Shared goals unite people, turning them from a group of individuals into a strong and efficient team. So, building a strong team begins with setting great team goals.
Every leader should guide their team in setting strong goals focused on clear outcomes. But why are team goals so crucial to motivation, productivity, and organizational success? Moreover, how do you establish the right ones? In this article, we’ll answer those questions and share some examples of great team goals.
Table of Contents
- Benefits of Setting Team Goals
- Best Practices for Setting Team Goals
- How to Set Team Goals, Step by Step
- Team Goal Examples
- How to Track, Monitor, and Support Progress
Benefits of Setting Team Goals
As Peter Hawkins says in Leadership Team Coaching, team goals are more than the sum of group members’ individual goals—they can only be achieved by working collectively. Setting team goals expands what your team can accomplish together.
In fact, when top leaders support strong goal-setting, productivity rises by 57%, research has found. Mutual understanding of objectives fuels strong collaboration. Shared goals increase team cohesion, which in turn strengthens psychological safety among group members, explain Robert N. Lussier and Christopher F. Achua in Leadership: Theory, Application, and Skill Development. Trust and collaboration rise when people work toward shared goals, they write. People become more interdependent, turning to one another for support, information, and resources.
Great goals also enhance engagement in the workplace. People know exactly what they’re driving toward, increasing motivation. In contrast, without strong goals, team members will lack direction and miss opportunities to achieve positive change together.
As a result, goal-setting plays a big role in enhancing organizational success—especially when you synchronize goals at different levels. “When employee goals are aligned with organizational priorities and help employees meet changing needs, coordinate with peers and hold themselves accountable, employee performance increases by up to 22%,” Gartner has found.
Best Practices for Setting Team Goals
Follow these best practices to set excellent goals that your team can achieve.
Set Cascading Goals
Align team goals with company objectives. All team goals should further the organization’s mission and vision. Start by reviewing the mission and vision. Then look at your company-level goals, as well as any department-level goals. Then, as a team, consider how you can best contribute to achieving them.
Decide on Goals Collectively
Brainstorming goals as a team will bring more innovative ideas than one person could generate alone. This also boosts group cohesion and morale, as Gerard Assey says in Goal Setting for Success. Plus, it increases investment in achieving the goals. Despite these benefits, just 15% of organizations involve teams in goal-setting, says Gartner. This represents a missed opportunity that you can use to enhance engagement, motivation, and performance.
Provide Context and Direction
As the leader, provide direction to open the brainstorming session. Discuss business strategy and how it applies to your team’s work, as Gartner urges. Managers who effectively provide this context can increase the percentage of high performers by 26%, they found.
Create Short, Medium, and Long-Term Goals
Break goals into short-term, medium-term, and long-term priorities. Short-term goals are ones that you can accomplish in the quarter (or even within a month or two). They’re often the easiest to visualize, since they have very clear, actionable steps. Medium-term goals might be achieved within six months to a year. Long-term goals might be achieved over the course of a year, or even several years.
Create SMART Goals
Ensure goals are challenging yet attainable. All goals should be SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). This will ensure clear expectations and metrics for tracking outcomes. SMART goals use numbers to show the change you aim to make. They also specify a clear time frame in which you’ll achieve the goal.
Make sure your SMART goals are also stretch goals. They should expand your abilities as a team and individuals. If you’re not tackling new challenges that feel daunting at times, you need to set more challenging goals.
Design an Action Plan
Outline the steps to achieving each SMART goal, and the specific people involved. Consider delegating a different project leader for each goal, to build leadership skills among team members. Assign responsibilities to each person, along with a timeframe for completing each task. Define any necessary support for helping them carry out these steps, too.
Mapping out the workflow in the form of a chart can clarify project stages. Also discuss key touchpoints for communicating about the project, like daily team check-ins.
Establish Criteria for Success
Agree on standards for work quality as well. Draft criteria for success, specifying any improvements needed. Discuss potential barriers to achieving each goal and how to overcome them. By putting your minds together, you’ll come up with more creative solutions to challenges.
Adapt Goals as Needed
Regularly review and adjust goals as circumstances change. In today’s agile business world, goals need to be adaptable. If conditions shift, or you meet a current goal, you must be ready to dive in and set new ones.
How to Set Team Goals, Step by Step
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Follow these steps to craft highly effective goals that motivate and inspire employees. Strive for several clear, actionable priorities that your team can zero in on.
- Convene your team to generate ideas for goals. Schedule the meeting for a time when people tend to be energized.
- To begin, share any points of information that will aid in drafting relevant objectives. Reflect on the company’s mission, as well as your team mission, to kick off this meeting. If company leadership has adopted new overarching goals, share this information. Or, if you believe you need to adopt a different strategy to meet existing company goals, convey this to your team.
- Organize your ideas in order of priority. Can some be combined? Should any be eliminated? Pick your top 3–5 ideas.
- Refine the language, making sure each goal expresses exactly what you intend. Make the wording as clear and concise as possible to avoid ambiguity and confusion.
- Create KPIs for each goal. These indicators of success will help you determine when you’ve met a goal. For example, “Build a content calendar featuring two quality weekly posts” could support the goal of improving brand awareness among your target audience. Another way to look at it: Write actionable goals that specify exactly what you’re going to do.
- Establish cascading goals, which means calibrating goals at the organizational, team, and individual levels. After you’ve set team goals, individuals can set personal goals supporting them. Talk in group sessions as well as one-on-one about individual goals. This will boost motivation and accountability for personally contributing to team-level goals.
In addition to performance goals, consider personal development goals as a team. What skills does your team need to cultivate? Pinpoint any gaps that exist, or that may emerge as processes and technologies evolve. Then, decide on which individuals will pursue training in these areas.
Team Goal Examples
Here are a few examples of strong team goals, in different areas of focus.
- Increase sales volume by 15% this quarter.
- Boost leads by 20% this quarter.
- Implement a mentorship program that ensures each employee has a mentor.
- Reduce production time for product X by 20%.
- Increase organic website traffic by 25%.
- Improve the conversion rate for leads to 60%.
- Boost customer loyalty by 35%.
When setting metrics, make sure they’re challenging but realistic. Remember that you can consider improving sales or processes quarter after quarter. So, start with a manageable improvement for the current quarter.
How to Track, Monitor, and Support Progress
Track team goals through performance management software. Make sure each person has access to this platform and understands how to use it. Good software can allow you to input cascading goals. This will illustrate the relationship between individual, team, and organizational goals in a quick-reference format.
Talk with each team member about progress toward personal goals during weekly one-on-ones. Also hold weekly team meetings where you check in about efforts toward team goals. During these team meetings, discuss hurdles, roadblocks, and milestones. Look at the percentage of each goal completed—seeing their progress can be extremely motivational! Then discuss what remains to be done. During performance reviews, refer back to goal achievement with the help of performance management solutions.
Through 360 reviews, you can also help team members set—and achieve—personal goals. Use these reviews to establish a baseline and track improvements.
By setting strong team goals, you’ll ramp up engagement and group morale. In turn, your team will achieve more ambitious results together, month after month. Share daily feedback on their progress to help them stay on track. As you achieve current goals, discuss how you can push yourselves even further!
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