How to Change Drifting Goals to Soaring Goals

Leaders often like to set goals. We do this because it helps us keep everyone accountable and on track to reach common objectives. We also believe that goals can motivate and inspire employees to do their best work. But sometimes, when we look closer, we realize that our love for goals comes from the fact that they help us stay in control and make sure everyone is working towards the same thing. So, what happens when our goals start taking on a life of their own and move away from us?

It is hard to stay focused on our goals when we have to worry about controlling costs, fighting fires, among other things. Over time, this can lead to our goals changing without us really noticing. The key challenge in this situation is not lowering the desired goal. There are completely legitimate reasons why goals might change, like when they are misdirected or inappropriate. However, new priorities and other competing goals also lead us to rationalize that the goal needs correction or that we will resume the old standard once "everything settles down".

It is hard to tell the difference between making adjustments that make sense and making excuses for not reaching our goals. How do we deal with this in our lives? Can leaders and organizations create an environment where teams are motivated to reach their goals?

Before answering these questions, let's take a look at what happens in our brains when we see a goal and how we process it.

How Our Brain Works:

According to a study in Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, goal setting actually rewires our brains to make the component parts work more effectively. The study showed that when you set a goal, multiple parts of your brain are engaged.

The emotional part of our brain, called the amygdala, decides how important a goal is to us. The logical part of our brain, called the frontal lobe, makes sense of the goal and breaks it down into smaller tasks. These two parts of our brain work together to push us towards completing the goal. As we move closer to achieving our goal, our brain changes in structure to help us do better at reaching it. This sounds great... what's the catch? The only way this happens is if we set the goal for ourselves- it doesn't change if someone else sets a goal for us.

When leaders set goals, it can create a gap between the desired performance and what is actually happening. To close this gap, there are two choices that most people gravitate towards: take corrective action which takes time, effort, money and attention; or lower the desired performance to match the actual performance so there is no longer a gap.

The third option is to create shared goals with your team.

3 Strategies that help create Shared Goals:

1.      Leaders should understand WHY they want to achieve their goals and share this with their team. This will help to activate the motivation part of the brain and turn off the fear circuits.

2.      To achieve your goals, it is important to be very clear and concise in your description. This will help your team understand where you are coming from. When we practice this technique, we activate the visual and prefrontal cortex of the brain. This part of the brain is responsible for making decisions. If you activate this part of the brain in your whole team, they will be able to make better decisions.

3.      Before you lower your expectations or goals, put some clear structures and processes in place to help you get from where you are to where you want to be. An example of a structure or process would be hold frequent retrospectives to understand what actions have we taken or currently taking to reduce the gap between where we want to be and where we are.  

Review how effective these structures and processes are, then only adjust your goals if necessary. The structure and the processes that you put in place will help relieve the pressure to settle for less