SMART Goals for Mentoring

In any mentoring relationship, mentors and mentees benefit from identifying SMART goals, which will help you build your working alliance (clear goals, agreed upon tasks, and interpersonal trust). Throughout this course, you may develop various goals with your peer, staff, scientific, and senior mentors. Depending on the focus of these mentorships, your goals may look a bit different. The following table will help you begin to develop these SMART goals. For this week, come up with one SMART goal you would like to work on with one or more of your mentors. (Table Adapted from Asquith & Villalobos, Mentoring Up for Postdoctoral Trainees)

 

SPECIFIC	MEASURABLE	ACHIEVABLE	RELEVANT	TIMELY
What is the specific goal? How will you know if you succeeded? Keep the goal simple and concrete. Break down larger goals into simple steps.	How will this goal be measured or evaluated? (Not all goals need to be measured quantitatively.) How will success be determined?	Can you actually do this? Do you have the knowledge, skills and resources you need? Will you need to seek help from others? Are all parts realistic?	Is this goal worth achieving? Does it reflect your priorities and align with other goals?	When is the deadline? When does each sub-task need to be done? What is a realistic timeline?
Ex: I want to set up weekly 30-minute meetings with my mentor to discuss the research project I’d like to develop in this course.	Ex: Success will be determined if we are able to meet weekly and I feel more confident about the specific steps I need to take to start on my project.	Ex: I (the mentee) will prepare questions and conduct a preliminary search on specific project ideas and an outline of how to get started. If we are unable to meet, I will send my mentor an update of my progress.	Ex: I will define the central hypothesis I am testing and its relationship to an important unsolved problem. I will draw a map of the connections of my goal to the mission of, and to other projects in our lab and those of others.	Ex: A day before our regular meetings, I will insert updates and suggested agenda items, and send the link to my mentor; during the meetings, I will explain the updates and suggest action items. Within 24 hours of our meeting I will send a summary of my action items.