Team Effectiveness: Creating Clear 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?
About the Author Duncan Brodie
Since 2006 I’ve worked with in excess of 8,000 accountants and professionals in workshops, seminars and one to one helping them land their next jobs and become better leaders, presenters and business partners. Before that I spent 25 years in accountancy climbing the career ladder from Payments Clerk to FD. I’m a CIMA Fellow, Certified Professional Coach and Team Coach Facilitator.