NEW CPP Goal Setting

Introduction A goal is a desired result that you envision for your team and organizational success. Goal setting helps you break down the things you want to achieve into more manageable steps so that you can gauge your progress. This week you will apply the goal-setting strategy covered in Coach's Huddle. Scenario As you know, Hometown Cars has been struggling to meet profit margins in all three of its departments. As the general manager, you decide to set a new long-term goal for the sales team to increase car sales by 10% over the next year. Instructions Download the assignment template: Goal Setting Template [DOCX] Download Goal Setting Template [DOCX]. Use backwards planning to set one monthly, one weekly, and one daily goal for your sales team. For each goal, write 1–2 sentences on what the goal is and what the sales team will need to do to achieve it. For example, if a grocery store's monthly goal is to sell 10 cases of bananas, their weekly goal might be to sell one case of bananas by running a buy-one-get-one-free banana sale. To do this, the grocery manager might promote the sale in the weekly flyer and set up a banana-sale display in the store. Coach's Huddle: Imagine if someone gave you a bucket and told you to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool by the end of the year. That goal would probably feel like something that was IMPOSSIBLE to achieve. woman lounging in a crystal blue pool But, if you knew how many buckets of water you would need to fill the pool, you could figure out how many trips you would have to make every day to accomplish your goal. Breaking down your larger goal into parts would keep you on track to achieving it and motivate you to finish the job. As you may remember from Course 1, a goal is a desired result that you envision for yourself or others, and goal setting helps you break down the things you want to achieve into more manageable steps so that you can gauge your progress. Coach believes that setting goals is the first step to achieving what you want in your life and career. That's because each time you reach one of your smaller goals, you're MOTIVATED to keep going…and going…until you eventually achieve your bigger goals! And this principle doesn't just work for individuals—you can apply it to your whole TEAM! This week, you'll learn how you can use goal setting as a motivational strategy to drive your TEAM to success. HOW TO SET GOALS THAT WILL MOTIVATE YOUR TEAM Imagine trying to plan a trip without knowing where you want to end up, finish your degree without knowing which classes you need to take or build the right team without knowing the type of project you're working on. In order to accomplish goals, we need to know where we're headed -- where we want to end up. Once we figure that out, we can work backward to figure out how to get there. This is called backward planning. Backward planning means starting with a long-term goal (1-5 years in the future) and then working backward to determine the short-term goals (less than one year in the future) you must accomplish in order to achieve that long-term goal. In backward planning, starting with your long-term goal provides the team with a clear direction and ensures that everyone is moving toward that direction together. Two men working together on a plan In this week's Strayer Talk, you learned how JGR's Motocross team uses backward planning to succeed by setting a long-term goal of winning championships and then breaking that goal down into short-term goals for their team. Backward planning is essential for any leader who wants to motivate their team to success. That's because backward planning takes long-term goals that might seem impossible or out of reach for your team and breaks them down in simple-to-understand, realistic ways. The short-term goals they accomplish act as motivators because they are easier to achieve, so each time your team accomplishes a short-term goal, it will boost their confidence and propel them to continue working hard to reach that final, long-term goal. To start backward planning for your team, follow these two steps: PRO TIP Coach finds short-term goals so motivating that he often focuses on the shortest timespans he can when setting goals. For instance, what do I need to do TODAY or THIS WEEK to achieve my long-term goal? Clearly define your long-term goal, make sure it's measurable, and set a deadline. The clearer the goal and the more measurable it is, the more likely your team is to achieve it. Example: A goal to be a top-performing sales team isn't clear or measurable and doesn't have a deadline. But a goal to increase sales by 10% in one year is clear and measurable, with a deadline. Clearly identify the short-term goals your team must fulfill to get to that long-term goal and set a time frame for each one. Example: In order to increase sales by 10% within a year, every team member must sign ten new clients. To do this, your team members set short-term goals to: Increase daily cold calls to gain 25 prospective clients by the end of three months. Sign five of these new clients by the end of 6 months. Ask all current clients for client referrals and pitch these referrals a sales plan by the end of eight months. Sign 5 of the new client referrals by the end of 12 months to bring each team member's total number of new clients to ten! Following these steps will help you use backward planning to set achievable goals for your team. And by doing so, you'll help keep them MOTIVATED day after day. MAKE SURE YOUR TEAM GOALS WORK FOR YOUR TEAM MEMBERS Every team is made up of individual team members, and when you implement backward planning, it's important to take each person into account. As a manager, you must consider each individual's goals to make sure they are in alignment with the team's goals. Let's go back to our example of giving your sales team the long-term goal of increasing sales by 10% at the end of one year. As the manager, you've already set short-term goals for your team to help them reach this long-term goal. But one of your sales team members, Doug, already has the individual goal to pursue some larger international clients and get them under contract in the next six months. Doug is concerned he won't be able to meet all of the team's short-term goals while flying back and forth to pursue these clients. You also realize that without Doug's contributions, your team might fail to meet their long-term goal. As the manager, it's your responsibility to make sure your employees' individual goals align with your team's goals. In other words, they support and don't conflict with one another. In the case of Doug, you might decide to reassign his international clients to an employee on another team. This will free up Doug to contribute equally to your team's goals. There's also another component to aligning team goals with individual goals. You must also ensure that every individual team member knows what portion of each team goal they are responsible for. For instance, if your team's long-term goal is to color a rainbow, it's your job to ensure that the team knows who is responsible for coloring each line — the red, yellow, indigo, and so on. Otherwise, you'd never finish your picture. colored pencils of all colors lined up in circle with the tips facing each other. Aligning individual and team goals does two things: it ensures everyone is working toward the SAME goal, AND it gives your players personal accountability over the roles they will play in completing that goal successfully. These two things motivate teams because all of the team members are achieving their success TOGETHER and have a PERSONAL stake in that success. As each team member contributes and succeeds, it pushes the other team members forward, inspiring continued success for all. Here are some tips you can follow to make sure your players' individual goals align with your team goals: Include your entire team in the development of long-term and short-term goals. This will allow your team to collaborate with one another. When your employees give input on goals and how the team will achieve them, they will be more likely to work hard to meet them. Make sure goals are communicated clearly. This will ensure everyone has a clear path forward and will also make it easier to identify and resolve conflicts between individual and team goals. Track team goals visually. For example, use whiteboards or online tracking apps that everyone has access to. This way, everyone consistently keeps the long-term goals in mind while being able to continually monitor their progress. Apply your goals to your team FIRST, then to each individual. If you know what the goal is for the entire team, you can then better plan how each individual can contribute to that goal. Clearly identify and communicate each person's role to the entire team. REMEMBER… Using backward planning to set long-term and short-term TEAM goals that align with your team members' INDIVIDUAL goals will MOTIVATE your team to stay on the winning track! Next week, you'll learn how you can use competition to boost your team's performance even more!