×

Używamy ciasteczek, aby ulepszyć LingQ. Odwiedzając stronę wyrażasz zgodę na nasze polityka Cookie.

image

INSPIRING & MOTIVATING, 2.3 Video: SMART Goals

2.3 Video: SMART Goals

Have you ever been told to do your best? It's a goal. It's a form of goal setting. It turns out it's not a particularly effective goal in terms of driving people's performance. In short, most people, when asked to do their best, don't do so. There is one exception to this general rule that we will discuss later in our lessons. But I would like for us to talk about setting SMART goals. Now a SMART goal is a framework that has a significant body of research behind it. It's also wildly popular in organizations. Many of you may have heard of SMART goals. SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, agreed-upon, reasonable, and time bound. Now you can quickly see that by this framework, do your best, is not a particularly SMART goal. It's neither specific nor measurable. There's no clear timeline attached to it. So let's start with a hypothetical goal. Say I'm asking you to increase sales. Is this a SMART goal? And if it is not a SMART goal, how can we make it smarter? Well, we could start, for example, by making this goal more specific. Instead of asking you to increase sales in general, I can ask you to increase online sales for a certain group of accounts, say in the top three accounts. I can also make this goal more measurable. So for example, I can say increase sales by 10% compared to sales in the third quarter of last year. I also hope that we would have a discussion about increasing sales by that particular number. In addition to setting specific and measurable goals, these goals need to be agreed upon. So you and I need to have a discussion, and make sure that we are on the same page when it comes to these goals. Recall from our earlier discussions that it's absolutely essential for goals to be accepted. By the way, goals are most effective when you are able to secure people's public commitment to those goals. We also want to make sure that the goals we set for people are reasonable. Make sure that people have the necessary skills to reach a particular sales goal. If they don't, you might want to provide necessary mentorship, support and training to make sure that they view these goals as reasonable. I often get the question of how to think about what a reasonable goal is. What are the benchmarks? Well you can look at sales statistics for a given geography, for a given region. You can adjust these sales statistics by the tenure of a given employee. How experienced are they? You can look at their personal sales records over the last couple of years, for example. All those could be valuable inputs into understanding what is a reasonable goal. Also make sure that goals are time bound, there's a particular timeline attached to the accomplishment of a given goal. It's tempting for us to put really short fuses in our goals, to have really tight deadlines. But think about this in the context of setting really challenging, really aggressive stretch goals. Short timelines, yes they can stimulate more intense cooperative experiences, we tend to work harder for a unit of time, but they can also push people toward unethical behavior. They can increase dissatisfaction. Now, in some situations it may be unavoidable, where we have to set goals with very strict deadlines. If that's the case, and you can do so, help your team anticipate those deadlines. So for example, tell your people, look, we have an important project coming up at the end of the month. I'm really counting on you then. Perhaps even give them a day off in anticipation of this very tough deadline. Now once you set that deadline and the team starts working on it, be a role model. The most demotivating thing you can do for your team is you set this tough deadline, and the next thing your team sees is you strolling out of your office with a gold bag in hand. And make sure to reward your teammates accordingly after the accomplishment of those goals. I mentioned to you earlier that SMART goals framework is very popular among many, many organizations. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to think of an organization that's not using a SMART goal framework in some shape or form. Take Amazon, for example. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is personally overseeing over 400 goals, and they're all in the SMART goal framework. I have some homework for you. I would for like you to use the SMART goal framework applied toward developing your leadership skills. So set for yourself a SMART goal in terms of developing your leadership skills. Make sure that it's consistent with the SMART goal dimensions. And then I'm asking you to go to a discussion forum, SMART Goals Thread, and discuss this goal with your peers.


2.3 Video: SMART Goals

Have you ever been told to do your best? It's a goal. It's a form of goal setting. It turns out it's not a particularly effective goal in terms of driving people's performance. In short, most people, when asked to do their best, don't do so. There is one exception to this general rule that we will discuss later in our lessons. But I would like for us to talk about setting SMART goals. Now a SMART goal is a framework that has a significant body of research behind it. It's also wildly popular in organizations. Many of you may have heard of SMART goals. SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, agreed-upon, reasonable, and time bound. Now you can quickly see that by this framework, do your best, is not a particularly SMART goal. It's neither specific nor measurable. There's no clear timeline attached to it. So let's start with a hypothetical goal. Say I'm asking you to increase sales. Is this a SMART goal? And if it is not a SMART goal, how can we make it smarter? Well, we could start, for example, by making this goal more specific. Instead of asking you to increase sales in general, I can ask you to increase online sales for a certain group of accounts, say in the top three accounts. I can also make this goal more measurable. So for example, I can say increase sales by 10% compared to sales in the third quarter of last year. I also hope that we would have a discussion about increasing sales by that particular number. In addition to setting specific and measurable goals, these goals need to be agreed upon. So you and I need to have a discussion, and make sure that we are on the same page when it comes to these goals. Recall from our earlier discussions that it's absolutely essential for goals to be accepted. By the way, goals are most effective when you are able to secure people's public commitment to those goals. We also want to make sure that the goals we set for people are reasonable. Make sure that people have the necessary skills to reach a particular sales goal. If they don't, you might want to provide necessary mentorship, support and training to make sure that they view these goals as reasonable. I often get the question of how to think about what a reasonable goal is. What are the benchmarks? Well you can look at sales statistics for a given geography, for a given region. You can adjust these sales statistics by the tenure of a given employee. How experienced are they? You can look at their personal sales records over the last couple of years, for example. All those could be valuable inputs into understanding what is a reasonable goal. Also make sure that goals are time bound, there's a particular timeline attached to the accomplishment of a given goal. It's tempting for us to put really short fuses in our goals, to have really tight deadlines. But think about this in the context of setting really challenging, really aggressive stretch goals. Short timelines, yes they can stimulate more intense cooperative experiences, we tend to work harder for a unit of time, but they can also push people toward unethical behavior. They can increase dissatisfaction. Now, in some situations it may be unavoidable, where we have to set goals with very strict deadlines. If that's the case, and you can do so, help your team anticipate those deadlines. So for example, tell your people, look, we have an important project coming up at the end of the month. I'm really counting on you then. Perhaps even give them a day off in anticipation of this very tough deadline. Now once you set that deadline and the team starts working on it, be a role model. The most demotivating thing you can do for your team is you set this tough deadline, and the next thing your team sees is you strolling out of your office with a gold bag in hand. And make sure to reward your teammates accordingly after the accomplishment of those goals. I mentioned to you earlier that SMART goals framework is very popular among many, many organizations. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to think of an organization that's not using a SMART goal framework in some shape or form. Take Amazon, for example. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is personally overseeing over 400 goals, and they're all in the SMART goal framework. I have some homework for you. I would for like you to use the SMART goal framework applied toward developing your leadership skills. So set for yourself a SMART goal in terms of developing your leadership skills. Make sure that it's consistent with the SMART goal dimensions. And then I'm asking you to go to a discussion forum, SMART Goals Thread, and discuss this goal with your peers.