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“You can’t get to the top of Everest by jumping up the mountain. You get to the mountaintop by making incremental steps. Step by step you get to the goal.”

—Robin Sharma,

author of The Greatness Guide

You also can develop goals that help employees manage their work life—for example, restrict the time spent answering e-mail to an hour every day, or complete expense reports each week. Personal development goals can also target bad habits—your staffer might resolve not to miss a deadline, answer the cell phone during staff meetings, or call in sick after a late night.

Some people find it helpful to set one goal with different priorities for different levels of achievement. For instance, assign top priority to meeting one new development prospect every day, medium priority to meeting three a week, and low priority to meeting a minimum of one new person every week. However it’s structured, the importance of any goal is that in energizing your employee it helps you both get where you want to go.

THE MANAGER’S ROLE IN SETTING GOALS

“Employees get fired up about their goals if they have a hand in shaping them.”

—Tom Gegax,

author of The Big Book of Small Business

Not that many years ago, individual goal-setting in the workplace went like this: the CEO called a meeting of the senior leadership team the day after the quarterly vision-mission retreat with top corporate management.

At the meeting, the CEO outlined the corporate goals and objectives for the next fiscal year, then instructed the senior staff to meet with their teams to disseminate the goals and “get all your people onboard!”

Implicit in this command, as senior staff knew from experience, was the need to increase company earnings and get the stock price up. The following day, managers met with their teams, passed out copies of the corporate goals, and warned that performance reviews would be based on how well employees’ work supported these goals. Pay increases and promotions would be hanging in the balance.

This top-down method of setting goals sprang from top managers’ vision, their need for control, and their sense of obligation to the board or stockholders. The results were often lackluster. To achieve business goals requires the efforts of all employees, and their commitment is indispensable. They are the ones who envision the products, develop the models, build the items, staff the call center, and develop the marketing campaigns. Without their motivation and dedication to accomplishing designated business goals, those goals are unattainable.

Today, managers know that goal-setting from the top down results in lukewarm commitment and weak participation in corporate goals, initiatives, and decisions.

Employees now have a greater sense of their own value and know they have more control over their careers. Just as they no longer expect to spend their lives at one company, they no longer accept paternalistic approaches to management. A purely top-down approach can cause problems with employees, such as poor morale, communication, and performance; high turnover; mere lip-service being paid to objectives; and high stress.

THE BOTTOM LINE

THE MANAGER’S ROLE IN GOAL-SETTING

As a manager, one of your most important responsibilities is making sure that goals are met successfully. Achieving business goals requires everyone’s effort and commitment. Taking an active role in goal-setting—being clear about the company’s mission and helping your employees create their goals—will bring you closer to meeting them. The manager’s participation in setting goals should include:

Ensuring that employees’ goals align with corporate goals

Steering employees toward high but achievable goals

Identifying and resolving any potential conflict with the goals of employees in other divisions

Determining how performance will be evaluated and goal achievement measured

Being an advocate for employees throughout the process

So while devising goals for your