Role of the Leader in Goal Setting
In this article, we will go over the role of the leader in setting an impactful goal for the project or team. As a leader, you may not be delivering the goal. Instead, you would be helping develop it, committing the team, moving resources, and, most importantly, building organizational momentum to keep the team moving forward.
I dug deeper into this topic with Jeffrey Lasselle, a leadership coach from Boosting Leadership. Here are 4 main points we covered that a leader can do to help their team be impactful.
1. Guide the team toward the right goal
The first thing a leader can do is to determine the direction of the goal. Many conversations with stakeholders and customers may be needed to determine what is impactful and meaningful for the business. Let's face it, if the goal isn't impactful for the company, you can be wasting your time chasing it. You also need to ensure the goals are SMART: they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
2. Set a stretch objective
Second, you need to set a stretch objective that isn't too easy to reach. To understand what isn't easy enough, you can refer to historical data to see where you can set the next bar or look at the benchmarks in the industry.
Often people set a goal according to what they think they can do. As a leader, you must ensure it isn't too mild. Your team can accomplish more than they believe they can accomplish and more than you think they can accomplish. So give them an objective to stretch them and achieve a business need.
3. Be consistent once the goal is set
You, as a leader, have to be consistent about the focus. If you are inconsistent and are chasing priority du jour, it will confuse your team. They wouldn't know how to prioritize. They wouldn't feel empowered to take action, and the organization may be moving in the wrong direction. At best, you could be stagnant and not deliver anything. So lack of consistency causes a lot of challenges with goal setting, particularly with leaders that weren't honed in on this.
If the business changes and your goals have to change, this must be very deliberately and clearly explained to the team, so they know how to prioritize. Teams feel empowered to make a decision and take action. They feel good about taking action. This builds organizational momentum, similar to the snowball effect, which is what the leader is trying to accomplish.
4. Be transparent about the risks
You need to be transparent about the risks if you don't reach the goal. Those risks need to be analyzed ahead of time and communicated to stakeholders and the team.
Watch full episode here:
To summarize, even though you may not be directly working on delivering the goal, your leadership, guidance, and support are critical for your team to define and reach that objective.
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