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Goal Setting Advantage - Legend or logic? Part 4 of 4

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Published: 29Jul2008
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In the first three parts of this series we have looked at goal setting, the process and the real research behind this to find out what makes a difference.

It seems that there is considerable support for the idea of SMART goals, yet there are still some issues with what the goal is. Is it an outcome or about performance?

Outcome goals - some issues

The problem facing many people with regard to 'Outcome' goals is that there is an element that is outside the power of the individual. An example of the potential issues with an 'outcome' goal comes from a rather sad testimony from one particular research participant:

"My goal was to have $3 million in the bank for my retirement by age 55. I achieved my goal with great satisfaction early at age 43. Unfortunately my bank was at the centre of a fraud and went under. 16 years later, I am still working and slowly rebuilding my goal. So, goals are important and we need to know what we want to achieve in life - just choose a goal only including yourself and don't leave all of it in one place."

Outcome goals are most often subject to others and to the environment. The greater the attainability of a goal through yourself only - I.e. Your own performance - the more you are in control of goal achievement.

Goals that have a high dependence on others and/or external circumstances are considerably more difficult to influence. As an extreme example, one survey participant has goal to win the lottery! Now there are certain things that you can do to increase the likelihood of this becoming reality, buying tickets is a useful component, but how many? Interestingly, another participant who had a 'money' goal did indeed achieve their goal - through winning the lottery! Though that wasn't the original plan and they rated themselves 'somewhat satisfied' in having completely achieved their goal. Whilst touching on monetary goals, another participant reminds us that being specific about your goal is important:

"My goal was to be a millionaire by 35... I achieved it the moment I stepped away from the foreign exchange counter at Jakarta airport!"

Following up with our survey participants revealed commonality in the way they went about setting goals and their subsequent actions to achieve their goals. We've already seen how those with the greatest success in terms of personal wealth had SMART goals. This isn't to say that success can only be measured by means of personal wealth at all - the original intention was simply to test the mythical Yale Study results. And, of course, someone could have set themselves a perfectly good SMART goal - but due to their own environment, had not accumulated as much personal wealth in terms of a standard currency - indeed, a person could have less in terms of monetary wealth yet be considerably better off in terms of the value they can obtain from less money.

Performance goals

An interesting aspect that began to show itself through the results was personal satisfaction in goal achievement.

People who set 'Ability' type goals, or 'Performance' goals reported to be 'very satisfied' with their achievements - whether completely achieved goals or not yet complete.

In part, this suggests the importance of personal values and suggests a question about the process by which they set goals. Through a random selection of fifty respondents we found that there is some commonality in the manner in which goals are set:

When we compare the groups of 'Very Satisfied' with their achievement and 'Satisfied' or 'Somewhat Satisfied' with their achievement. The first group were more likely to have SMART goals. The goal is described in sensory terms - what will be seen, heard and felt, and for a small number, smelt and tasted. Respondents were clear about what achieving the goal will do positively for them and the cost to themselves (and others) of achieving their goal. Their goal, they considered personally stretching yet 'knew' that they were capable of achieving it themselves.

More than 60% stated their goal in the present tense - 'I am' rather than 'I will be'. This provides a template for a useful goal-setting process that we've turned into an easy-to-remember acronym: SWING.

Goal setting process

1. A SMART and Sensory performance goal.

2. What will I positively Win and lose.

3. Am I In control of achieving this goal?

4. Stated as Now.

5. Guarantee - this is an added psychological process to ensure personal motivation towards achieving the goal.

Final thoughts

From our survey, those individuals who set performance goals using slight variations of this process represent a small, though statistically significant fraction of the sample that have a net higher annualised personal wealth accumulation (2.15 times) and are more satisfied than individuals who use only one or two aspects of this process. It is not the writing down of the goal that makes the difference, it seems to be the emphasis on performance or ability and the process of thinking through the goal.

And for those of you, like me, who just didn't get round to setting goals way back and worry that you might have missed out - well you can't go back and revise history, but you can create a new one now.

Bibliography

Hollenbeck, John R. and Howard Klein, J. (1987), 'Goal Commitment and the Goal-Setting Process: Problems, Prospects, and Proposals for Future Research', Journal of Applied Psychology, 72 (2), 212-20.

Loche, Edwin P. (ed.) (1986), Goal setting, Generalizating from Laboratory to Field Settings, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books) 101-17.

Locke, Edwin A. and Gary P. Latham (1990), A theory of goal setting and task performance, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).

Locke, Edwin A. and GaryP. Latham (2006), 'New directions in goal-setting theory', Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15 (5), 265-68.

Locke, Edwin A. and G.P. Latham (2002), 'Building a practically useful theory of goal-setting and task motivation', American Psychologist, 57 (9), 705-17.

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