Achieving Goals_ Define and Surpass Your High Performance Goals - Kathleen Schienle [14]
The Explorer. Good with people and moved by curiosity rather than by goals, explorers have broad horizons and big dreams—dreams so big that they seem impossible. Your job is to help them figure out what they want and how to get there. Write down the goals, plan, review them often, and help them prioritize and focus.
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
—T. S. Eliot,
British poet
(1888–1965)
The Diplomat. Skilled at building relationships, responsive, fulfilled by friendship and community, these strong team members are all about the people and the group. Your job is to help them focus on what their own needs and goals are. Encourage them to figure out what they want without allowing your expectations to influence their decisions.
The Scholar. The pursuit of expertise motivates scholars. Ability with details may mean they miss the larger picture, while their passion for being knowledgeable restricts their operations to their comfort zone. They may spend too much time planning and not enough doing. They need your help to develop long-term goals and plans for achieving them, and then to follow through. Urge them to take risks; show that failure won’t bring disgrace. Praise their work ethic and high standards.
ORGANIZATIONAL AND INDIVIDUAL GOALS
The goals of each employee in an organization should converge so you’re all moving in the same direction, instead of pulling against each other. The goals translate the corporate vision and strategy into individual objectives that are distinct, yet parallel.
The traditional model of a salesperson on commission illustrates how company goals can be relevant to individual employees. An experienced salesperson knows that trust is difficult to establish, so veteran sales staffers don’t push unwanted products or services on a customer. They know that they will earn more from a loyal, repeat customer. In contrast, a new sales rep isn’t going to care about long-term sales. This rep needs money and sales points now and is going to push the sale, even if it puts off a particular customer or customers permanently. The result is that this salesperson is always making a first sale—the hardest sale—and always struggling.
These two salespeople have the same goal and commission system, but there’s a relevance gap. For the experienced salesperson, satisfying the customer is most important, because she knows long-term success will follow as a result. For the new sales rep, all that’s relevant is getting his numbers up by closing sales, which drives completely different behavior and produces completely different results.
“No scientific study has ever found a long-term enhancement of the quality of work as a result of any reward system. Bribes and threats can get you a short-term effect, but that’s it.”
–Alfie Kohn,
author of Punished by Rewards
Just like the novice salesperson, many managers are driven by short-term results. Held accountable for the budget or sales performance for each quarter, there’s no room for lower-than-expected results. All resources have to be pointed at pushing performance. But then the company goes into a crisis mode, stress levels rise, and, ultimately, the company’s long-term progress suffers. A manager may understand the importance of the company’s long-term goals and desperately want to pursue them, but the urgency of the need for short-term results mandates a different priority. A downward spiral ensues and it becomes progressively more difficult for the company to pull out of it. Manager stress increases, and their ability to do their jobs suffers.
Responsibility and accountability must go hand in hand. Too often, employees are given one without the other, which increases their feelings of helplessness and stress. Individuals often are held accountable for delivering results they can’t control—outcomes that they don’t have the authority or the responsibility to produce. For example, fast-food workers may be told their promotions depend on their ability to go three months without any customer complaints,