Goal Setting In The Corporate World
The act of setting goals can produce different feelings in team members, depending on their mindset. Setting goals for go-getters and top performers present an opportunity to hit new heights and create new opportunities.
However, for team members that are bogged down and experiencing performance issues, setting goals can produce feelings of stress or anxiety. Regardless of the specific situation of your team members, setting goals should be a process that includes careful thought and proper guidance.
Team members setting goals should provide several significant benefits for your organization. This article will highlight tips that make the process more efficient, hopefully leading to progress for you and your team members.
1. Think Big, Get Excited
You should be encouraging your team members to raise their intentions. What do we mean by this? Goals should be set in a way that puts your sights on things that are much bigger than where you currently reside.
The point of goals is to level up. If you set small goals, you’re going to end up getting small results. The larger, and more extravagant your team members’ goals are, the bigger the results tend to be in the end.
Goals should be something that excites the people that set them. They should be things that people want to have and achieve. Ask each team member about the goals they’re trying to accomplish.
If their answers don’t generate energy within them, most likely, things should be revisited. Go over their motivations with them to produce a new set of goals that garner new enthusiasm.
2. Alignment Should Be Present
Alignment is important when it comes to goals. Do your team members have goals that align with the future of your organization?
Goals should be listed separately, but they should all be in alignment with one another. Visit goals in this manner:
- Goals of your organization as a whole
- Goals of each separate department
- Goals of each team within those departments
- Goals of individuals on a professional level
- Goals in individuals on a personal level
In some manner, these goals should overlap at some point. Not everyone’s goals will overlap in the same way, but at some point, there should be common ground mixed into the equation.
This helps to produce a common aim for your organization and everybody in it. In the end, this does wonders for company culture and the overall collaborative atmosphere of your company goal-setting.
3. They Should Be Attainable
While it’s important to set goals that are big, they should be realistic goals. Regardless of how tough the goals might be to hit, there needs to be an element of reality. Otherwise, there’s no driving force behind the goals.
If there isn’t some form of belief that a team member can hit their goals, there’s no point in setting them in the first place. There should be a clear set of steps or resources outlined that will allow each team member to hit their goals.
After outlining what everyone’s goals are, you should make a plan for what it’s going to take to achieve them. What type of support do your team members need? What type of resources are required to make these goals a reality?
This will form a roadmap to each set of goals. When your team members can see a clear route to their goals, the reality of achieving them becomes a real possibility.
4. Be Descriptive
Everybody should be as descriptive as possible when it comes to their goals. If someone has the goal of buying a house, add as many details as possible regarding that house.
- What color is the house?
- How much will you pay for the house?
- Where will it be located?
- How many bedrooms are in the house?
This goes along with the last tip of goals being attainable. If you can visualize something and then picture it happening, you can make it a reality. A mindset like this is the basis for the law of attraction.
It may sound cliché or somewhat cheesy, but if you can believe it, you can achieve it. This is more true than you could imagine.
5. Make Goals Measurable
This is where having an efficient performance management system comes into play. All of the goals that team members set (at least professionally) should be measurable.
In fact, all of their goals, regardless of whether they’re personal or professional, should be measurable. However, your PMS platform will be vital when it comes to measuring professional goals.
Track certain metrics regarding what individual team members’ goals are. Maybe their goals are to beef up their sales numbers. Perhaps certain team members want higher customer service ratings than they’ve ever had before.
Regardless of what these goals are, there should be some tracked measurement to monitor progress. This is important for tracking what changes might need to be made at the quarter or the halfway point.
This actually brings us to another tip to close with. When it comes to measuring goals, you should make sure leaders and team members are revisiting their goals every so often. Whether this is every quarter or at the halfway point of the year, bigger goals should be examined to monitor how close team members are to achieving them.
This allows them insight into whether they need to kick it up a notch to hit their goals. Tracking progress is extremely important when it comes to making goals a reality.
It’s important to never underestimate the importance of setting goals and sticking to them. Your team members should be held accountable to a certain degree for hitting their goals.
It’s your job to ensure that everyone is taking their goals seriously. This type of atmosphere should be spread throughout your organization as a vital part of your corporate culture.
Breeding a winning attitude is important for a thriving environment that leads to growth. This is especially true when it comes to onboarding new hires; new talent wants to be a part of something worthwhile, and seeing everyone achieve their goals can be very attractive.