The Ultimate Guide to Achieving Your Team’s Goals

Whether you’re a CEO, director, or manager, the key to being a successful leader is guiding your team towards your organization’s short- and long-term goals. This not only helps your company achieve stronger business outcomes but also enables employees to thrive on an individual level.

Goal setting provides a sense of purpose and direction so employees remain motivated and focused on their current projects and daily tasks. In fact, employees who set goals are 14.2 times more likely to be inspired at work.

So how can you make sure your team is meeting its goals while also developing critical skills and building morale?

Emphasize Your Company’s Vision

When candidates are searching for new job opportunities, they will look at your organization’s core values and mission to see if it’s a good fit for them. After you onboard new hires, it’s important to keep these front and center to inspire your employees and unite them. This will also help them understand how their individual contributions impact your overall organization.

Provide Proper Technology

Without the right technology, your employees won’t be able to put their best work forward. Whether it's collaboration platforms, like Trello, or file sharing tools, like Dropbox, make sure you provide them with the resources they need to succeed as a team. If you adopt new technology, set aside time to provide them with proper training on how to use it.

Be Available for Questions

Employees who have a responsive team leader feel more supported and ultimately perform better. Make yourself available for questions or feedback and respond to employees in a timely manner. You should not only encourage them to ask questions during one-on-ones but also in team meetings. There’s a good chance that if one employee has a question or needs clarification, another one may too.

Share Progress Updates

Checking in with employees to get updates on their work will help your team stay on the same page and work towards goals together. Giving the rest of your team this insight can also help keep employees motivated and engaged. Consider sharing key metrics with your team on a weekly basis or asking employees to share their own updates during team meetings.

Build Peer Accountability

The highest-performing teams keep each other accountable rather than just relying on their manager to do so. Building peer accountability also improves your team’s relationship with you as their leader, allowing you to embrace more of a “coach” role.

To help develop accountability, consider hosting a training session to teach your employees how you can all hold each other to your commitments as team members. You can help them develop the skills they need to initiate these crucial conversations and receive constructive criticism from one another.

Recognize Your Employees

Showing your employees appreciation for their hard work is crucial to their engagement and productivity. Doing so motivates them to keep working hard towards their individual goals, team goals, and your company’s goals. Whether it’s a hand-written thank you note or acknowledgement during a team meeting, make sure you're giving praise where it’s due and encouraging your employees to do the same for each other.

Effective goal setting is a critical leadership capability in today’s hybrid and remote-first workplaces. But how else can managers develop employees as leaders and which leadership skills should be prioritized? To learn more, check out our blog post.