It’s a perfunctory ritual that takes place in offices large and small all across the globe. Whether it happens as part of your annual performance review or in the weekly sales meeting, the boss announces his or her goals for you. You know: the pie-in-the-sky, “sure thing, Jack” goals that confirm your suspicions that the two of you dwell in very different dimensions of reality.
If you leave the session feeling more disheartened than inspired, you’re not alone. Everybody’s natural response to being assigned a “goal” is to rush back to your real-world work as quickly as possible and forget the whole thing ever happened.
But what if, just for fun, you decided to do everything in your power to meet those goals? What if you decided you would even surpass them? The boss probably doesn’t expect you to meet them. He set them because he got a set of numbers from somewhere–from his boss, or from his accountant, or from the spreadsheet he finished just before the meeting. He set them because he was expected to set them, not because he thought they could, or would, be met. But what would it mean to him and to the company if you really did hit the mark? What would it mean for you?
That, really, is the first question you need to get answered. What’s in it for you if you do meet the goals? If an incentive has already been placed on the table, decide whether it’s something you really want. Is it worth the effort the goal would require? If not, decide what you would like as a reward instead and then negotiate for it. If you were offered a 3% raise, for example, and you feel it’s worth a 5% increase, ask for the 5%. If you were offered a trip to Hawaii for you and your spouse and you’d rather see Switzerland, ask for Switzerland. If no incentive was offered, propose a reward that you would appreciate. Would an increase in compensation do it for you? Would you like a promotion or a lateral move to a different department, or a set of different responsibilities? Decide what would make the game worth playing and ask for it.
Make sure you have a clear and detailed description of the goal. If it seems truly unrealistic, or if you think it needs tweaking in some way in order to produce a more relevant or more significant outcome, go ahead and offer your proposed adjustments to it.
Ask, too, for whatever additional support or resources you think you might need to reach the goal. Will you need training? Coaching? An addition to your team? Any additional materials or equipment? Can you be assured of having the ear of your boss if you run into obstacles along the way? Or the counsel of someone from senior management? Would it be helpful to make regular progress reports to someone?
By asking for what you need, both to achieve the goal, and as a reward for the effort it will require, you’re letting your company know that you’re ready to be proactive about moving forward and that you place sufficient value on your potential contributions to deserve the promise of a fair reward. Because so few people take such an assertive position, you will not only be noticed, but likely get all that you ask.
Once you have named your stakes and taken ownership of the goal, use every tool you can get your hands on to bring it to fruition. Privately up the stakes for yourself: do it below cost, get it done before the deadline, make it pay off bigger than expected. Take all you have ever learned about self-motivation and put it to the test. Give the goal your priority attention. Let it be the primary focus of your day.
Not only will your job take on new life–and new doors open to you on your career path–but you will reap the rewards inherent in pursuing a worthy goal: you’ll stretch and develop and discover more of yourself as you go. And in the end, that’s the ultimate reward, whether you succeed at the particular goal or not: the reward of expressing more of your personal strengths and being more fully all you are capable of being.
