11/30/2023
Set Goals to Achieve your Resolutions (and Motivate Workers as Well)
As we approach the start of a new year, people all over the world are setting their New Year’s resolutions. A lot of these resolutions unfortunately are doomed to failure. I suspect one of the reasons for this is people are setting poor goals for their resolutions. To help with this, today’s post is about motivation, and what we can apply from the science of goal setting to help solve our motivational problems. As it turns out, the science of work motivation is really no different from motivation in any context. So instead of writing about how to apply goals to solve your work motivation problems, I’ll write about how to apply goals to help you achieve your resolutions. It also happens to be the same process you should follow to set goals for your leadership development, effectively manage workers, and every other situation where motivation plays a role.
SMART goal overview
Anyone who spends time studying the scientific literature on motivation can tell you about the importance of setting goals in the motivation process. Indeed, if you look for information about how to make any change in your life, you will probably find some discussion of the importance of goals to the process, specifically SMART goals. SMART goals stand for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This means that to be the most effective, goals need to be specific, measured, something you feel you can do, relevant to something important to you or a bigger goal, and have a time limit. Goals should also be difficult, which I define as something that you need to work on every day to accomplish. Research has consistently shown that specific, difficult goals lead to high levels of performance.
There appears to be no shortage of webpages, articles, and books that have devoted space to defining SMART goals and their importance to a person’s motivation to achieve whatever the goal is. However, I’ve noticed that when SMART goals are discussed, there is time spent on what each part means and its importance, but no real discussion on how to apply the concept of a SMART goal. With that in mind, let’s explore the steps for how to set SMART goals.
To start, you need to think about your big goals. These are the things that you REALLY want to accomplish in the next year or longer. These need to be SMART goals, so things like “I want to get in shape” or “I want to learn a new language” are not specific enough. Since they aren’t specific, your planning and motivation will suffer. Ask yourself the question, what does this mean to me? In other words, what does it mean, to you, to get into shape or to learn a new language?
Let’s consider the often-used resolution, “I want to get in shape.” Does that mean you want to become a bodybuilder? Run a 5K? Lose 15 pounds? All of these are possible meanings behind that phrase, but how you try to achieve one is not how you would try to achieve the others. Therefore, before you can plan, you need clarity on what you want to achieve. To help guide this, think about what it would be like if you achieved the goal. What would it look like? What would it feel like? Your values and interests should also help guide you in answering this question. Once you have your specific goal in mind, make it measurable, attainable, and give yourself the deadline of when you want to achieve it. Once you have done all that, write your goal down and why you are doing it. It will come in handy later.
Once you have settled on your big goal, you should break that big goal into smaller goals. These smaller goals should also be SMART goals. For example, let’s say my big goal is to lose 20 pounds by May 1. That would give me 4 months to do it. From there, I can see that I would need to lose 5 pounds a month, or 1.25 pounds a week. I now have my weekly goals that will help me achieve my long-term goal. Those weekly goals will also help me develop a plan and give me something to track my progress toward the overall goal.
Doing this serves several purposes. First, by having the smaller goals, I can verify that whatever plan I have is working based on whether or not I’m attaining the smaller goals. With a measurable goal, I will be able to see if my progress is on track or whether I need to adjust my plan. Second, achieving a goal leads to a variety of positive emotions that have the net effect of making you feel good about yourself and your progress. These positive feelings will help reinforce your efforts, which will help maintain motivation towards your big goal.
That is the basic process of how to set your original big goal and then break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks. However, there are a few more things that you need to keep in mind when choosing your goals. These have to do with your knowledge of the activity, recognizing the limits of your efforts, and the reality of motivation.
While it is true that specific, difficult goals help to motivate us, you need to consider your knowledge/ability when setting your goals. If you are setting a goal for something that you can do well, then you can focus on performance/outcome goals. These are goals where you focus on the fruits of your labor. If you don’t know the activity well, if you focus on a SMART performance goal, you will fare worse than if you didn’t have a specific goal. In these cases, you need to set a learning goal for yourself. A learning goal is where you focus on becoming proficient at whatever the task is. Learning goals should also be SMART goals.
The second thing to keep in mind is that not all goals have a simple, linear progression. In addition, sometimes achieving a goal is not entirely up to you. In these situations, it is helpful to focus on the process as much, if not more, than the outcomes. Therefore, if your big goal is something like getting a new job, then focusing on processes, like making sure to spend time every week looking for jobs, attending networking events, etc., will be the way to go because these are the things that you can control.
The final thing that you will need to keep in mind is that motivation is not consistent. Sometimes we are highly motivated and sometimes we are not motivated at all. For those times that you feel your motivation slipping, don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s normal. To help you through the slumps, it is helpful to remind yourself as to why you are doing this and how far you have come. If you wrote down the reason for the activity and what it would be like if you achieved your goal in the first step, then all you need to do is to read what you have written to remind yourself. If you didn’t write it down, repeat the exercise now.
Doing the above will help you achieve your goals. This advice should help in most of the situations that you encounter. As mentioned at the beginning, the process of using goals to motivate is the same regardless of whether you using them for your New Year’s resolution, planning out your professional development, or managing a team. However, there are additional concerns that you will need to attend to when using goals in teams. First, you need to communicate the goals, and the reasons why those particular goals were chosen, to your team to help them with goal commitment. Alternatively, you may want to work with your team to set the goals or have your team set their own goals. The research indicates all three are equally effective, as long as they lead to specific, difficult goals being set. You will also need to monitor the self-efficacy, or task-specific confidence, of your team members, and help develop it if it is low.
Good luck with your resolutions and professional development in the coming year. As always, please reach out if you feel you need any help with your personal or professional development!
