Every 6 months or so I try to spend time with my staff to review their performance over the past 6 months and to spend some time talking about the stuff that doesn't normally get talked about in the day-to-day of the working life. With 15-odd staff (including contractors) it took three days to get through everyone but it's a worthwhile exercise.

Apart from the performance related parts of the review I talked to them about their own personal goals and development. It's not normally something that gets covered in the workforce as the focus is more on career goals and professional development (since that can directly influence the bottom line).

The thing I found interesting was that there is a fairly strong correlation between positive attitude and emotional stability and having personal goals. Those people who have a consistently good outlook on situations and who take a long term view of things instead of being swayed by the various challenges and problems of work and life seem to be those with goals firmly in mind.

Most people have some sort of career goal, you know, things like career progression, improving technical skills, being a better analyst, etc and that is something that should be encouraged and expected from my staff.

Personal goals are things like wanting to be a better father/mother or being able to improve your relationships, learning leadership abilities (not management skills), learning to interact better with people, being at peace regardless of circumstances, and so forth. Basically the things that improve your life both in and out of the working environment.

For tech people and male techo's in particular, it's not something that is typically considered and it can be difficult to get a good handle on these types of goals. After all it's easy with programming since code either works or it doesn't - personal goals are much more nebulous and harder to define, so how do you know if you've achieved them. In short - you don't. Instead what you do is build into yourself the habit of always improving in areas of your life. For me, I have aimed over the years to keep my temper under control since letting it go just causes more problems than it solves. I am constantly striving to lengthen my fuse and to keep reducing the powder keg that it's attached to. Whilst I've made plenty of progress I don't think I'll ever achieve it, but I will always keep pressing on towards it.

For yourself, try to identify character flaws or areas of weakness you would like to eliminate and work at doing so. The easiest way to do this is figure out what parts of yourself you don't want your (potential) kids to inherit. Why? Because kids will learn from your behaviour and character - not from your words.

Similarly staff in the office pick up and respond to your character and responses in stressful situations. You will always replicate behaviour in your staff that you exhibit yourself. I can point to this directly in my staff - I have a slightly irreverent attitude to others around me and my staff have picked up on this and behave in the same way towards me - ie respectfully disrespectful.

If you've never set personal goals or thought about developing yourself then do so. The benefits to yourself and the improvements in the way you relate to your family, friends and your work colleagues will only make your life more enjoyable and fruitful.