Staying motivated while working toward your goals can be daunting. There are days when we just want to quit, and ‘Goal Setting Theory’ can be your savior during those times. Studies have shown that people with specific and clear goals are more likely to be motivated than those with vague or undefined goals.
The Goal setting theory will help you hack your mind and stay consistent throughout your goal-accomplishment journey. Today’s write-up will introduce you to the principles and application of goal setting theory of motivation to help you achieve your career, fitness, or educational goals.
What is the Goal Setting Theory of Motivation?
Edwin Locke and Gary Latham proposed the Goal Setting Theory in 1990 to motivate individuals to set clear, specific, and challenging goals for optimal performance.
They performed research that concluded people with mindful and challenging goals are more likely to outperform those with easy goals and a ‘do their best’ approach. Moreover, this theory is considered the substructure of the famous goal-setting framework known as SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time).
5 Core Principles of Goal Setting Theory
Locke and Latham defined effective goals through the following principles of goal theory:
Clarity
Goals direct and guide individuals to carve out their path to success; that’s why it’s imperative to have a clear goal orientation. Unclear goals can lead to misunderstandings, procrastination, and missing deadlines. To avoid these, use the SMART goals approach and explicit instructional strategies.
Challenge
The goal’s difficulty and performance are directly proportional to each other. The more difficult and realistic the goals are, the better the performance of employees is. During their research, Locke and Latham observed that adequately challenging goals keep employees engaged and improve their performance and motivation, whereas those with boring and easy tasks are less productive.
Commitment
The Locke and Latham goal-setting theory is based on the assumption that the employees are committed to the goal. Employees must stay committed to the goals to achieve better results.
Furthermore, stick to the below-mentioned points while setting your goals:
- Don’t start to follow someone else’s goals; set them for yourself.
- Employees’ individual goals should be oriented toward the organizational goals.
- Keep track of your progress and celebrate your every achievement.
Following these instructions will make you committed to your goals, along with eliminating any distractions from work.
Feedback
According to the goal-setting theory of motivation, feedback is important in goal-achieving. These aren’t random suggestions provided by the superiors; instead, they work as guides to keep the employees on track.
Feedback helps in the following ways:
- Motivating the employee.
- Improving their performance.
- Strengthening workplace relations.
- Acts as a tracker of employee performance.
- Increases the engagement of employees.
Without the feedback report, an individual can’t reflect on and analyze their performance.
Task Complexity
A highly complex goal can ruin the experience and motivation for performing tasks. Therefore, dividing the tasks into short-term and long-term is preferred, and feedback should be provided at each level. Make sure that the tasks are adequately complex and align with the employee’s capabilities.
Enhance Productivity at the Workplace With the Goal Setting Theory of Motivation
Goal theory has immense potential to achieve an organization’s objectives. To utilize it, an enterprise has to go through the following stages:
Identify the Purpose of Goal
In the framework of the clarity principle, it is important to identify the purpose of the goal first. As mentioned above, objective orientation is the key to avoiding confusion and misunderstanding. Before setting goals, an individual should know the objective of their goal.
For instance, if an organization has decided to change its services and increase its profit margin, it needs to start focusing on the quality of the services to convince customers about their pricing.
Discuss With Employees
Once the organization has decided on the purpose of the goal, it’s time to discuss it with the employees. Schedule a meeting with all the employees and discuss the reason and need for the changes.
Allow the employees to present their views, suggestions, and potential risks. Furthermore, clarify their roles and duties and keep them in the loop for upcoming changes and updates.
Make a Plan Using the SMART Approach
After having a word with employees regarding the new objectives, it’s finally time to create an effective plan using the SMART approach. SMART is an acronym that stands for –
- Specific – It commands building precise goals that are easy to navigate.
- Measurable – Measurable means that the goals and progress are quantifiable for easy reflection.
- Achievable – It denotes that goals should be achievable, not void.
- Relevant – Asks for goals to align with the long-term objectives of the institution.
- Time-bounded – Urges for setting deadlines to create a sense of urgency, which eventually helps in timely hitting the goals.
Furthermore, you can also use the SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threats) method to create a SMART plan.
Make the Necessary Resources Accessible to the Employees
To timely accomplish your goals, it’s extremely important to make the necessary resources accessible to employees. Ensure they have what they need. Avail them all the required resources, tools, and time to precisely complete their tasks.
This also includes fixing the problems that hinder the task’s success. Start being vocal with employees and holding conversations with them. It will help you learn about the necessities required for task completion and inform you about the adjustments that you need to make to achieve the desired result.
Provide Regular Feedback
The last stage of Locke and Latham goal-setting theory is providing regular feedback to the employees. It is concerned with giving suggestions, reviewing tasks, analyzing performance, and sharing the achieved results with employees so that they can analyze their weak points and work on them.
