Want to know more about Learning Goals? Start here.
Note: The learning goals feature is only included in coaching partnerships started before April 30, 2025.
Will my manager, HR department, or CEO see my learning goals?
Administrators of the overall Torch program at your organization will only know if a learning goal exists. They do not have visibility into how many learning goals you specifically have created or what those goals are, but can view the proportion of overall program participants who have set at least one learning goal and who have not set any.
Upon request, the Torch team can provide program administrators from your organization with information on if you have created a learning goal. Once at least 3 users have set goals, we can also provide administrators with a summary of the learning areas for goals created across a program, without any connection made between specific users and learning areas (for example, “4 participants have goals related to Reliability”).
All other information about your learning goals is private between you and your coach. This includes a goal’s learning area, title, and description. Learn more about learning goal privacy.
How many learning goals should I pursue?
In order to keep coaching manageable, we recommend working on no more than three learning goals and three related actions at a time.
In other words, three learning goals with no more than one action per learning goal at any given time, or one learning goal with three related actions, and so on. This is intended to increase the likelihood of action completion and goal progress. Setting too many goals can take away from your focus and progress.
What actions can help me make progress toward a learning goal?
Actions are concrete steps you can take to make incremental progress toward a goal. To be effective, an action should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and ideally time-bound).
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Specific actions are described clearly enough that there is no ambiguity about what you are supposed to do (for example, read the first three chapters of Radical Candor vs. read about effective communication).
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Measurable actions have clearly defined success criteria (for example, practice active listening at least once with 3 colleagues in the next 5 days).
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Achievable actions are sufficiently challenging to move you just outside of your comfort zone, but not so challenging that they are well beyond your developmental level.
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Realistic actions can be achieved given your schedule and other constraints (for example, meditate daily for 5 minutes vs. 5 hours).
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Time-bound actions have a fixed completion date.
Torch tip: Though not formally required, you can include actions in the description for a learning goal, and discuss them with your coach.
How should I design actions for a learning goal?
There are many ways to do this. However, one way to narrow a broad learning goal (for example, becoming a more inspiring leader) down to an action that can be completed between coaching meetings is to examine the factors that get in the way of achieving the goal.
Let’s say that you’re trying to become a more inspiring, more transformational leader, and the obstacles to that goal are lack of self-confidence, and social anxiety. Any actions that build self-confidence or reduce social anxiety are potentially useful. Self-confidence and social anxiety are highly related, so actions that target one area are likely to target the other.
Although it’s somewhat counterintuitive, actions meant to build self-confidence and decrease social anxiety usually require experiencing a temporary increase in anxiety. For example, you may avoid talking to new colleagues for fear of being negatively evaluated. In this scenario, you can’t really make progress without confronting your fear of negative evaluation by talking to new colleagues, becoming more skilled in these conversations, and learning to tolerate the anxiety that accompanies these interactions. While your anxiety will naturally decrease over time the more you practice, the action itself is understandably anxiety inducing.
Torch tip: Though not formally required, you can include actions in the description for a learning goal, and discuss them with your coach.
I’m already busy and stressed. Why should I put extra work into creating learning goals?
A common source of stress is feeling pulled in too many directions. Articulating your learning goals can help you prioritize what to focus on when there simply isn’t time to do it all.
When you have clear goals, you are also able to track the progress you are making toward achieving them. A little bit of progress can be really helpful to tap into your inner motivation when you face inevitable challenges to reaching your goals. Having clear goals can also help your coach understand how to best support you because they understand what you want to achieve and why. So even though you may be stressed and busy with a limited amount of time, having clear goals will make each minute you spend working on your goals that much more effective.