By Kevin Eikenberry
Looking for a way to help your team achieve goals?
As a frontline supervisor, you help to set goals. We help the team to set goals, we help individuals on our teams to set goals, and you even help departments to set goals. We expect these goals to be reached during regular work hours, in addition to their regular work.
There are three major reasons that people don’t achieve their goals:
- Procrastination
- Trumping the urgent over the important
- Lack of goal clarity
While each of these three items are important and even warrant a blog post of their own, they are not surprising. However, these aren’t the reasons that we have goal achievement wrong.
We have it wrong because we think that we can reach our goals if we work on it “a little at a time.” While this seems to be reasonable, it actually makes as much sense as dusting one piece of furniture today, another tomorrow, and another the next day. Once the polish and rag are out, it is much more efficient to finish the job right then.
That is what we do with our goals.
We attempt to make a little progress over time. I’m not opposed to this in theory, and incremental progress can be valuable. However, if this is the ONLY way you try to reach your goals, especially in a group, you will never achieve ultimate success.
We must polish all of the furniture at once. If we want to make big progress, we must schedule time to take concentrated, massive action on a goal. So what needs to happen?
- Put everything else aside
- Focus on the task at hand
- Create momentum
And what will happen if you give yourself time? In these bursts of effort, you will create greater progress and spur your thinking. New ideas will pop up, new connections will be made. Greater excitement and passion will feed further developments and progress.
While we don’t want to discourage incremental progress, it should be done effectively, without the false feeling of progress that comes from too much multitasking, and for maximum results, should always be done in connection with periods of MASSIVE, focused action.
How do we take advantage of this idea as a leader?
As a new, front-line supervisor, we can model, teach, plan for and expect this behavior. We can schedule time designated for Goal achievement. You might even consider setting aside a full day for goal focused efforts only– leaving the core work alone– and expecting massive progress on goal oriented activities.
If you want great goal results, apply this approach with all of your team leadership activities, and watch your progress towards your biggest goals grow rapidly.
Let us know how your goals and how setting aside the time to work on them help you. Email us at info@kevineikenberry.com or leave a comment below.
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