Goals, by themselves, don’t automatically create motivation or commitment. It isn’t as simple as giving an employee an objective, encouraging them to do their best, and sending them on their way. Some goals naturally encourage employees to buy into them, while others feel more like compliance requirements than anything else.
Employees typically resist goals for reasons tied to basic psychological needs. If they feel like they have no input in the goals they’re meant to pursue or like a goal has no purpose, they’re not likely to feel particularly motivated by them. Unrealistic expectations and goals that don’t match broader priorities can cause this lack of motivation as well.
Behavioral science can help managers, HR, and leadership build goals that fulfill basic psychological needs and keep employees motivated to pursue them. Here's how.
Key Takeaways
Employees won’t always buy into the goals you set with them. Sometimes, that’s due to performance or commitment issues. But, in most cases, that resistance can be traced to genuine challenges you can actually work together to resolve. Challenges like:
Goal compliance means an employee works toward a goal because it’s required of them. Goal commitment means an employee is genuinely invested in a goal’s outcome. In many organizations, goal setting ends at compliance, with managers and leadership expecting employees to work toward goals just because they’re part of an employee’s responsibility.
But commitment beats compliance.
When employees truly commit to a goal, they’re more likely to complete it. That commitment typically means they helped craft that goal, which makes them more accountable for its outcome than a goal that was handed to them fully-formed. Making a goal a requirement for employees to comply with means employees will just do enough to meet that requirement. When they commit to a goal, they’re more accountable, more motivated to complete it, and more likely to problem-solve when they run into obstacles.
Logically explaining the link between an employee’s goals, their day-to-day work, and your organization’s priorities can only go so far. To set goals that employees will be motivated to pursue, they need to meet the psychological needs that lead to stronger self-determination.
In their 2000 paper “Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being,” researchers Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci listed three innate psychological needs that lead to better self-motivation and mental health:
These three psychological needs can be mapped to three essential elements of a motivating goal: autonomy, meaning, and achievability.
Competence is an essential part of self-motivation and mental health, and employees feel most competent if they’re pursuing a goal they actually have a chance of achieving. A goal should challenge an employee to reach slightly beyond their grasp without feeling impossible. Getting that balance right can be challenging, which is why employees should be involved in setting their own goals.
Managers need to consider an employee’s capacity, skills, resources, and competing priorities when setting goals.
Relatedness increases motivation, and there’s a simple way to fulfill that need in goal setting: give them meaning. You can do this by connecting each goal to:
When employees have input into how their goals are set, completed, and tracked, they’re more likely to be motivated to pursue them. That’s because having that input maps naturally to a person’s need for autonomy. Employees feel more comfortable committing to a goal they’ve helped craft rather than one that’s just been handed down to them.
Employees should be involved in conversations about timelines, milestones, and measures of success. This not only helps them feel more autonomous, but it can make them feel more accountable for outcomes.
In the 2002 paper “Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey,” Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham summarized 35 years of research on goal-setting to identify where goals and motivation intersect. From this research, we can pull three essential elements of an effective goal-setting strategy.
A goal that can be summed up as “do your best” won’t lead to a positive outcome. Locke and Latham’s research shows that goals need to be specific to push employees to perform. That means using goal-setting methodologies such as SMART or OKRs, which make them measurable and specific.
Effective goals need to be difficult. But you need to strike the right balance between difficult and achievable. Set a goal too far outside of someone’s reach and they won’t be motivated to work toward it. If it’s too easy, then there’s no need to put any effort toward it.
Continuous feedback allows managers to regularly share feedback as employees work toward their goals rather than in yearly or quarterly review sessions. This has multiple benefits. For one, it can reinforce the positive steps employees are taking toward their goals, encouraging them to keep moving. It can also help managers correct missteps before they lead to greater issues.
When employees buy into the goals you set for them, they’re more likely to commit to them rather than simply complying with what’s expected of them.
Employees shouldn’t just be signing off on the goals you set for them. They should have input in choosing what their goals are going to focus on and what important milestones should be. They should be consulted on the kind of support they’ll need and the skills they’ll have to build.
