Goals and Employees Success

It's common knowledge that helping employees set and reach goals is a critical part of every manager's job. Employees want to see how their work contributes to larger business objectives, and setting the right targets makes this connection explicit for them, and for you, as their manager. Goal-setting is particularly important as a mechanism for providing ongoing and year-end feedback. By establishing and monitoring targets, you can give your employees real-time input on their performance while motivating them to achieve more.

So, how involved should you be in helping employees establish and achieve their goals? The key is to be hands-on while giving your people the room they need to succeed on their own. Here are some principles to follow as you navigate how to best support your people in reaching their objectives.

Connect employee goals to larger company goals
For goals to be meaningful and effective in motivating employees, they must be tied to larger organizational ambitions. Employees who don't understand the roles they play in company success are more likely to become disengaged. Critical: no matter what level the employee is at, he should be able to articulate exactly how his efforts feed into the broader company strategy.

Make sure goals are attainable but challenging
Since employees are ultimately responsible for reaching their goals, they need to have a strong voice in setting them. Ask your employee to draft goals that directly contribute to the organization's mission. Once she's suggested initial goals, discuss whether her targets are both realistic and challenging enough. Be careful though: your team members are likely to resent you if you insist on goals that are too challenging to accomplish. At the same time, you don't want to aim too low, either. If you are overly cautious, you will miss opportunities and settle for mediocrity. Even worse, poorly set goals can be destructive to employees' morale and productivity, and to the organization's performance overall.

Create a plan for success
Once a goal is set, ask your employee to explain how he plans to meet it. Have him break goals down into tasks and set interim objectives, especially if it's a large or long-term project. Ask your employee: what are the appropriate milestones? What are possible risks and how do you plan to manage them? Because targets are rarely pursued in a vacuum it’s important that help your people understand who they are dependent on to achieve those goals. Then problem solve with them on how to best influence those people to get the job done.

Monitor progress
Staying on top of employee progress will help head off any troubles early on. Review both long-term and short-term goals on a weekly basis. Even your high-performing employees need ongoing feedback and coaching. Ask your employee what type of monitoring and feedback would be most helpful to her, especially if the task is particularly challenging or something she is doing for the first time.

When things go wrong
Very few of us reach our goals without some road bumps along the way. Build relationships with employees so that they feel comfortable coming to you if and when problems arise. If your employee encounters an unforeseen obstacle, the goal may need reworking. First, however, ask him to bring a potential solution to you so you can give him coaching and advice. If his efforts to solve the problem fail, you will need to get further involved.

What about personal goals?
Some managers neglect to think about what an employee is personally trying to accomplish in the context of work. For example, if your employee has expressed an interest in teaching but that is not part of his job responsibilities, you may be able to find ways to sculpt his job to include opportunities to train peers or less experienced colleagues.

The first step is for you to understand what these goals are. Ask employees if they have any personal goals they want to share with you. Don't pressure them; they should only share these aspirations if they feel comfortable. Just as with work goals, you need to be sure personal goals contribute to your team, unit, or to the company. It's got to be a shared commitment to experiment and mutual responsibility to check in on how it's going. It's got to be a win for both.

When goals aren't met
There will be times, even with the best support, when employees fail to meet their targets. Hold people accountable. Discuss with your employee what happened and what each of you think went wrong. If the problem was within his control, ask him to apply the possible solutions you've discussed, take another stab at reaching the goal, and check in with you more frequently. If it was something that was outside of his power or the goal was too ambitious, acknowledge the disappointment but don't dwell on it. Do the diagnosis, get the learning, and move forward.

It's possible that you may have contributed to the problem. Be willing to reflect on your role in the failure. Were you too hands off and failed to check in frequently enough? Did you not review his work in a timely way? Have an open discussion about what you can do next time. "If you don't hold yourself accountable, they're going to have trouble with you," says Hill.

Principles to Remember
Do:
Connect individuals' goals to broader organization objectives
Show employees that you are a partner in achieving their goals
Learn about and incorporate employees' personal interests into their professional goals

Don't:
Allow employees to set goals alone
Take a hands-off approach to high performers — they need input and feedback to meet their goals as well
Ignore failures — be sure people have the opportunity to learn when they don't achieve goals