Fall is typically a time when leaders and team members make plans for the next year, setting goals and objectives for team and individual performance.
Goal-setting exercises clarify what is important and give everyone precise targets to aim for and achieve. Setting goals is as much an art as a science, which makes it easy to make a misstep or two.
One of the most common errors leaders make in the goal-setting process is to classify everyday obligations and commitments as goals to achieve rather than as responsibilities to uphold.
As part of the organization, team members have a host of responsibilities that are expected of them. These obligations are inherent in what it means to be a team member.
For example, team members in all enterprises are expected to be a positive force within the culture, to give colleagues actionable feedback, to offer candid viewpoints during meetings, to meet deadlines, to share information and knowledge, to follow workplace rules and procedures, and to safeguard confidential information. You can think of an army of others.
While engaged in goal-setting discussions, it is essential that leaders do not register obligations and commitments as goals to be achieved.
Casting everyday responsibilities as goals reduces accountability for being a productive team member. It sends the message that the obligations and commitments of being a team member are optional or elective.
All team members have a binding responsibility to act in the best interest of the team. As such, there is a multitude of behaviors, actions, and norms they are expected to uphold.
Leaders who mistakenly cast these obligations as goals during the planning process unknowingly undermine what it means to be a contributing member of the team in good standing.
Team members who are weak or inept at fulfilling the everyday standards of the role must be confronted with the need to get with the program and act the part.
This pass-or-fail mentality sets the standard for all team members.
Setting a goal that a particular team member must improve their collaboration or information sharing, for example, suggests that such commitments naturally vary among colleagues, and some are just not good at it.
Asking the team member to take up to a year to improve on it makes them unaccountable for being a good team member now. No wonder some team members continue to underperform as colleagues.
Before discussing the goals and objectives a team member should aspire to achieve next year, ask yourself if any of the outcomes or goals you have identified are truly obligations or responsibilities expected of them every day.
In that case, have the discussion to meet the standard, but don’t present them as goals. A great team culture depends on it.
