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Teams perform better when they have clear shared goals. One key element of good team leadership is helping your team establish team goals.

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Quick reference

Setting Team Goals

Teams perform better when they have clear shared goals.  One key element of good team leadership is helping your team establish team goals.   This module will provide several suggested approaches for establishing goals and a set of criteria for good team goals.

When to use

When a team has been formed, one of the first activities should be to create team goals.  It is often helpful to periodically review those goals.  With functional team, I suggest reviewing them twice a year or possibly every quarter.  For project teams, it is helpful to review them at the start of every major project phase.

Instructions

There are numerous methodologies and approaches to help you set your team’s goals.  Dr Edwin Locke identified five key principles to follow when setting goals from his extensive research, the acronym SMART has become a best practice used by many teams when setting goals, and finally, I have my own checklist which I have developed.  This represents the best practices that I have learned (sometimes the hard way) to apply when working with teams on goals.  Although goal setting is normally done when a team is formed, it often needs to be periodically reviewed and refreshed for both new team members and because some old team members begin to drift in their focus

Locke’s Principles on Team Goal Setting

  • Clarity – Use SMART approach.
  • Challenge – Aggressive goals, but not unrealistic, can inspire a team.
  • Commitment – Team involvement in goal creation leads to team buyin.
  • Feedback – Status reporting and accountability strengthen the buyin.
  • Task complexity – Avoid simplistic goals, allow for some complexity; but don’t go overboard so that they become confusing.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

  • Specific – clear and concise, not vague or ambiguous.
  • Measurable – a measurable target so that the team knows when the goal is met.
  • Achievable – challenging but realistic, if the goal is impossible, the team will think they have been set up to fail.
  • Relevant – the goal aligns with organizational and personal goals.
  • Time-bound – there is a time period associated with the goal.  This creates a sense of urgency and focus.

