Goal setting matters. But gone are the days of managers deciding on unachievable milestones for their teams. These days, there’s a better way. By actively including employees in the goal-setting process from the very start, managers can create a sense of alignment while also ensuring everyone on the team knows what’s expected of them, according to a 2023 Gallup survey of US employees.
But getting every team member on the same page and then driving toward the same objectives can be easier said than done. Here are five best practices for setting effective team goals, plus how performance management tools can help make this process as simple and intuitive as possible.
How to Set Team Goals: 5 Best Practices
When setting team goals, the key is to make them clear. Then, as teams start working toward these goals, managers should model the kind of collaborative behavior they expect from their employees, celebrate milestones, regularly review each goal’s relevance, and learn from any failures.
1. Get SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound).
From the beginning, all goals and initiatives should be SMART, said Jennifer Durbin Tuffy, founder of executive coaching practice Scoutenger. The SMART framework provides a critical breakdown of how business goals can be set.
“I see a lot of teams that say, ‘We need to increase our revenue another $500,000 this coming year,’” said Tuffy. “Well, that’s lovely, but unless there’s a plan behind it that tells you how you’re going to achieve that goal, it’s nothing but a wish written on paper.”
Rather than relying on wishes, the acronym SMART spells out an action plan for goal setting. Here’s how it works:
Specific
Ensure each goal is clearly defined, detailing why it’s important and who will be working toward the goal.
“A goal is no different than any other project you run within an organization,” Tuffy said. “It has to have an owner [and] it has to have a purpose. People have to understand what the purpose is and why they are working on this.”
Measurable
A measurable goal relies on specific metrics — otherwise, employees won’t know whether they’ve reached it. So, for example, don’t just say “Increase sales,” say “Increase sales by 20% over the next quarter.”
“Make sure the goal is very specific and action-oriented, not just a fuzzy thing that different people can interpret in different ways,” advised Abigail Ireland, peak performance strategist and founder of leadership and training consultancy Understanding Performance. Provide “as much clarity as possible around what it looks like, what the objective is, [and] why [you] are doing it. Getting all of that right from the start is going to be very important.”
Achievable
Is the goal attainable, and does each contributor have the resources they need to get it done?
“The dirty little secret is a lot of goals don’t get accomplished,” Tuffy cautioned. So rather than setting lofty goals that your team may struggle to achieve, consider whether what you’re asking of them is truly actionable and achievable.
Relevant
How does a particular target mesh with the wider company goals, values, and business strategies? Jessica Donahue, founder of HR consulting firm Adjunct Leadership Consulting, recommended that executive teams should meet at the end of each year to set annual goals for the company.
From there, she advised that leaders share those goals with managers, so they can set team goals and individual objectives with their direct reports. In this way, every goal is clearly connected to an organization’s overarching plans.
“The idea being that [employees] can very clearly see that this is how their individual goal will help their team’s success and, therefore, help the broader organization, so that they have that line of sight to their job driving success for the business,” Donahue explained.
To ensure team members can also see the bigger picture, Ireland recommended posting a visual map or diagram that ties goals to company, department, and team objectives while also linking individuals’ activities to that big picture. “People talk about [goals], but it’s all just words,” she said. “Making it as real as possible, as visual as possible, can help.”
Time-Bound
What’s the actual deadline for accomplishing the goal? If there are no precise timelines for when company objectives must be met, it’s easy for them to become a moving target.
“It has to be time-bound in some way,” said Ireland. “We want to make sure we know what success looks like and we know when it’s achieved.”
Incorporate SMART goals into daily conversations.
Knowing how SMART goals work is one thing, but effectively incorporating these principles into day-to-day performance management is another. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is using a tool like Lattice Performance, which clearly defines goals, monitors progress, and helps build a culture of continuous improvement.
2. Prioritize and model ethical, collaborative behavior.
Goal setting sometimes has the potential to bring out the worst in people. Cross-functional teams may find themselves at odds, or team members might become overly competitive, triggering unethical conduct. While working in banking during the 2008 financial crisis, Ireland witnessed this kind of bad behavior in action.
“The goals were to get in as much money as you can or do as many deals as you can,” she recalled. “The behavioral challenges were around ethics and trust and [was what you were doing] in the customer’s best interest?”
In contrast to that kind of approach, leaders should make sure they model the kind of ethical, collaborative behavior they expect from their team. This might include treating everyone with respect and ensuring they have an equal voice at meetings. Leaders should also watch out for any signs of workplace bullying, and deal with this proactively. When managers and leaders fail to model good behavior, or don’t deal with workplace tensions, the fallout can impact an organization’s brand image and reputation for the long term.
“You could lose customers over time,” said Ireland. “You’ll lose people because of high turnover — people get fed up with going out to achieve the targets, but [seeing others] not really...valuing the team members.”
