How to set SMART goals that motivate and inspire your team

Leadership Development, Organizational Leadership

If you’re like most professionals, you’ve probably experienced a time where you felt like your team leader or manager failed to set clear goals for your team. 

It leaves you feeling directionless, like you’re rowing a boat with great effort but don’t know if you’re actually making any progress or where you’re rowing to.

Eventually, people in such circumstances burn out or engage in “quiet quitting.”

If you’re a manager or leader, you obviously want to avoid such outcomes. You want to lead a team that thrives and makes clear progress on a daily and weekly basis.

One way to do that is by setting goals — SMART goals, specifically — that motivate your team and lead them to work hard, heading in the strategic direction that you’ve identified for your organization.

The importance of goal setting in the workplace and in one’s private life are well supported, as many people can personally attest.

Science backs it up as well. For instance, in 2015, Gail Matthews conducted a study and found that when people wrote down their goals, they had a 33% better chance of accomplishing them compared to those who only thought about the objectives without writing them down.

Her research found the positive impact of writing down goals, publicly committing to goals, and having accountability in the form of weekly progress reports.

A team using SMART goals can integrate all of the above, ensuring even greater effectiveness. It’s interesting to note that professional leadership coaching also utilizes all of these to help see progress in clients! If you’d like to experience this approach and its transformative effects, book your free coaching consultation.

What are SMART goals?

  • S: Specific

By specific, we mean that the goal should be clearly defined and tangible. It should answer the 5 Ws (who, what, when, where, why), leaving no doubt as to the desired outcome.

Good: attend three networking events focused on my professional field per month.

Bad: get more connected.

Notice how the first goal is specific, with an actionable step, timeline, and expected result, while the latter appears to lack any form of structure.

  • M: Measurable

The effectiveness of the goal can be measured. It should be clear how much or how many you plan on increasing/decreasing/reaching, etc.

Good: increase sales by 15% within the next two months.

Bad: increase sales as much as possible.

Notice how the first goal gives you a benchmark to strive for, while the second doesn’t. You’ll know when you actually obtain the goal, which makes it something you can push for and know when you’ve reached it.

  • A: Attainable

The goal should be realistic and attainable. It must be a goal that is within the team’s reach based on their skills, capabilities, and resources. Setting unrealistic goals is often counter-productive and leads to a decline in morale

Good: increase our social media engagement by 5% by the end of the quarter.

Bad: increase our social media engagement by 50% by the end of the quarter.

Notice how the second example is too ambitious and is not attainable within a short period of time. It’s great to have big goals, but pushing your team to achieve something that’s downright impossible will just leave them feeling beat down.

  • R: Relevant

The goal should be relevant to the company’s mission. This ensures that the team is working toward something that will actually benefit the organization. It should clearly move the ball forward.

Good: improve customer satisfaction ratings by 10% by increasing technical support response time to 12 hours or less.

Bad: invest in NFTs.

Notice how the first goal is clearly defined and relevant to the organization’s mission. The second example, however, is a nice idea but doesn’t necessarily directly correlate to the mission of the company.

  • T: Time-bound

The goal should have a set timeline for completion. You should be able to instantly tell when the goal will be completed. This ensures that the team is working on it with some urgency

Good: reach a total of 10,000 subscribers by the end of 2023.

Bad: reach 10,000 subscribers.

Notice how the first goal has a timeline for completion, which provides clarity for the team and a sense of urgency, while the second doesn’t have a timeline, making it easy to procrastinate. 10,000 subscribers in the next 10 years is a far different task than 10,000 subscribers in one year!

Leveraging goals to motivate your team

In order to leverage goals that actually motivate your team, make sure you’re establishing goals that are meaningful and align with the team’s values and interests. 

For example, if a team values innovation and creativity, you can set a goal to come up with 10 new ideas to improve the company’s product or service. This goal encourages the team to think outside the box and leverage their creativity while aligning with that key value.

You must also be sure to clearly communicate the purpose behind the goals and how they fit into the team’s and company’s larger mission.

Explaining the purpose behind goals helps to connect the team’s efforts to the company’s larger mission, which can help to inspire their work. 

For example, if your team is focusing on creating motion graphics for a promotional video, it’s easy for them to feel like they’re not really contributing to anything all that meaningful.

As a manager, your job would be to help them see how their motion graphics connect the product offering to customer needs, improving their their lives and contributing to the entire product launch effort.

It’s also very helpful to involve team members in the goal-setting process to ensure buy-in and commitment.

This encourages everyone to be invested in goals and makes them more likely to be committed to achieving them, while also allowing team members to provide insights and perspectives that may have otherwise been overlooked.

Finally, you should reward and recognize successes, big or small. These little wins can have an incredible motivating effect.

Achievement of a goal should be celebrated and communicated throughout the organization, which reinforces the importance of the goal and helps your team to feel seen.

If you’re looking for a coach who can help you explore how to more effectively utilize SMART goals within your team, book a free consultation and let us help you!

Tips for maintaining team motivation when pushing for big goals

  • Encourage regular progress check-ins and feedback – Checking in on progress and seeking feedback will allow team members to course correct and adjust their plans to reach their goals more quickly. You need regular progress check-ins to ensure that people aren’t putting in too much effort heading into a different direction than you desired for the project.
  • Offer support and resources to help team members succeed – Provide access to training, regular coaching, and feedback to keep people on track. Make sure that people feel free to express when they don’t know what they should be doing to move the ball forward on your SMART goal.
  • Establish and celebrate milestones and achievements along the way – If your goal is truly SMART, it should be able to be broken down into smaller steps. For instance, if your goal is to double your customer base in six months, you should have smaller objectives like increasing your customer base by x percent each month. Celebrate each of these milestones and recognize team members for their hard work.
  • Give team members autonomy and flexibility – Allowing team members some autonomy and flexibility in how they pursue a goal can help keep them engaged and motivated. When workers feel like they can make decisions, it keep them engaged in their work and ultimately leads to better results.

Conclusion

SMART goals are common to the point of becoming cliche in the business world. However, they’re common for a reason: they work!

If you aren’t already implementing SMART goals, start by tweaking a few of the goals you already have established to make them SMARTer. Begin small and see if these little tweaks make a big impact on your team’s performance.

The benefits of using the SMART goal framework for team motivation and success include increased clarity, team alignment and commitment, and improved motivation and focus. 

However, SMART goal implementation will require ongoing work from you as a manager or leader to keep them on track. Make sure to involve your team, check in with them regularly, provide support and resources, and celebrate milestones and successes.

May your 2023 be filled with many new SMART goals set and achieved!