Goal Setting Checklist

  • Aligned with organizational goals.
  • Understood by all team members.
  • S.M.A.R.T.
  • Accountability allocated for elements of the goal.
  • Establish performance indicators and progress monitoring.
  • Identify internal and external dependencies.
  • Identify and manage risks.
  • Ensure full team commitment to the goals.
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  • 00:04 Hello, I'm Ray Sheen.
  • 00:06 The next team process that I would like to discuss is the process of
  • 00:10 setting team goals.
  • 00:12 >> There are a dozens of different techniques, principles and
  • 00:15 approaches for going about setting team goals.
  • 00:19 I'd like to discuss one that has been developed by Dr.
  • 00:22 Edwin Locke, and is based upon over 30 years of research.
  • 00:26 I like this approach because it not only has the credibility from research,
  • 00:29 it is straight forward and easy to follow, and
  • 00:32 I have found the steps to ring true with teams that I've been on.
  • 00:36 First, Dr. Locke advocates selecting clear goals.
  • 00:39 A great way for understanding what that means Is to use the SMART acronym,
  • 00:44 which I'll cover on the next slide.
  • 00:46 Next, is Challenge.
  • 00:48 The goals need to be aggressive enough to create a challenge, not so
  • 00:52 aggressive as to seem impossible.
  • 00:55 But a challenge is motivating and
  • 00:57 can help to engage an emotional attachment to the goals.
  • 01:00 Third, is Commitment.
  • 01:02 The team should be involved in the development of the goals, so
  • 01:04 that they feel that the goals reflect something important to them.
  • 01:08 We are much more committed if it was at least partly our idea.
  • 01:12 Fourth is feedback.
  • 01:14 Teams need to get a periodic status report of how they are doing on the goal for
  • 01:18 them to stay bought in and committed.
  • 01:20 So in developing goals,
  • 01:21 ensure they are ones that will enable some way of tracking progress.
  • 01:26 The last is Task Complexity.
  • 01:28 This is a balancing act.
  • 01:30 The goals need to be complex enough to provide challenge but
  • 01:33 too complex leads to confusion and frustration.
  • 01:36 In my experience, too many teams err on the side of overly simple goals
  • 01:41 that are too basic and therefore never engage the team.
  • 01:45 Let's take a look at the S.M.A.R.T. acronym.
  • 01:47 There are several variations on this acronym but
  • 01:50 I found that this one works well with team goals.
  • 01:52 S stands for Specific.
  • 01:55 The goal needs to be a clear and concise description of expectations and
  • 01:58 objectives.
  • 02:00 Avoid vague terms like empower employees or satisfy the customers.
  • 02:04 Be specific, so team members understand what they're striving to do.
  • 02:09 M is measurable.
  • 02:10 This goes hand in hand with Specific.
  • 02:13 Clarify what metric you will use to show the progress towards achieving the goal
  • 02:17 and what you're target value is for that metric.
  • 02:20 You may need to run a baseline study first,
  • 02:22 just to know where you are today with respect to that metric.
  • 02:26 A stands for Achievable.
  • 02:28 The team needs to feel that the target is within their grasp.
  • 02:31 Setting a target that is unattainable does not motivate the team,
  • 02:35 rather they often feel like they are being set up to fail.
  • 02:38 Make sure you include the time dimension and
  • 02:40 resources when considering whether the goal is achievable.
  • 02:44 Can the team accomplish the goal with the time and money they have available?
  • 02:48 R stands for Relevant.
  • 02:50 Do the team members understand why this goal is important to them and
  • 02:53 the organization?
  • 02:55 Help them see how achieving this goal advances the greater good.
  • 02:58 Finally, the T stands for Time-Bound, Timely or Time Constrained.
  • 03:03 A date or milestone adds urgency and focus to the goal.
  • 03:07 Again, make sure it is realistic.
  • 03:11 Let me wrap up this section with a checklist that I use
  • 03:13 when working with a new team to set up the team goals.
  • 03:16 There's no particular order to this checklist.
  • 03:19 Rather, I use it to remind myself of what we need to address, and
  • 03:22 some of those that we have already covered.
  • 03:26 First thing on my list is to be sure that the team goals are aligned
  • 03:28 with organizational goals.
  • 03:30 That helps to maintain buy-in to the goals from both the team members and
  • 03:34 outside stakeholders.
  • 03:36 Next, I make sure that all the team members understand the goals.
  • 03:39 This is usually easy to do with the original team when
  • 03:42 the goals are being established.
  • 03:44 I find the bigger challenge is for me to spend time with
  • 03:47 new team members to ensure that they also understand and are aligned with the goals.
  • 03:51 Don't overlook the importance of this.
  • 03:53 A new team member who is not aligned can quickly
  • 03:56 derail a previously high performing team and require weeks or months to recover.
  • 04:01 Next is the S.M.A.R.T. acronym which I covered on the previous slide.
  • 04:05 Accountability is an interesting topic.
  • 04:08 The whole team is accountable for all of the goals.
  • 04:11 But often some goals fall within one team member's oversight.
  • 04:14 You need to be clear with that individual and
  • 04:16 the rest of the team as to how much authority the team member has.
  • 04:20 And how much accountability is to be shared across the entire team.
  • 04:24 This is situationally dependent upon the individual,
  • 04:27 the organization, and the goal.
  • 04:29 Another one that we've talked about some is establishing a metric or
  • 04:33 monitoring system for progress towards the goal.
  • 04:37 This is part of S.M.A.R.T., but
  • 04:38 I find that I often need to create a special system or
  • 04:41 process to get the information Format for the team's goal and distribute it.
  • 04:46 The last few items will help to ensure goals are achieved.
  • 04:50 One of these is to understand any internal or external dependencies.
  • 04:53 These often have to be micromanaged by someone on the team.
  • 04:57 Another is to acknowledge the risks to the goal.
  • 04:59 And again, have someone on the team take the lead in managing each risk.
  • 05:04 Finally, ensure that everyone stays committed to the goal.
  • 05:07 It's not uncommon that for either personal or professional reasons,
  • 05:10 someone who was once committed to the team goals has lost interest.
  • 05:14 I saw this one time with a senior engineer on one of my teams.
  • 05:18 Well it's that time to talk with him about it,
  • 05:19 he told me that his father had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
  • 05:23 And he was worried about how to take care of both his father and his mother.
  • 05:27 As we talked it through we decided to change his role on the team
  • 05:31 to more of an advisor rather than a major actor.
  • 05:34 With this, I kept him engage and committed to the team, while allowing more time for
  • 05:38 the very important personal issues that he had to deal with over the next few months.
  • 05:45 >> A team without goals is like a rudderless ship that gets carried away
  • 05:50 by every wind and wave until eventually capsizes or runs aground.
  • 05:54 Set your goals and steer your teams with these.

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