Feedback is pervasive and promotes employees’ professional growth, skills, and confidence. However, make sure to share feedback as constructive criticism to keep employee spirits high.
Goal Setting Theory: Strengths VS Limitations
Implementing the goal setting theory of motivation is a prudent process, as even a tiny mistake can ruin the whole approach and the results.
Read the following strengths and limitations of the goal-setting theory before its implementation.
Strengths of Goal Setting Theory
- Keeps the tasks goal-oriented: Providing regular feedback on employees’ performance reduces the risk of deviation from the long-term objective.
- Universal usability: The goal-setting theory of motivation is both pervasive and universal, used at all levels and kinds of goal-setting processes.
- Higher level of engagement and satisfaction: Setting challenging goals facilitates effective engagement and job satisfaction in the workplace.
- Clarity and focus: Goals set through goal setting theory are mainly clear and focus-driven, which encourages employees to take initiative and become proactive in the workplace.
- Usability: Apart from the workplace, the goal-setting theory applies to several other domains and areas.
- Set viable goals: This theory guides employees to set feasible goals for effectively achieving them.
- Improves communication and collaboration: While working toward a common objective, the goal-setting theory helps employees develop communication and collaboration skills. In this process, they undergo various meetings and express their thoughts about achieving goals.
Limitations of Goal Setting Theory
- Lack of flexibility: Once the goals are set, making changes to the goals ain’t an easy task. This requires reframing the goal from the start.
- More focus on short-term goals: It often focuses on short-term goals, which may lead to employees neglecting the long-term goals.
- Impact on the emotional state: Drach-Zahavy and Erez, in their research, found that goal setting affects the emotional state of individuals who consider it a threat.
- Possibility of employees’ behavior changing: Setting excessively challenging tasks that exceed the capabilities of the employees results in changing their behavior. It is displayed through reduced effectiveness and efficiency.
- Leads to conflict: Sometimes, while chasing the objectives, organizations set goals that don’t align with the managerial goals. This may lead to organizational disputes.
- Risk of delays and incompletion of tasks: If the employees’ skill set doesn’t match the complexity of the goals, it will result in the incompletion of tasks and failure to meet the deadlines.
Application of Goal-Setting Theory in Various Areas of Life
Now, let’s see what the different domains and areas are where we can utilize the goal-setting theory of motivation.
- Professional development: In Layman’s terms, professional development is concerned with adding new skills and knowledge to advance in your career. Using the goal-setting theory for professional development will help an individual create measurable and viable goals.
- Personal development: What makes the Personal Development Plans (PDPs) ineffective is the lack of engagement. Therefore, considering the goal-setting theory for planning personal development is the best choice. The goal theory will craft an engaging and effective plan to excel in your personal development.
- Classroom: Implementing the goal setting theory in the classroom can help the students create SMART plans for their academic success, such as improving reading comprehension and creating learning designs for themselves. Moreover, teachers can utilize it to provide feedback on students’ performance, challenges, and engagement in the classroom.
Apart from the workplace, utilizing this theory in the above-mentioned domains will streamline the path to success.
Bottom Line
The goal setting theory is an ideal strategy for effectively achieving realistic and challenging objectives. Its elastic nature makes it functional in various areas, such as personal and professional development.
However, before implementing the Locke and Latham goal setting theory, organizations need to assess the hindrances and limitations, or it may lead to severe consequences.
FAQs
Ans: The goals should be challenging enough to keep the employees engaged and focused on performing the tasks. Too many tedious and repetitive tasks lead to a decrease in the motivation and productivity of the employees.
Ans: As all the principles of the goal setting theory are directed toward motivating employees, we can say that motivation is a major factor in the goal-setting theory.
Ans: The goal setting theory is considered complicated only because of its drawbacks. If not utilized correctly, its drawbacks can overpower its advantages. While employing it, make sure to go through the above-mentioned stages to perform it effectively.
Ans: In goal setting theory of motivation, it is assumed that employees are participative towards the achievement of goals and long-term objectives. Besides, it promotes the engagement of the employees by assigning adequately challenging tasks.
Ans: To avoid the disadvantages of goal setting theory, an organization should discuss its goals with its employees. It helps to align the objectives of the organization with the employees’ managerial objectives.
Ans: The AEIOU theory is a framework that can be used for setting goals. It stands for Achievable, Established, Important, Outline, and Under Control.
- Achievable: This means goals should be realistic and attainable.
- Established: Create your own goals. Don’t go for goals that are already established by competitors, as they might not fit well with your necessities.
- Important: From all the goals, only choose those that are necessary. Targeting multiple goals at once will create problems like confusion and duplication of work.
- Outline: Creating an outline for goals helps in clarifying and directing the research.
- Under control: The goals should be measurable to track progress.
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