Goal setting can affect your success

Posted By SPW on January 11th, 2012 

From Website: The Y Athlete!

Happy New Year to you all and wishing many great things for this upcoming year (fingers and eyes crossed).

My last post on goal-setting (seen here) focused more-so on the benefits and advantageous effects of applying goals in order to succeed. And if you haven’t read it, I suggest you do so since it’s jam-packed with useful information. This go-round, however, we will touch on the inadvertent effects caused by inappropriate goal-setting. As you may already know, too much a good thing isn’t always good for you. In this case, setting goals, although essential (in my opinion) in achieving success, can be applied improperly. An example, in an article by Ordonez, Schweitzer, Galinsky, and Bazerman (2009) which visits this topic, is energy-trading company Enron, who’s goals seemingly centered around obtaining revenue (sales) as opposed to profits (money retained after all costs have been paid) which ultimately led to their demise.

As it relates to sports and performance, setting unsuitable goals are, in essence, setting oneself up for disappointment and/or failure. To take an example from my last post, I mentioned ‘egocentric goals’ as being detrimental to teams or any opportunity when working with a group of people. In this instance, goals can increase the level of competition between team members because the focus more often shifts from team success to individual goals and performance, therefore, neglecting the overarching goal which relies on the collective effort of the group. Another cause for concern manifests in the fear of failing to achieve a goal, be it the subgoal or end goal. Because of this, goals tend to be less challenging and complex which is one of the aspects of good goal-setting.

As a summary, listed below are some of the issues one may encounter as a result of ineffective goal-setting (Ordonez et al.):

1. The ability to increase unhealthy competition
2. A narrower goal focus (ie. Enron – revenue vs profits)
3. Setting too many goals (issue: quality vs quantity; quantity always wins)
4. Time as a factor which affects quality
5. A decrease in intrinsic motivation

The ‘S.M.A.R.T. laws’, which I outlined last time, are effective standards in which you want to assess your goals.  A few more tips that I encourage include:

1. Setting priorities for your goals
   1. With too many goals, we can find ourselves walking the line between quality and quantity. You want to focus your attention to the goal which requires most of it first.
   2. Being really realistic
      1. People generally have an idea of what’s challenging for them. More likely than not, these challenging goals fall short of what’s realistic. My advice is to go over your goals with someone. Someone, of course, who knows your ability and other factors which may affect the outcome (ie. coach, parent, the sales person at Modell’s, etc.)
      2. Write your goals down, people!
         1. Just because it’s personal to you doesn’t mean you’ll remember it. Especially if it’s challenging or time-stamped a written order of what needs to be done helps keep everything into perspective and avoids that veering of the path we spoke of last time.
         2. Lastly, be positive in how you write your goals
            1. To maintain (or increase) that level of intrinsic motivation, you don’t want to forget that this whole process is to become more efficient or (insert preferred adjective here). So say things like, “I think I can. I think I can.” (obviously a bit more specific, if you can) as opposed to “Never make dumb mistakes.” Just makes you sad and nobody likes to be sad.

Once again, I hope this helps you or someone you know. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.  Should I end off ‘Go team!’ again or are we all sick of that?

Cassandre Maurice
M.A. Student | Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Hofstra University | Hempstead, N.Y.

References
Ordóñez, L. D., Schweitzer, M. E., Galinsky, A. D., & Bazerman, M. H. (2009). Goals gone wild: The systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting. Academy Of Management Perspectives, 23(1), 6-16.