3. Celebrate milestones.
Big goals can take time to achieve. That’s why it’s important to celebrate the smaller milestones along the way. This doesn’t need big budgets or elaborate gestures. Some simple ideas and incentives for celebrating progress include:
- Giving shout-outs during team meetings
- Bringing in treats for break time
- Taking the entire team out for lunch
- Recognizing a team member’s accomplishments in your people management platform
Tuffy mentions that celebrating small wins not only helps reinvigorate your team but also gives people the important opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments.
“What people forget is how draining every day can be,” she added. “When you’re talking about large, lofty, year-long goals, it can be really demotivating to think, ‘I’m plugging away all year and I’m not going to win or be successful until the end of the year when this entire goal is achieved.’ Teams can lose a lot of motivation and energy for achieving the goal if they don’t have those small wins.”
4. Review and adjust.
Business plans can change very quickly, and those shifts often require adjustments to specific goals and objectives. Rather than thinking of goals as fixed, it’s better to think of them as flexible and subject to change.
Donahue recommended reviewing goals every quarter, and during this process, checking if specific goals are still relevant. Ask: “Do we need to become more aggressive with the target? Do we need to pull back? Do we need to move up the deadline or push it out to accomplish other things?” she said. “All those conversations are right to have.”
Tuffy, who also recommended setting goal review cycles, agreed. “The absolutely worst thing you can do is have people continue to work on a goal that’s no longer relevant to the business,” she said.
What this can look like in practice:
Regularly reviewing and adjusting goals can help build a high-performance culture, where individual employees can see where they’re headed, and what they need to do to get there. Campspot uses Lattice Grow to create individual development plans that help employees work toward their professional goals.
5. Learn from failure.
Setbacks are inevitable — it’s how executive teams and managers deal with them that matters. Ireland advised that teams should reflect together, and discuss what went wrong. Maybe targets were too high, or external factors meant they couldn’t be met.
“The best you can do is learn [from the setback], rather than just glaze over it and rush into the next year’s planning,” said Ireland. “Do a bit of scientific dissection of it and figure out, as a team, what can be done next time even better.”
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The Role of Performance Management Tools in Goal Setting
What’s the best way for managers to get buy-in from their teams? By making them feel like they’re part of the process and getting them involved in their own journey, said Ireland.
That’s backed up by the 2023 Gallup survey of US employees, showing that workers who are actively involved in the goal-setting process are twice as likely to say they have clear expectations.
Knowing the theory is one thing — but knowing how to put it into practice is another matter. Luckily, performance management tools are here to help. These tools can be integrated into the team goal-setting process from the very start, which helps leaders and their teams feel more connected and purposeful as they work to achieve their objectives, together.
Some of the main benefits of team performance management tools include:
- Providing clarity and alignment: By making new goals crystal clear and easy to refer to, leaders can ensure alignment across their teams, which can help enhance focus and coordination.
- Tracking progress: When employees can quantify their progress toward key results, it can help boost motivation. By allowing managers to keep an eye on employee progress, HR dashboards make it easier to adjust the time frame of specific goals, adapt workflows, and course correct when necessary.
- Encouraging accountability: By clearly documenting goals and progress, digital tools can help foster accountability. When employees can keep track of how their personal goals impact the team as a whole, it’s easier to see how everyone’s actions make a difference.
- Regular check-ins: Keeping goals front of mind is easier with a tool that can seamlessly integrate into each employee’s daily routine.
- Feedback and improvements: Whether team members are working toward objectives and key results (OKRs) or specific key performance indicators (KPIs), managers can use the performance data within HR tools to refine and improve goals and provide detailed feedback.
- Boosting engagement and motivation: Visual reminders of progress can help employees stay engaged and motivated, as it’s easier to see how they’re making an impact over time.
- Celebrating success: Acknowledgement and recognition are powerful motivators. Tools that allow managers to celebrate their team’s success help create a culture of continuous feedback.
- Data-backed insights: Advanced people analytics can give team leaders an at-a-glance view of their people’s engagement and performance, helping them proactively identify factors that might be impacting teamwork.
Achieving team goals relies on tracking progress.
Effective goals are at the heart of any successful team — so getting this process right is a crucial part of a manager’s remit. By following the best practices covered above, managers can supercharge the goal-setting process while also giving their team the tools and support they need to succeed.
The right goal-setting tech is also a game changer. Research from Forrester shows that using Lattice can yield a 195% return on investment — plus $3.5 million in benefits — over three years.
Ready to set better goals and unlock benefits like this at your organization? Learn more about Lattice or request a demo.
Use Lattice’s SMART Goals Template to align team goals with wider business targets, while also providing the detail your team needs to get the job done.
