Leadership & Management: Goals and Goal Setting

Setting goals is one of the few things in the leadership and management realm that everybody seems to think is a good idea.  Articles and books on the subject abound.  Researchers love the findings because they are so plentiful and consistent with about 1000 current references in print.  Practitioners could care less about the multitude of studies since their own experience tells them the same thing: goal setting works to enhance performance.

Two basic propositions indicate the importance of goals to work behavior.  The first of these is that increases in the difficulty of goals lead to increases in performance, assuming the goals are accepted.  Naturally, attempting to set goals that are so difficult as to be beyond the ability of employees to attain them violates the acceptance criteria, and is likely to lead to resentment.  But realistically set, challenging goals do result in enhanced performance.

Secondly, we know goals that are difficult and specific result in higher performance than do goals which are general or, even worse, no assigned goals.  Not assigning goals is likely to produce extremely lackluster performance, if any performance at all, and such behavior by leaders or managers is rarely seen.  However, it is not uncommon to find general goals being set such as, "try to do your best."  Such non-specific goals do not result in significant changes in performance.

Goal setting is a favorite tool of consultants because it is fairly easy to do and, based upon the plethora of research, is a sure bet to get results.  Likewise, tools abound for setting appropriate goals.  One popular technique is to follow the acronym SMART in setting goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely.  If rules such as these are incorporated with an appropriate process for acceptance building,  we know that performance can be improved, whether you see yourself as a leader or a manager.

So how do leaders and managers differ with respect to goals?  Research has shown us that managers tend to be reactive or passive toward goals while leaders take a much more proactive stance.  Let's look at the managerial preference first.  Someone with a preference for management accepts goals provided by the organization and begins a process of creating tracking systems, measurements, and controls to achieve those goals.  Using all these tools, a manager will make sure the managerial accounting and feedback systems will allow her or him to know when a deviation occurs.  Then using various control mechanisms, they will correct the deviation as soon as possible, obtaining the most efficient course to attain the goal they have been assigned.  This process would be similar to one used by a pilot who wants to fly from Colorado Springs to Santa Fe.  By paying attention to various navigation instruments, the pilot can detect deviations from the planned course due to unexpected cross winds, and can make immediate corrections to achieve the most efficient flight path.  Efficient goal achievement is the objective.

Not surprisingly, certain personality characteristics are nicely suited to this type of managerial work.  People who prefer to pay attention to details and achieve results by incremental steps succeed in managerial jobs with little extra effort.  Their personal preferences and the requirements of managerial goal attainment make a good match.

Leaders, on the other hand, are more inclined to take an active role in setting the goals in the first place.  Rather than accepting the goals provided by the organization, leaders are out creating the objectives, or changing the objectives that were previously set.  They continually see new opportunities for new products, new services and new processes.  

Leaders have personality preferences which differentiate them from both the general population and even from successful mid-level managers.  Senior leaders are more inclined to vary from the profile described above for managerial success.  Rather than being methodical and incremental, they are more apt to make big leaps forward in their thinking.  They are seldom happy in dotting the final "i" to achieve a goal; they would rather be starting something new.  It has been said, "Once a leader has set a goal, they then go out and set another goal."

These manager-leader differences set up a dynamic tension in most organizations with interesting consequences.  For example, most people would agree that leadership has the right, and indeed the responsibility, for setting organizational goals, assuming they follow the acceptance criteria noted earlier.  After all, that's what we pay leaders to do, isn't it?  But what about the frequency with which leaders do this?  Certainly, yearly would be a reasonable expectation, and with the turbulent environment in which many organizations find themselves today, even quarterly might make some sense.  What about weekly?  While that might be the inclination of the pure leader, it creates an impossible situation for the managers who must reactively implement those goals.  In our pilot metaphor, managers have barely got the flight plan plugged in for Santa Fe and this overactive leader has changed the destination to El Paso!

Of course, the secret of a successful organization is to have both of these functions operating in about the right proportions.  An organization without good management is doomed to be overtaken by competitors operating more efficiently, but an organization efficiently headed toward the wrong goal is equally ill-fated.  That's why we need both leadership and management.

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