Team Goal Setting

The team charter clarifies the sense of direction for the team, providing a long- term , broad understanding for the team and the organization. But teams also need to know what to focus on this week, this day, and this hour . Without clear goals, you are basically building teams for teams' sake, making it likely that the organization will not receive a good return on the investment of having a team concept and the team members themselves will likely feel frustrated. They need clear goals to know what they are collectively responsible for accomplishing. Leaders need to make sure that goals are established. As long as they are reasonable, they can be announced to the team by management, or the team can play a role in establishing them. The goals must be perceived as challenging yet attainable. Teams also need to be able to look at a score-card and assess whether they are "winning."

EXERCISE 14

Composing an "Elevator Speech" About Your Team

Directions: Visualize being in an elevator with a key manager or union official from your organization. After pleasantries are exchanged, this person congratulates you for being willing to lead the efforts to establish a team approach to work. Pretend he asks you , " What is the purpose of the teams you are associated with? What are they supposed to accomplish? What is expected of the members, and what should they be able to expect from the organization? "

You have only 30 “60 seconds to reply before he reaches his floor and exits. What will you say? Feel free to use the following outlines to help you organize what you want to say and then write out your short speech in the space provided at the end.

Key points on purpose of the team:

Key points on what the team is supposed to accomplish:

Key points on what is expected of the members:

Key points on what members can expect from the organization:

Your completed "elevator speech":

 

Research by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham (1990) strongly supports the need for goals, which help provide the following:

• Focus

• A means to channel behaviors

• Motivation

• A chance to fulfill the need for achievement

• Challenge

• Clarification of priorities

Doesn't it seem like the need for clear goals is an easy case to make? Then why is it that managers, group leaders, and group members themselves often resist establishing clear goals? Why have you resisted setting goals? The most common answer is that once goals are set, someone might be held accountable for accomplishing them. Many people in organizations consciously or unconsciously leave goal statements vague. They may honestly feel that accountability is important, but they end up spending time justifying what happened and what didn't. They have become skilled at explaining things after the fact. Members may also fear that if goals are established and the team succeeds, it will only lead to ever-escalating expectations. However, if we don't know what we are trying to accomplish, how will we ever figure out what we are supposed to be doing? As Yogi Berra, former New York Yankees all-star catcher , once said, "We're lost, but we're making good time." Sometimes we seem to confuse effort with accomplishment. How can we ever expect teams to succeed and feel fully satisfied unless we clarify the goals they are to achieve?