How helpful are goals, really?

A few months ago, I was coaching a client and at the end of one of her sessions, we agreed she would spend some time reflecting on what she wanted and write a list of goals. At our next session, I was looking forward to hearing her thoughts and expected her to arrive to our session feeling energised and focussed. So I was a little taken aback when she told me that she felt overwhelmed and pressurised by her list*. Since then, I’ve had similar conversations with others who find that creating goals can feel overwhelming and confusing. It got me thinking – how helpful are goals, really?

I spent twenty years in corporate organisations where hitting targets are not only the norm, they have become the DNA of the business.

Having worked with hundreds of leaders over many years, the main issue with this current approach seems to be that in focussing purely on the target, behaviours may become unhelpful. Different departments may have contradictory agendas, which creates internal competition, conflict and silo working. People become stressed and overwhelmed with the need to achieve their allocated objectives. Poor, short-term decisions can be made, losing sight of what will be positive for the organisation in the longer term. And focus on learning, improving and getting better is de-prioritised in pursuit of the next target.

But there are also some real benefits to having goals. Without them, we can become aimless, unclear about what success is for us and those we serve. The question is, how do we as individuals, teams and organisations make goals helpful and inspiring rather than empty and overwhelming?

The case for goals

Goals can be the guiding star that helps us stay in line with our purpose.
They can provide a sense of achievement – which can become a positive virtuous circle of increasing confidence and learning.
Goals can provide accountability, helping us to avoid procrastination.
Creating a goal can help give you clarity and encourage you to take action.
They can build our tenacity and resilience. When we truly believe in a goal, we will keep going, even if we face setbacks along the way.
Goals give you agency – essentially, you're able to influence your future more effectively rather than leaving it to fate.
Goals can help with decision making – filtering out low priority activities and helping us to concentrate on the things that are important.
They help us to learn – by working towards a powerful goal, we can improve ourselves and those around us.
When they serve something greater than ourselves – achieving a higher purpose than purely self-interest – goals feed our soul and provides fulfilment.

When goals can be unhelpful

Goals without soul – when we focus on numerical targets rather than a meaningful purpose behind them, they can cause unethical or unhelpful behaviour in the pursuit of the number.
When we don’t notice that the goal is becoming irrelevant due to changes internally or externally.
When we think we should always have clarity. When we don’t know what we want, we worry that there’s something wrong – but a goal can simply be a journey of discovery in itself.
Goals that seem out of reach – goals that feel too big, too overwhelming are demotivating and can create a sense of failure.
Goals can be riddled with bias – so when we create goals in isolation, we are setting ourselves up for failure.
When we are confused with who the stakeholders really are – goals that only serve shareholders/ owners are likely to lack a holistic purpose which also serves employees, community, society and nature.
When goals are misaligned with our values – if you’ve ever tried working towards a goal which doesn’t fit with your moral compass, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Goals that are set for us can be demotivating and not utilise our strengths and passions. When goals are imposed upon us, we feel a loss of control and purpose.
When the goal is too precise or too woolly – they can either be too constraining or too vague.

“New goals don’t deliver new results. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is a process, not an outcome. For this reason, your energy should go into building better habits, not chasing better results.” – James Clear

So how do you create goals which are helpful?

Consider who you are serving and how – how are you making people’s lives happier and healthier? How are you creating a better world for the future? Your goals should align with your purpose, vision and mission.
Create goals that are aligned with your values – personal or organisational. The why keeps us motivated, focussed and energised, because it’s something important to us, even when the ‘what’ might change.
The secret to great goals is to combine being and doing. The being goal ‘I want to be fulfilled and purposeful in my career’ might start with a doing goal of ‘Understand what my values are’.
Powerful goals include the process of learning and growing. When we have a growth mindset, we focus on the process of learning and getting better. Results are the outcome of how well we are serving our customers, community and the earth.
Co-create your goals – include all your stakeholders' needs and collaborate where possible.
Enable everyone in the organisation to contribute towards their own goals. Create the overall organisational goal and then ask teams and individuals to come up with their own measurable way of contributing towards that goal. This increases motivation and engagement.
Ensure individual and team goals are aligned with people’s strengths. This increases the likelihood the goal will be achieved because strengths enable us to work on what we’re good at and what we enjoy doing.
Measure the qualitative as well as quantitative. Feedback, impact, internal levels of satisfaction and growth, referrals and recommendations can all be included as measures of success. Not having some of these means you are constantly chasing numbers rather than knowing you’ve done a great job.
Define your goals with positive language. Moving towards a positive vision rather than away from a negative one has shown to be more effective in lasting change¹ e.g. from: ‘Leave my crappy job this year’ to: ‘Find a role I will thrive in’.
Visualise your goal – what will you be feeling, seeing, hearing, doing? What will you observe in others? Being descriptive gives your brain something specific to focus on and identify when it’s happening.
Set mini goals (milestones) to help you track your progress and increase motivation.
Celebrate your successes – taking time to do this releases dopamine (our reward hormone) which will provide energy and motivation to continue forwards.
Put your goals somewhere visible – write them down, create a board, have a little figurine on your desk that reminds you, a sign, anything that keeps your goal in your mind and your heart.
Make them personal – one size doesn’t fit all. Small/ short term goals can be helpful when you know motivation will be a challenge or the way forwards is unclear. Big/ long term goals can be helpful to give you a trajectory and make you feel excited and inspired. I have a big goal for my business and a small, precise one for my personal nemesis – exercise.
Learn as you go – adjusting your goals is part of being adaptable and resilient to changes in your environment and internal being. There’s no shame in changing a goal, despite many falling foul to commitment bias. Indeed, it takes courage to change a goal when it is no longer working.

When I started to reflect on my conversation with my client, it began to undo a significant number of beliefs I had held about goals. I’ve come to the conclusion that goals have their pros and cons, but should be approached with the mindset that it is the process of learning and being better which should be prioritised, not whether or not a specific metric has been achieved. When we focus on what’s important to us, what we’re good at and how to serve others, the results follow.

To help you consider your goals for this and coming years, I’m sharing a few coaching questions which might help you, your team and your organisation create goals that are meaningful, motivating, achievable and have a lasting positive impact. I would love to hear how you find these, and what other questions you find useful when setting goals – hit reply and let me know!

* If you’re wondering what happened with the client, we talked through what would be helpful for her and she decided to focus on optimising her energy, her strengths and her values and consider where that may lead her. Her ‘goal’ become a journey of discovery. A few months later she’d landed her dream role in an organisation she felt passionately about.

¹ Helping people change