Setting Goals for

Success
The Importance of Goals

 1. GOALS PROPEL YOU FORWARD

Having a goal written down with a set date for accomplishment gives
you something to plan and work for. A written goal is an external
representation of your inner desires; it’s a constant reminder of what
you need to accomplish.

 2. Goals Transform Insurmountable Mountains into Walkable Hills

You can take this lesson and apply it to your own life. Take the
mountains you need to climb and break them up into smaller hills that
you can walk. You’ll be more happier and more motivated to start
working towards that next milestone on your way to greatness.
 3. GOALS HELP US BELIEVE IN OURSELVES
Setting goals for yourself is a way to fuel your ambition. Goal setting
isn’t just about creating a plan for your life and holding yourself
accountable, its also about giving us the inspiration necessary to aim
for things we never thought possible.
 4. GOALS HOLD YOU ACCOUNTABLE FOR FAILURE
There’s something extremely humbling about looking back on a goal
you’ve set yourself 6 months, 1 month, or even 5 years ago and
realizing that you were supposed to accomplish a lot more than you
actually did. It’s a concrete sign that whatever you’re doing isn’t
working, and you need to make real changes if you want to get where
you want to be.
 5. GOALS TELL YOU WHAT YOU TRULY WANT
There are certainly times where we set goals that don’t really reflect
what we want. If you never set goals in the first place, how do you find
out what you truly want? By asking ourselves what we truly want and
constantly re-assessing our goals, we gain the benefit of introspection
and self-reflection. We can figure out what it is we truly want in life –
and then we can go out and do it.
 6. GOALS HELP US LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST
When you take the time to set goals, you ensure that your life is geared
towards getting the most of of every moment. There’s so much to do
and experience in life, but many of the things we want to achieve and
experience won’t be handed to us – we need to work for it.
Bandura’s Self Efficacy: Sharing is
Caring
 Albert Bandura, aged 91, is one of the most well renowned living
psychologists in the field of psychology, as well as one of the most
cited (Haggbloom et al., 2002).
 Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s ability to influence events that
affects one’s life and control over the way these events are
experienced (Bandura, 1994).
 According to Albert Bandura, self-efficacy is not a trait that some
have and others don’t (or somewhere in-between). Instead, he
proposes that anyone regardless of their past or current
environment, has the ability to exercise and strengthen their self-
efficacy.
4 ways to exercise and strengthen
self-efficacy
 1. MASTERY EXPERIENCES
Is experiencing the results of self-efficacy first hand. The key to mastery
is approaching life with dedicated efforts and experimenting with
realistic but challenging goals. Essential to mastery is also
acknowledging the satisfaction of goals, that are achieved.

Easy success with little effort can lead us to expect rapid results which
can in turn make us easily discouraged by failure (Bandura, 2008).

Experiencing failure is important so that we can build resilience to it.

This is done by treating every failure as a learning opportunity and a
chance to reach competence with a different approach.
 2. SOCIAL MODELING
This means choosing role-models that can demonstrate their self-
efficacy. Observing those who employ this is their lives and have
reached their goals despite adversity can provide great motivation.

Bandura notes that due to modern technology, it is not necessary to

draw role-models from one’s own social surrounding. The internet and
other digital resources can provide windows into the lives of many
inspiring models.
 3. SOCIAL PERSUASION
This is about ‘finding the right mentor’. While social modeling refers to
the observation of a role model, social persuasion is about having
others directly influence one’s self-efficacy by providing opportunities
for mastery experiences in a safe and purposeful manner.

Due to the specific nature of self-efficacy strengthening experiences

(avoiding easy successes and overwhelming failures) it’s essential to
have a mentor that is “knowledgeable and practice[s] what they
preach” (Bandura, 2008).
 4. STATES OF PHYSIOLOGY
Our emotions, moods and physical state can influence our
interpretation of self-efficacy. It is easy to judge oneself with bias based
on the state one in when a failure occurs.

To feel ‘tension, anxiety, and weariness’ is normal but society has

negative perspectives on such states, leading to a stronger sense of
failure in the wake of these feelings. Positive and negative emotions
act as magnets to further.
Dweck’s Mindset
(Growth vs. Fixed)
 Carol S. Dweck (October 17, 1946) is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton
Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Dweck is known for
her work on the mind set psychological trait.
 Dweck has primary research interests in motivation, personality, and
development.
 According to Dweck, individuals can be placed on a continuum
according to their implicit views of where abilities comes from. Either
fixed mindset or growth mindset.
Fixed Mindset
 Believes their success is based on innate ability ; these are said to
have “fixed” theory of intelligence.
 Fixed-mindset individuals dread failure because it is a negative
statement on their basic abilities.

