Team Dynamics
Learn how to set clear, measurable team goals that align with purpose, boost collaboration, and improve results—with examples and templates included.
Workplace team goals might seem simple, even commonsensical: Keep clients happy. Sell more products. Cut costs without missing deadlines. If the goals have a number — like selling 10% more products than last year — even better.
But that’s still not good enough.
Setting team goals that generate positive results requires much more than telling employees what the company expects them to achieve. Successful team goals align team members with overall organizational objectives. They help each employee understand why their role is important and provide guidance on how to meet their goals.
Establishing team goals early and communicating them often pays long-term dividends. Harvard Business Review reported that high-performing teams spend nearly 20% more time than their low-performing counterparts translating high-level objectives into actionable goals. And when team goals are aligned with employee goals, individual performance increases by up to 22%.
In this blog post, we look at why setting team goals is critical to success, how to effectively establish them, and which pitfalls to avoid.
Why Team Goals Are Crucial
The overriding objective of a volleyball team is to score more points than the opponent. That’s easy enough to understand. But how should they attempt this: By concentrating on defense? Going heavy on offense? Trying to force faults? Who’s going to be responsible for attacking and blocking? And after the first set, who determines if the team needs to rethink its strategy and tactics?
Setting team goals that align with the overriding objective can answer these questions. Team goals clarify and align the roles of each team member so that there are neither skill gaps nor duplicated efforts (just imagine how easy it would be to score against a volleyball team that was all attackers and no defensive specialists!).
Optimization and clarity are just two benefits. Establishing the importance of each member’s contributions to the team’s goals gives members a greater sense of purpose and engagement.
Team goals also encourage collaboration among members, which further spurs employee productivity. 73% of employees feel they do better work as part of a team rather than on their own, according to Deloitte. Along with promoting accountability, establishing team goals enables measurability, and you can’t improve what you don’t measure.
6 Steps to Setting Effective Team Goals
Setting team goals is easy. Setting and communicating effective, achievable team goals is more complicated, though fortunately, not too much so. The process can be broken down into six steps.
Step 1: Anchor goals in your team’s purpose
Kids are more apt to clean their room when told “Because Grandma is coming over” than “Because I said so.” The desire to understand the reasons for a request or command persists into adulthood. One survey found that 51% of respondents felt they’d be more productive if they understood how their work benefited the company’s objectives. Anchoring team goals clarifies why the group is working toward the particular objectives, and members who see the importance of team goals in achieving the organization’s overall goals are more motivated and engaged.
Step 2: Identify clear, measurable outcomes
Ambiguity has no place in setting team goals. The entire team needs to understand what needs to be achieved, when it needs to be achieved by, and how success will be measured. Often, team goals are broken down into smaller milestone goals or deadlines, such as scrum sprints, so that any roadblocks can be detected sooner rather than later. This helps make what might seem to be an overwhelming project more achievable.
Step 3: Choose a goal-setting framework
Another way to make projects more achievable and manageable is by using a framework to establish team goals.
Objectives and key results (OKR) is one popular framework, having been developed by Andy Grove at Intel and used at Google, Uber, and other major corporations. OKRs for teams consist of one objective and three to five key results that will gauge the team’s success.
Each objective is usually an aspirational “stretch goal.” While that objective might be qualitative (“improve workforce engagement”), each key result needs to be quantifiable (“improve the existing learning program so that employee participation increases 25% by the end of the year). In keeping with the more ambitious, strategic nature of the objective, the key results might be adjusted over time.
Another popular framework is SMART goals for teams. SMART goals are better suited for achieving more immediate, finite objectives that are tactical rather than strategic. In this framework, every goal must be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Assignable
- Realistic
- Time-bound
By the way, the key results in an OKR framework can be established as SMART goals. Whether you opt for OKRs, SMART goals, or another framework, you need to ensure that the team goals ladder up to the organizational objectives and that every team member is kept up-to-date on individual and overall progress, as well as any changes.
Step 4: Collaborate to ensure buy-in
When people are asked for their input on a project, they’re much more likely to feel a sense of ownership and accountability than if they were just commanded to work on a project. It’s one reason open communication boosts employee trust, loyalty, and productivity. So, rather than dictate team goals and individual milestones, ask team members for suggestions and other feedback. Beyond ensuring buy-in, doing so might well result in tactics and solutions you might not have considered otherwise.
Step 5: Align team goals with individual responsibilities
Just as organizational objectives cascade down to team goals, team performance objectives should cascade down to individual responsibilities and goals, aligning personal and team goals. Reiterate at team meetings and one-on-one sessions the relevance of each team member’s role to the team goals, and set individual benchmarks accordingly. If none of an employee’s responsibilities serve a team goal, there’s no need for that employee to be a part of the team for that particular project or objective.
