Desk Lite

Have you ever had a manager tell you need to set your own career goals or else?

Else being some mysterious omen.

I have.

And honestly, while the idea might be rooted in good intentions, the way it appears in the workplace is like getting root canal.

Goals are supposed to be motivating. They are meant to make people feel engaged, purposeful, and driven. In theory, they are the secret ingredient to better work and happier staff.

But here is the thing: personal goals only work when they actually come from the individual person. Not when your manager is breathing down your neck telling you to come up with goals because it is important if you want to keep working here.

When self-driven goals work

Let me tell you about a time my own goal worked. When I was saving for a house deposit, every decision I made tied back to that goal.

• Lady Gaga or ACDC tickets? I’ll save the money instead.
• A six-week European holiday? That money is going straight in the savings account.
• Groceries? Well yes. I did need to eat.

I did not need anyone to tell me what to do or how much to save. I had a clear goal, and I was motivated to stick to it because it was mine. If I wanted help or information, I sought it out. But it was never driven by anyone other than me. No manager required.

That is the magic of personal goals: they are personal.

The problem with “make your own goals” at work

At one workplace, we were forced to set nine personal goals every single year. NINE! I couldn’t even come up with one. And then over the course of the next twelve months we were meant to work towards achieving those goals.

I didn’t have much stake in the company at the time. I just wanted to show up, do the job I was paid to do and then go home. But that was not enough. I had to have an all-inspiring dream of being the best at the company. It was not inspiring, it was exhausting. And it turned the whole process into a tick-the-box exercise that bred resentment instead of motivation.

Because forced goals raise questions that no one seems to know how answer:

• What if I do not have any goals?
• What if I just want to do my job well and go home?
• Who gets to determine if my goals are appropriate or not?
• Do I get rewarded if I hit them? Do I get punished if I don’t?
• Who is responsible for tracking them, me or my manager?
• What if I complete my goal earlier than expected? What if I need more time?
• What if my goal is outside of my immediate control? I can’t transfer into another team if there is no position available.
• What if my goals compete with my teammate’s? We can’t all be the Star of the Month.
• And what is actually happening to all the goal data collected? I’ve never seen a broadcasted company statement of “89% of our staff were able to achieve their goals this year. This is up 6% from last year.” As far as I am aware it just sits forgotten in a file somewhere.

Business goals not personal goals

On the flip side, business goals actually make sense.

Business goals make sense because they tie directly to the reason the business exists in the first place.

They give everyone a shared direction, a collective purpose, and something meaningful to rally around. Business goals unite people instead of dividing them. Each person is able to do their part to contribute without needing to isolate or compete with anyone.

I think of goals such as mergers and acquisitions. A goal to reduce carbon footprint. A goal to become the number 1 business in the industry or to have $10 million in profits or save 1000 peoples lives.

This is where momentum happens. This is what people talk about as they get their afternoon cup of tea. This is what is sent around in the company emails. This is what the end of year staff party is all about.

No body cares if Darren learnt how to do a V Lookup on excel. Some people don’t even know who Darren is.

Sorry Darren. I think you’re fab really!

Final thoughts

Personal goals can be powerful, but only when they are chosen, not forced. So people can still have their own goals but how they manage that is up to them. It does not need to be a KPI with dire consequences or threat of dire consequences.

So maybe the real question is not how many goals employees should set, but why companies feel the need to mandate them in the first place.