Not every aspect of a goal can be changed, and employees should know where goals are flexible and where they aren’t.
Goals need to be related to team and organizational priorities to fulfill a person’s basic need to feel connected to other people. Draw that relationship by explicitly naming specific team or organizational priorities an employee’s goals support. That goal alignment is essential.
Goal tracking allows managers and employees to stay aligned on progress toward goals, so there are no surprises during performance reviews or 1-on-1 meetings. Employees are more likely to buy into goals when their progress is tracked somewhere their manager will see it.
Nothing is more frustrating for an employee than finding out they don’t have the time, tools, skills, information, or authority they need to achieve a goal. Managers need to identify what employees will need before they start working on a goal—as best they can—then have a plan for providing extra support as needed.
Recognizing the progress an employee has made and the effort they’ve put toward a goal makes them motivated to strive toward it. That recognition can be done in private, in 1-on-1 conversations and similar meetings, or publicly through chat apps and team meetings.
Managers have a key role to play in shaping the way employees understand, accept, and pursue goals. While HR and leadership put forward the guidelines that help prioritize commitment to a goal over mere compliance, managers are the ones who can actually put them into practice. Manager enablement allows HR and leaders to align with managers and give them the support in coaching their teams.
Managers shouldn’t just be tracking the progress employees make toward goals. Regular check-ins should go beyond monitoring, creating opportunities to support and coach employees as they work toward goals. That includes identifying and removing blockers, providing learning opportunities where needed, and solving problems.
Since the strongest goals are tied to broader priorities, they need the flexibility to adapt as these priorities change. Managers are the in-between for their teams and the rest of the organization, so they’re best-placed to help employees adjust their goals over time. Regular check-ins allow managers to ensure goals still support organizational priorities and help restore alignment when needed.
When helping employees set better goals, watch out for the following mistakes.
Context switching is what happens when people have to switch between multiple priorities, making meaningful progress towards any of them more difficult. Working on three priorities simultaneously, for example, is enough to lose 40% of working time just switching between them.
Too often, goals are passed from leaders to managers, trickling down to employees nearly fully-formed. Employees should have a hand in defining their own goals to fulfill their need for autonomy.
Goals need to be clear and achievable in order to be motivating. Managers and employees need to align on expectations and ensure everyone understands what’s expected of them.
Disconnected goals aren’t as motivating as those that tie day-to-day work to larger priorities. Make drawing that link as important as crafting specific, challenging goals.
If progress toward goals is only discussed in yearly or quarterly performance reviews, it’s all too easy for managers and employees to drift out of alignment. Have regular conversations about goals to prevent this from happening.
It’s easy to keep working toward a goal that’s become outdated because a lot of effort has already been put into it. But employees and managers alike should treat goals as malleable, reacting to shifting organizational priorities.
Goals should help employees grow their skills and capacity. They shouldn’t just be used as checkboxes in a performance review.
15Five is dedicated performance management software that allows managers, leadership, HR, and employees to stay aligned in setting goals, tracking progress, and getting the necessary support to keep moving forward. Using a platform like 15Five for goal-setting leads to stronger employee buy-in, clearer priorities, and improved accountability. 15Five allows you to centralize:
With 15Five, you can set stronger goals, maintain alignment at every level of your organization, and support employees as they work toward their objectives.
Employee goal setting is a practice through which managers and employees work together to set performance goals for the year or quarter. These goals should be clear, specific, and just challenging enough to motivate employees to push themselves.
Employees might resist workplace goals for multiple reasons:
Managers can improve employee buy-in by:
Goals are motivating when they can fulfill three basic psychological needs:
Employee goals should be reviewed at least quarterly, though managers should also check in frequently through 1-on-1s.
Employees inherently want goals that challenge them. They just need the right support to achieve these goals, a say in setting them, and the feeling that their day-to-day work contributes to something greater. Managers can help employees build goals they'll buy into by involving them in the process, keeping goals clear, and ensuring day-to-day work matches shifting organizational priorities.
Want to see how a platform like 15Five can help you do this? Book a demo.