Step 6: Monitor, evaluate, and celebrate progress
To ensure goal alignment remains intact, managers need to regularly check in with team members and provide feedback. They also need well-thought-out team accountability metrics for effective goal tracking. Because the team goals are designed to be measurable, evaluating success is objective and transparent rather than subjective and opaque, which eliminates uncertainty on the part of team members. Particularly for team collaboration goals that span months, celebrating milestones along the way keeps momentum going and engagement high.
Team Goal Examples
Talking about the theoreticals of team goals is one thing; seeing examples of effective goals is another. Here are a few concrete team goal examples, as well as individual goals or key results that fall within them, set within an OKR or a SMART framework.
Marketing team goals with an OKR framework
Objective: Increase monthly lead generation by 20% by the end of the year.
Key result #1: Expand our email nurture series, adding personalization to emails to improve clickthrough rates by 45% by EOY.
Key result #2: Launch two content campaigns, one for SMBs and another for enterprises, that will bring in 1,000 leads each month by EOY.
Key result #3: Reactivate and reintroduce our referral program, focusing primarily on enterprise customers, to generate 100 qualified leads by EOY.
HR team goals, SMART framework
Goal: Improve internal onboarding satisfaction score by 15% within six months by sending out an engagement survey and using the findings to streamline training resources.
This goal is specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-bound.
Customer care team and individual goals
Goal: Improve problem resolution time by 15% within six months.
Senior employee goal: Work with IT to update the team’s knowledge base within three months, then instruct the rest of the team on how to use it.
Mid-level employee goal: Collaborate on improving triage processes, presenting findings and suggestions to supervisor within two months.
Phone specialist goal: Complete training on email and SMS channels by end of quarter.
How Team Goals Drive Team Development
Team goals go a long way toward clarifying objectives and deadlines. They also have a secondary benefit: turning a group of individual employees into a productive, aligned, and engaged team.
Just as people can rally together against a common enemy — such as poverty or environmental harm — colleagues will come together to complete a shared objective. Their increased willingness to collaborate and share suggestions and constructive criticism goes hand in hand with fostering trust and psychological safety, which 89% of people surveyed by McKinsey & Company deemed not just nice to have but essential. And when employees are motivated, collaborative, aligned, and communicative, the magic happens: They achieve greater productivity and profitability with lower employee turnover and fewer product defects.
Setting team goals can also help managers identify skill gaps and employees ready for additional training. Upskilling these team members so that they can help achieve the current team goal also sets them up for success with future objectives, expanding their skill set as well as that of the team overall.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Setting Team Goals
It takes only one or two snafus to make team goals difficult — if not impossible — to achieve. Here are a few common pitfalls to avoid:
- Setting goals that are vague or impossible to measure. Precision is key. Team goals should include the metrics that will define success. For instance, “Improve customer satisfaction” is too nebulous. How would you know if the team succeeded? “Increase our customer satisfaction score by 15% by the end of June” is clear regarding how success will be measured.
- Failure to involve the team when setting goals. Don’t dictate the objectives without feedback. Even if leadership has already charged your team with attaining certain metrics, seek input from team members regarding how to achieve them and track progress. Asking for their input is a surefire way to encourage cooperation and engagement.
- Lack of goal alignment. Team goals should support overall organizational objectives, just as team members’ individual goals should support the objectives of the team. Of course, if members work on multiple projects or teams, some or all of their individual goals used for their performance reviews might be applicable to their other responsibilities, but goals should not exist in a vacuum.
- Insufficient tracking or monitoring. Regular team check-ins help prevent projects from veering too far off-course. This is especially important for team goals that span extended time periods. In those instances, it’s a good idea to establish intermediate goals and milestones.
- Lack of feedback. If the team is falling short, don’t just let them know; ask what’s keeping them from success and work with them to come up with a solution. Don’t limit feedback to criticism. It’s just as important to commend team members for their progress.
- Failure to adapt goals. Maybe the corporate objectives have been reprioritized. Perhaps a member has left the team, or the budget has been reduced. When factors related to the team goals change, it’s time to revisit the goals and determine if they’re still relevant and doable or whether they should be modified.
Team Goals: From Setting to Achieving
Imagine being in a foreign city and instructed to get to the embassy without being told why, when, or how to get there, perhaps without even knowing the address or the language. That’s what it’s like trying to achieve organizational objectives without team goals.
Conversely, when team goals are clearly defined and easily measured, their purpose is apparent, and communication is open, teams are much more likely to achieve their objectives.
Just as important, team members are more likely to assume ownership, collaborate for what they see as the greater good, and be more engaged. That benefits the individual employees, the team, and the organization at large.
Start making a difference in your workplace by setting effective team goals. Even just one new, strategic goal can shift the trajectory of your team. Looking to gain even more tools to boost your team’s performance? Wonderlic Team Dynamics can help. Backed by leading industrial-organizational psychology and workplace-specific behavioral science, our platform makes it easy to align team and individual goals with organizational objectives. We use science- and psychology-based strategies and real-time, personalized feedback to improve individual and team communication and collaboration.
Learn more about Wonderlic Team Dynamics today or request a demo to see how you can give your team an edge.
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