A Culture of Reaching Goals

by Jonathan Jones

If you want to achieve your goals as a leader, you need to create culture of achieving goals. You start with meeting every commitment that you make. Train and coach your employees on how to achieve their goals. Here are a few guidelines:

Communicate your vision and goals to your employees. Define goals they can align toward. Their goals must be relevant to their personal ambitions and relevant to the organization. Otherwise, it is just an exercise to “set goals” to appease you. There should be an emotional connection to the goal.

Coach your people to set very clear goals. They must be specific enough so that the employees know exactly what they need to do. Every goal should have a deadline, so everyone knows when it is complete. If the specific objective is met, but not at the set deadline, the goal is not met.

Allowing deadlines to be missed erodes a culture. Goals must be able to be measurable. Everyone from you, the goal achiever, and her peers must know the measurement for success. It helps team members hold each other accountable. Ensure employees see action steps needed to achieve their goals. It may include following a certain set of standardized processes that helps support success for each employee.

To expand the action step concept into the culture, ensure that every action step is linked. Align all employees goals, so that the combined achievement of their goals ensures that your strategic goals are reached. Set annual goals and link quarterly and monthly goals as larger steps so that they compound together to reach the annual goals. Be disciplined with these guidelines starting the first week and month. Coach employees to maintain performance and your culture will help you reach your goals consistently.

Jonathan Jones (Jonathan.jones@vistagechair.com or 314-608-0783) is a CEO peer group chair/coach for Vistage International.