Set Goals for Your Team to Achieve Great Results - Austin Stanfel

Team leaders must set goals for their subordinates to follow and supervise their progress in achieving them. Austin Stanfel teaches that traditionally, managers and leaders were taught to create SMART goals for their team. SMART is an acronym that means:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Time Sensitive

This is what most students learn when they study marketing in college. However, this is an overused approach for trying to achieve a long-term strategy. It does not do enough to bring out the true potential that each team member has inside of them.

MIT researchers did a study into this and they found that SMART goals downplay an individual’s ambition. There is no emphasis on discussing goals either. According to the MIT researchers, it is better for leaders to create goals and objectives that are F.A.S.T. This means:

Frequently discussed

Ambitious

Specific

Transparent

Let’s dive deeper into these areas of setting goals.

Frequently Discuss Your Goals

Sometimes unexpected things happen during a project that you don’t anticipate on. Maybe the market conditions change or someone new takes over as team leader of the project. The most common circumstance is a client requesting new changes to the project.

For all these reasons, you cannot wait until the end of the project to go over the goals you set in the beginning. You must frequently discuss the goals you set to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Set Ambitious Goals

Do not set safe goals because your team members cannot grow that way. They need to feel confident in experimenting and thinking outside the box. That is why you should set ambitious goals which give your team the opportunity and freedom to take risks and get outside of their comfort zone.

You may have some trouble motivating your employees to take risks, so try to persuade them with rewards and other incentives. You could also promise that their jobs won’t be affected if they simply give it their best effort.

Set Specific Goals

It is easier to take action toward your goals if you have set specific goals. If you have clear goals with specific milestones over the course of the project, it is easier for employees to know which tasks they need to accomplish immediately. This will increase their productivity and be more successful at accomplish the goals.

Set Transparent Goals

Each team member may have their own private goals they set for themselves. But this should not be the case when it comes to team goals. All the groups and teams in your organization should know what their responsibilities are. This is the only way that each team can develop goals which help other teams out in the organization. Then everyone can work toward accomplish the overall objective of the company.

So, in the words of Austin Stanfel;“remember to focus on FAST goals rather than SMART goals.”