Top 5 Reasons Why Setting Goals Is Important For Leaders
sxc.hu: bleu73
We all know that leaders set goals and then put all their resources in action to achieve them. Here we are not talking about how to set goals. We are talking about why leaders need to set goals and why goal setting is one of the most vital parts of your role as a leader.
1. Setting a goal will give you a sense of direction
What orders are leaders going to give to their teams if they don’t have a goal to work towards? It will be impossible to chart out the plan of action of a team without a goal in sight. This is the first answer to our question of why leaders need to set goals. The answer being, to get a sense of direction and be able to give orders to their teams.
2. Leaders need to set goals to ascertain targets and KPIs
KPIs or key performance indicators are numbers or levels that are used to judge an organization, companies or even an individual’s performance. Targets and KPIs are an important reason why leaders need to set goals because there is no better way to judge the performance of his/her team or followers. Even in personal life, the head of the family, who is an effective leader, will always look to keep the household expenditure under control. The leader may set a goal of $5,000 per month, including mortgage repayment. This, in its own right, is a goal that has been set by the leader.
3. Goals eliminate the question, “What to do now?”
Leaders need to set goals because their goals become the penultimate achievement that they and their teams will work for day in and day out. For example, if a sales team has been given a goal by their leader to achieve 150 sales in one month, all the members of the team will have only one thing in mind – achieve sales. At no point in the month will the leader or a member of the team will have to think “What should we do now? What work do we have on hand?”
4. A goal will help the leader asses his/her own performance
Like all of us, leaders too need to have their performance reviewed and assessed by a higher authority which can be the leader’s manager, top executives, CEO or the board in a typical corporate situation. This is exactly why leaders need to set goals because they can assess their own performance by looking at whether they’ve achieved their goals or not. So the next time your company leader gives you goals that seem unattainable, always remember that there is someone sitting above him/her who is making them set these goals.
5. Leaders need to set goals to improve efficiency
Like we discussed earlier, in a corporate scenario, KPI reports give a numerical assessment of an employee’s work. This will only help a leader to set more specific goals for the next time by looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the employee. And why only for corporates? Even in a simplest of situations like playing soccer, the captain as the leader of the team, sets goals according to the attributes of his/her players to get best results. Don’t you agree, friends?
