Let Your People Determine Their Goals

Who sets the goals on your team?

It's absolutely necessary to set clear, meaningful goals for every team. Certainly, as a leader you have goals of your own. But who sets the goals for your people?

The best bosses I have worked for always let me set my own goals. They had to be goals that aligned with the goals of the team, of course. And, they had to be ambitious and in some way, noble. I got lots of guidance on writing those goals but the writing was up to me. The goals we eventually agreed on may have been revised a few times, but they were MY goals and so I was fully energized around achieving them.

Isn't that what leaders want? Fully energized team members who relentlessly act on their plans to achieve their goals create great teams.

Be careful about giving people goals, especially those that will not improve their situation.

It's much better to quietly collaborate and, in the end, let your team members clearly set their own goals.

What do you think?

-- Doug Smith

Front Range Leadership: Training Supervisors for Success

doug smith training: how to achieve your project goals

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"An enemy is a person whose story we have not heard." -- Gene Knudsen Hoffman Without contrary evidence it always seems like we're right. Even WITH contrary evidence we get stuck often defending our story, our view. The story may not be wrong, but it is surely incomplete. Listen. Ask questions. Understand. Learn. High performance leaders look for common ground. -- doug smith

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