Posts Tagged ‘team goals’

Teams and organisations exist to deliver a specific result.  If a team lacks clarity about what it is to deliver, then it may deliver something but chances are it will not be optimal performance.

 

So how can you create clear goals for your team?

 

Ask yourself what the problem or need is

 

Chances are the team has been established to address a specific need, for example, to recommend new markets, products or services or to respond to some sort of problem that the organisation is facing.  Sit down and make a list of those needs or problems.  At this stage, focus on volume rather than evaluation.

 

Define how you would like it to be

                                                                                                                                 

In my experience people do a great job at defining what the issues are but struggle more when it comes to defining how they would like it to be.  The big trap that people fall into is trying to get it to how they would like it to be word perfect.

 

Don’t worry at this stage if your description goes to a quarter or half a page as you can scale it back later.

 

Scale down your description

 

Once you have your detailed description of how you would like it to be, you can take this and scale it down into a series of short specific key goals.

 

Communicate goals and refine

 

Share the goals with the team and seek their contributions on how they could be made better, more specific and easier to measure.  Keep refining and adapting until you get to the point where the team is crystal clear about what is expected and can sign up to deliver from an informed place.

 

Bottom Line – Creating clarity about the goal or outcomes for the team is a vital part in team effectiveness.  So what steps do you need to take to set better goals?

When working with groups on team working, one of the questions I ask is

” What are the success ingredients of great teams?”

Almost without exception, one of the first things on the list is having a clear goal.

When you have a clear goal that you can articulate and is understood by everyone in the team, the team has focus.  They know what they are trying to achieve and the goal mobilises them towards achievement.

If you lead a team, how clear are your goals? 

If they are unclear or are not compelling enough, what could you do to address this?

Bottom Line – If you want a team to deliver, make sure the result is crystal clear.

When leading workshops, training or speaking about teams, I often get people to think about what the key characteristics are of the best teams.

Without exception, having a common goal is one of the first things that people tend to highlight. So why are goals seen as so powerful when it comes to team working?

Firstly a goal gives everyone a clear and specific outcome to aim for.  The team knows what is trying to deliver and has a clear direction of travel.

Secondly, delivering the goal, especially if it is going to make a big difference to a number of stakeholders becomes a huge desire for those in the team.  This desire drives the team on, even when things are tough.

Thirdly a common goal breaks down the barriers of which function or specialism people work in and shifts the attention to delivering the result.

We all know that teams have huge potential to deliver great results.  How has the existence or lack of a goal impacted on the results your team delivers?