SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 210,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.
How effective are you at aligning your team’s behaviors with goals you set?
- Very — Everyone knows the desired behaviors to hit our goals: 50%
- Kind of — I point out the most important behavior changes required: 42%
- Not very — I don’t often link behaviors to goals: 6%
- Not at all — I just set the goal, and they’ll figure it out: 2%
Behavior is Key. Goals are great but without specifying which behaviors need to change, your odds of hitting your goals are slim. Be sure to clearly spell out behavior changes required to hit goals. Tell your people what has to change and link it directly to achievement of the goal. If you leave it up to them, they may or may not change the desired behaviors. Why go through all the trouble of setting goals if you’re not going to invest the time in helping your team achieve them?
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and the host of the upcoming Executive Insight 16 — a leadership conference being held in New York this November