Growth Mindset
 Believes their success is based on hardwork, learning, training and
doggedness are said to have “growth” or an “incremental” theory of
intelligence.
 Individuals don’t mind or fear failure as much because they realize their
performance can be improved and learning comes from failure.
 Dweck argues that the growth mindset will allow a person to live a
stressful and more successful life.
 Individuals may not necessarily be aware of their own mindset, but
their mindset can still be discerned based on their behaviour. It is
especially evident in their reaction to failure.
 These two mindsets play an important role in all aspects of a
person’s life
 Dweck’s definition of fixed and growth mindsets from a 2012
interview:
“In a fixed mindset, students believe their basic abilities, their
intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain
amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all
the time and never look dumb.”
Locke’s Goal-Setting Theory

 Dr. Edwin Locke and Dr. Gray Latham spent many years researching
the theory of goal setting, during which time they identified five
elements that need to be in place for us to achieve our goals.
 In 1990, Locke and Latham published their seminal work, “A Theory
of Goal Setting and Task Performance.” In this book, they repeated
the need to set specific and difficult goals, while outlining five other
characteristics for successful goal setting.
5 Principles of Goal Setting

 1. SETTING CLEAR GOALS

When your goals are clear, you know what you are trying to achieve.
You can also measure results accurately, and you know which
behaviours to reward.
HOW TO SET CLEAR GOALS
Use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Bound)
and consider putting your own goal into the form of a personal mission
statement for added clarity.
Write your goal down and be detailed as possible.
Think about how you will measure your success toward this goal.
Once you’ve set your goal, examine how it makes you feel.
 2. SETTING CHALLENGING GOALS
People are often motivated by challenging goals, however it is important
not to set a goal that is so challenging that it cannot be achieved.
HOW TO SET CHALLENGING GOALS
Develop self-discipline, so that you can have the persistence to work
through problems.
Identify ways that you can reward yourself when you make progress.
Before taking on a major goal, research it thoroughly. This will help you be
realistic.
Use the inverted U-model to find the best balance within pressure and
performance when you set goals.
Create some friendly competition between the team members.
Competitions can encourage people to work harder.
 3. SECURING TEAM COMMITMENT
To be effective, your team must understand and agree to the goals – and team
members are more likely to “buy into” a goal if they have been involved in setting
it.
This doesn’t mean that you have to negotiate every goal with your team members
and secure their approval. They are likely to commit to it as long as they believe
that the goal is achievable, it is consistent with the company’s ambitions, and the
person assigning is credible.
HOW TO SECURE COMMITMENT GOALS
Visual representations of your goal can help you stay committed, even when the
going the gets tough.
Imagine how your life will look like once you’ve achieved your goal.
Use Management by Objectives within a group.
Use Amabile and Kramer’s Progress Theory to enhance your team’s motivation and
commitment with small wins.
 4. GAINING FEEDBACK
In addition to selecting the right goals, you should also listen to feedback, so that
you can gauge how well you and your team are progressing.
Feedback gives you the opportunity to clarify people’s expectations and adjust the
difficulty of their goals.
Keep in mind that feedback does not have to come from other people. You can
check how well you are doing by simply measuring your own progress.
HOW TO GIVE FEEDBACK ON GOALS
Schedule your time once a week to analyse your progress. Look at what has and
hasn’t worked, and make adjustments along the way.
Learn how to give your team members feedback that’s objective, useful and
positive.
Use the Stop- Keep Doing – Start model for a quick feedback sessions.
 5. CONSIDERING TASK COMPLEXITY
Take special care to ensure that work doesn’t become to overwhelming when
goals or assignments are highly complex.
People who work on complicated and demanding roles can often push themselves
too hard, if they don’t take account of the complexity of the task.
HOW TO SET COMPLEX AND CHALLENGING GOALS
Give yourself plenty of time to accomplish complex goals.
If you start to feel stressed about meeting your goals, they might be to complex or
unrealistic. Reassess these areas and modify goals if necessary.
Break large, complex goals into smaller sub-goals.
Give team members a training needs assessment to identify any knowledge of skill
gaps.
If team members are overwhelmed, consider putting them into a mentoring
relationship with a more experienced colleague.