How to Choose Goals That Motivate and Inspire Your Team

Your task, being a team leader, is to keep everyone going and make the best out of every single workday. You work with various people, and there are so many differences and opposing opinions. Even though the people aren’t the same, you need to get them on the same page. It’s not an easy project, but there are ways for you to gather your team members around the same table.

You need to think regarding motivation and inspiration. Creating a positive work atmosphere will promote better workflow and lead to new ideas being born. One of the ways in which you can get your team going is by choosing specific goals for them. They are meant to motivate each team member and inspire them to be great at what they do. The question is: how do you choose these goals? Let’s take a look together.

It’s essential that each team member feels like an integral part of the company and consequently the team they belong to. This means they:

• Understand the company’s style and vision
• Respect the company’s policies and rules
• Advocate the company’s values and principles
• Understand the company’s long-term goals

Every goal you assign the team has to be in accordance with the company’s long-term plan and vision. This will help your team members feel like they are contributing to the entire company, which adds value to each task. According to Ethan Dunwill, a content manager and a writer at Hot Essay Service:

“Members of a team need to know they’re not working for the team, but for the company. Make them feel like they belong, and you’ll have the best workers”

To sum up, your goals need to:

• Relate to the company’s long-term goals
• Contribute to the development of the company’s ideas
• Make your team feel important and valuable

Once the team members feel like they are contributing to the company as a whole, they’ll be more motivated to work hard and inspired to give their best.

Make sure they know they represent the company in the eyes of the world. Make sure they feel important.

As a leader, your job is to present and assign tasks to your team members. However, it’s not enough to have a general idea and wing it from there. The goals need to be clearly defined. How else can you expect people to work on them? Scott Lewis for Forbes explains:

“The performance targets should not be ambiguous and include very specific language and a well-defined completion date”

Therefore, the goals you assign your team members need to be:

• Detailed
• Planned out
• Thorough
• Unambiguous
• Determined by a time frame

If team members know exactly what they need to achieve, they’ll be more excited to actually start doing it. Knowing what they strive to achieve will awaken their enthusiasm and make them a better employee.

Therefore, make sure to plan everything out, present the goal to the smallest detail and ensure everyone is on the same page.

A goal needs to be hard to achieve. Why? Because otherwise, it’s not a goal.

Chelsea Ann Dowdell, a CCO and an editor for Rewarded Essays, says

“Setting the bar high is one of the best recipes for success. People want to feel like they are doing the impossible.“

Of course, you won’t assign your team members with the impossible. But make sure their task is far from easy.

The task has to:

• Require effort and hard work
• Require research, planning, and brainstorming
• Include several phases
• Imply several minor failures
• Bring a sense of true accomplishment

If you want to inspire your team to do their best and enjoy their job, make sure the goal is worthy of their expertise and performance. This way, you let your team members know that you:

• Believe in them
• Trust them
• Want them to succeed
• Respect them

That will evoke motivation in the entire team. Plus, once they achieve the goal, they will be over the moon for all the hard work paying off. It’s a win-win situation.

A team is a team. Your job is to bring every single team member on board for each new goal you set.

How can you do this? You need to develop a strategy on how to make everyone contribute and work together to achieve the goal. You can:

• Assign Roles
  If everyone has a clearly defined role in the team, they are more likely to genuinely contribute the team.
• Allow personal development
  “Go out of your way to create opportunities for employees to develop themselves.” Suggests Casey Wright, a contributor for Huffington Post.
• Acknowledge skills
  Every team member has his or her areas of expertise. Acknowledge that and give them their role accordingly. This will help them shine even more.
• Inspire cross-sector collaboration
  Have the employees inspire one another and collaborate bringing the team-effort to a new level. Don’t build a wall between them. Break the boundaries and have people cross them.

If the goal you set includes every person on the team and needs them to be a part of it—you will have a highly motivated team. Let them know you can’t do it without them

Another way to inspire your team members to be the best version of themselves is to let them have a say in setting the goals. That means your team will work together even before you assigned the task. They will contribute to its creation.

What does that imply? Here are a couple of ideas:

• Organize monthly group meetings
• Have a brainstorming board somewhere in the shared area
• Allow everyone to speak their mind
• Listen to ideas

If the team feels like they have a say in choosing goals and setting new tasks, they will be motivated to:

• Come up with ideas
• Think about progress
• Integrate
• Collaborate

If your team members know they contributed to choosing the task, they will be enthusiastic and even ecstatic to make it happen and work hard for it. Your employees may have fantastic ideas and great goals to suggest. However, you have to make the final call. Make sure to think it through and consider the idea from all angles before approving it.

Another important thing you need to consider when setting your team’s goals is to work for the best possible outcome. You are aware that things don’t always go as planned, but in terms of motivation and inspiration, you need to strive for perfection.

How does that inspire your team? Here’s how:

• They look forward to success
• They make no excuses
• They know what they’re in for

On the other side, you need to be prepared for a different kind of outcome.

What if you don’t achieve perfection? News flash: you probably never will. The important lesson is that they gave it their best. Teach them to always give their maximum and there’s nothing to regret or feel sorry for later.

Neightan White, a Chief Marketing Officer and a writer for Supreme Dissertations says:

“Every team has a leader. Every leader needs to set up a good example, otherwise, it’s all in vain.”

Where does this leave you in terms of choosing a goal for your team? You need to make sure that you show consistency in every goal you choose and assign your team. That will inspire them to do the same, and motivate them to accept every assignment with the same amount of responsibility.

You should:

• Show on the clock alertness
• Work hard on every assignment
• Not allow any oversights
• Supervise responsibly

Only by dedicating yourself entirely to each goal you set will you have your team members do the same.

Now let us take a step back and see what have we learned. Here’s a recapitulation of all the main points:

• A goal needs to be in correspondence with the company’s long-term vision.
• A goal needs to be clearly defined.
• A goal needs to be hard to achieve.
• Every member of the team needs to take part in achieving the goal.
• Team members can take part in setting the goal.
• Work for the best possible outcome, learn from the result.
• Show consistency.

Hopefully, we’ve helped you understand the art of setting quality goals. Maybe this is how you’ll work on inspiring and motivating your team members from now on.

There’s nothing better than having a group of people who do their job with love, dedication, and responsibility. You can’t expect this kind of a team to be born out of nowhere. You don’t just make a pick of the people and expect them to work earnestly and tirelessly. On the contrary. You need to build that team.

The best way to inspire people to give it their best and become a true member of the team is to motivate and inspire them. Make sure to choose goals which bring out the best out of every one of your team members. Give them space to grow, develop, learn, contribute and be important. Give them their spot and they’ll respect it. Give them something to fight for.

FROM THE EDITOR
At Conscious, we feature powerful stories about global initiatives, innovation, community development, social impact and more. You can read more stories like this and connect with a growing community of global leaders when you join as a member.