While goal setting is important for company, personal and professional growth, it’s common for leaders to face the challenge of motivating their staff. There are many reasons your employees may not feel motivated, including a lack of understanding, different focuses or the pressure of having their goals monitored. To get your team excited and motivated about personal and company-wide goals, you need to implement goal motivation strategies.
In this Article:
9 Popular Goal Motivation Strategies For Your Team
Consider these nine team activation and goal strategies for keeping your employees motivated.
1. Teach Employees the SMART Goals Template
Providing your team members with an effective goal-setting technique can help them better understand what they’re working toward and motivate them to do it. SMART goals motivate employees by challenging them and providing clear direction for the goal. Using this template, you and your team members will set goals that are:
- Specific: Goals should include real numbers and deadlines to aim for.
- Measurable: Ensure your goals can be tracked and measured to see progress.
- Attainable: Goals should be challenging yet possible.
- Realistic: Be honest about what you and your team are capable of doing.
- Time-bound: Set a specific deadline for the goal to be completed by.
2. Improve Visibility and Document Progress
When your team members set goals, it’s crucial to document progress and be transparent regarding the work being put toward the desired outcomes. Improving goal visibility and effectively documenting progress toward the specific goal helps keep your staff from losing sight of these aims. Progress tracking helps them clearly see the work they’re doing toward their goals without neglecting other areas of job performance.
Additionally, visibility and documentation allow leaders to make course corrections as needed. When leaders can see the work being done toward goals and the progress that results from that work, they’re able to more effectively guide employees in the direction of success.
3. Keep Goals to a Minimum
To help keep your employees motivated, be sure to keep the number of goals your employees are accountable for to a minimum. When too many goals get stacked on top of each other, staff members can easily get confused. When this happens, it’s common for employees to put focus on the wrong desired outcome. For example, without proper distinction and with multiple other goals stacking up, high-priority plans may get forgotten or overlooked.
Keeping goals to a minimum helps employees stay focused and keeps your company ambitions aligned with their individual ones. Try to set one overarching goal and break that down into objectives different teams or individuals can strive to complete.
4. Prevent Procrastination
Goals should feel imminent so staff members don’t feel like they can procrastinate reaching them. If the desired outcome is too easy to achieve or the time frame is too long, employees may put it off with the mindset that they have time to complete objectives.
To help prevent procrastination, set realistic goals within achievable time frames. Breaking big goals up into smaller parts or objectives can also give your staff aspects of the goal to gradually work toward.
5. Discourage Sub-Par Solutions
When goals are too difficult, employees may feel the need to take unnecessary risks to see an outcome. Or, they may settle for less than optimal results if their time frame is too short. These are sub-par goal solutions, and they’re typically thought of as unethical.
The first step to discouraging this behavior is to work with employees to set realistic and achievable goals. When employees are realistically able to achieve their goals, they’ll be less likely to cut corners. Provide your employees with the support, tools, time and information they need to achieve goals, as well.
6. Build in Pivot Points
When working toward a challenging goal, some team members may develop such a deep focus on the goal and their method of reaching it that they forget to consider other ways of achieving the outcome. Help employees take a step back to consider alternative ways of reaching their goals.
Giving team members these points to pivot their thinking will provide learning opportunities and help them see alternative approaches that may be more effective. When employees can take a step back to reevaluate, they’ll be more likely to positively impact company-wide innovation.
7. Encourage Collaboration
While you may use individual awards to encourage and motivate employees to work toward their individual goals, be careful when doing so. A strong focus on individual rewards can drive employees away from team goals. Team members may begin to focus more on their personal goals and the rewards they can earn for themselves rather than on helping the team reach its goals.
Encourage team members to collaborate and collectively work toward goals that will benefit the team. Block out times for meetings, have team leaders discuss efficient communication methods and provide communication tools, whether that’s software or webcams.
8. Master Goal-Oriented Meeting
When your employees are working toward goals, it’s important to be actively engaged in what they’re doing. Meet regularly with team members to review progress and set new objectives. Goal-oriented meetings show you’re invested in their goals and successes and that they’re being held accountable for their efforts. Meeting with your team members about the progress of their goals demonstrates that you have a stake in their goal progress.
9. Align Personal and Professional Goals
To help employees see the stakes in their goals, help them align their personal and professional lives. When the two are connected or have a relationship with each other, team members will be more likely to push themselves toward personal and professional wins.
When an individual has a stake in their own progress, they’ll put more work and effort into reaching those goals. They might aim to communicate more effectively or manage stress, which can help them perform better at your company’s objectives.
Get Your Team on the Way to Their Goals Today
Tracking goals is crucial to team goal activation and keeping your team members motivated toward their goals. Goal tracking helps you and your employees stay focused on what needs to be done to reach the desired outcomes. Tracking is also important because it can help employees identify and overcome obstacles, set realistic goals and stay positive and motivated.
AchieveIt allows you to track your goals, objectives, strategies and more essential functions of your business. Our plan management software helps you gain workplace accountability while gathering and reporting data to focus your efforts. To find new ways to help your team members stay motivated to achieve their goals, schedule a demo with us today.
