Five Big Mistakes Leaders Make When Setting Team Goals
Like most leaders, you have frothy moments of frustration when your team underperforms.
It’s never been more critical for your team to crush performance goals. It’s also never been more challenging.
Many teams feel disoriented, making missing targets or objectives more likely.
Speaking of targets and objectives, how do you even know what to aim for in a milieu as confusing as the environment you lead in right now?
These are great questions; fortunately, there are better answers than what you might be telling yourself.
The solution for many of these issues is a framework I outline in depth in my RECLAIM MOMENTUM {LIVE} KEYNOTE.
After leading teams for nearly three decades, here are five big mistakes (I have personally made and suggest you avoid) - when setting goals with your team.
1. You don’t have a clearly owned core purpose, vision, and set of values
Your core purpose, vision, and values are the rudder of your system to decide how and in what direction your team runs when you are not around.
Most organizations have advanced to throw up a mission statement and set of values on the wall, but it usually doesn’t make it into the bones of their people.
From my observations, what’s on the wall often isn’t owned down the hall.
The same with core values. So many leaders take time to define the core values they want, but often there’s a big gap between the values they want and those they have. In addition, many team members couldn’t name more than one core value on their campus web page.
So, how can you tell if your team owns your core purpose, vision, and cultural values?
Here’s a little test: During your next team meeting, ask your team if they can articulate them without cheating.
You know there’s work to do if they can't, but don’t get discouraged. 95% of the time I conduct this exercise with campus executive teams, they can’t deliver a 100% accurate response either.
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When core purpose, vision, and values aren’t owned or shared, your team will spin in a myriad of directions.
If you would like to drill deeper here, I invite you to download the 5 Evidence-Based Practices to Reclaim More Team Engagement with Less Effort.
You can find this valuable resource help here.
2. You lack a clear strategy to execute
Core purpose, vision, and values should have a long shelf-life, but without execution, they are more like fortune cookies.
Strategy is how you plan to accomplish your vision.
For every campus, COVID threw a wrench (or nuclear bomb) into strategy. Unfortunately, a return to your old strategy likely won’t work.
As much as you can’t have certainty in this season, it’s essential to have clarity.
Part of my strategy before the pandemic was consulting and speaking in person. When COVID shut down travel, my team and I pivoted (literally overnight) to deliver all our workshops and coaching fully in a 100% digital environment.
Our mission (To Optimize Higher Team Performance) stayed the same.
Our strategy changed.
In fact, quick pivots on strategy preserve the mission in times of rapid change.
If you haven’t clarified your strategy recently (even if it’s a strategy for the next 30 days), I encourage you to pull your team together and refine it.
No team can own what it doesn’t understand.
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