Take Care With Your Goals

Is there a dark side to setting goals?

Let me be clear -- I firmly believe that setting ambitious and noble goals is critical to your success. We need targets. We need measurements. We need goals.

It's also true (centered leaders must be comfortable with an occasional paradox) that goals can create risks and temptations that must be avoided. If all we care about is the outcome, we may well break rules and hurt standards -- even other people, in pursuit of those outcomes.

Creative, noble goals consider the needs of others. Chasing a dream with a deadline is important and it is also important to stay within the boundaries of ethical, disciplined behavior. There can be no cheating to hit the metric. There can be no cooking the books to show better results. There must be character.

Achieving goals is our time to show our best use of clarity, courage, creativity and compassion. We dare not let any of them get out of balance.

A recent article from philly.com: Setting Goals Can Sometimes Hurt You points out that in addition to goals, we should also work on our areas of focus. What are the things that we do that bring about the outcomes we are looking for? Often, it is in working on our areas of focus that achieve our goals and in so doing we don't bend the rules, we don't blur the data, and we don't burn ourselves out.

Elevating each employees stretch goals every time they achieve a goal is risky, too. As leaders, let's take care to keep the pursuit of our goals noble and to support our team members in their focus areas as well as their results. In all that we do, it pays to keep the big picture in view: what kind of organization are we building, and what type of people do we want to work with in the long run?

What can you do today to balance your goals and your focus areas?

-- Douglas Brent Smith

Comments

Reason to Talk

That misunderstanding, that festering conflict, that difficult behavior...what are we to do? Talk it over. Bring it up. Conflict is reason to talk. Conversations cost less than making assumptions. Talk about it.

The Benefits of Supervisory Training

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For example

Get good at something that won't obsolete itself. For example: emotional intelligence creating great conversations encouraging people leadership What would you add to the list? Which ones are you developing? -- doug smith

Easy on the Multitasking

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Show Integrity

The goals we seek bring a lot of pull to them. We get wrapped in them. It's useful and it's powerful when we care about our goals so much that they propel us forward and keep us working even when we're tired, beyond the boundaries of our usual limitations. But they should not take us beyond the boundaries of our usual values. They should not trick us into bending the rules just because the rules are in the way. Truly high performance leaders of character who are focused, and centered, and noble maintain integrity. No cheating is ever worth the outcome. Integrity is so rare that many people don't even recognize. If you do, be thankful. We need leaders like you. To truly understand integrity you've got to keep it. Even when it's hard. Even the lines are blurred. -- doug smith

Your Reputation

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Busy

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Personally

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Does emotional baggage ever intrude on your problem solving process? Sometimes people bring up feelings that were deeply hidden yet growing. Sometimes unresolved conflict re-emerges creating sparks and noise in your attempts at collaboration. It's easy to get excited about a problem. It's especially tempting when people seem to be making the problem worse. But does getting angry help? Does attaching yourself so tightly to the outcome that you burst help your situation? Probably not. Any problem is big enough without adding emotional baggage. Why not drop the emotional baggage and focus on your goal? -- Douglas Brent Smith

High Performance Leadership

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