. In E. A. Locke, & G. P. Latham (Eds.), New developments in goal setting and task performance (pp. 195–212).  NY: Routledge.

Seijts, G. H., & Latham, G. P. (2012). Knowing when to set learning versus performance goals. Organizational Dynamics, 1(41), 1–6. doi: 10.1016/j.orgdyn.2011.12.001.