Let’s talk about goal setting - a topic that comes up quite often in leadership coaching - especially this time of year. Leaders often struggle with helping (empowering) their employees create meaningful goals using the SMART formula. The SMART goals model was first written in 1981 by George T. Doran in a paper titled, “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management’s Goals and Objectives”. The original SMART goals model written by Doran was as follows:

• Specific: target a specific area for improvement.

• Measurable: quantify, or at least suggest, an indicator of progress.

• Assignable: specify who will do it.

• Realistic: state what results can realistically be achieved given available resources.

• Time-related: specify when the result can be achieved.

Slight variations can be found, but for the most part it has the same intent. The biggest change is the “A”, which now typically stands for attainable.

Some of the frustrations I hear from leaders are:

• “It is difficult to identify meaningful goals for this position (person)”

• “There is no way to measure the goal”

• “My employees won’t create their goals”

While there is not one easy answer that covers all these frustrations, there are a few things you can keep in mind that will help ease some frustration.

1. Encourage your employees to look at their job from “the balcony”, a high-level view of what they need to accomplish to be successful. What 3 - 5 things do they need to do to be successful. These should include results, and other things such as process and how well they work with others.

2. Make sure that the measurement is connected to what is most important, because it will drive behavior. Success doesn’t always have to be measured on performance, consider measuring mastery as an alternative - see the blog Win Some, Learn Some to learn more. Measurement can be as simple as timely completion of each action item leading up to the goal. Keep it simple!

3. Resist the urge to create goals for your employees, let them struggle through - give them guidance, challenge their thinking, support them but don’t do it for them. There are several types of goals, help them consider these different options:

   • Performance-approach: Goals to demonstrate and validate abilities by achieving a specific outcome, or by outperforming others.

   • Mastery goals: Goals which are designed to increase competency, understanding, and long- term success. Mastery goals are not dependent on a particular outcome, as all outcomes can lead to learning and growth

   • Core goals: Goals that reflect an ultimate desired result. For example, if the goal is to win salesperson of the year award, this would probably bring a deep sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. In this case, the core goal is what you get as a result of that win—the feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment.

Other Resources

How to Make Goal Setting More Meaningful - blog article

Making Sure Your Employees Succeed - HBR article

Why the secret to success is setting the right goals - John Doerr | TED