Team Workshop

Setting a Team Goal

Start bei setting a team goal
60-100 minutes
3-20 people
Remote & on-site

Background


Goal setting plays an important role for developing the strategies that will enable the individual to perform at the required goal levels and reach that goal, which in return leads to satisfaction, higher motivation, commitment and performance. Studies have shown that individuals who are provided with specific, difficult but attainable goals perform better than those given easy, nonspecific, or no goals at all.


Team workshop instructions

Preparation

  • Moderation cards
  • Space to group the moderation cards (e.g whiteboard or floor)


Check-In (5 minutes)

  • Welcome the team and introduce the workshop

Overview: Team members consider why their team exists and what they want to accomplish in order to agree on one primary team goal.

Goal: Setting a team goal for everyone in your team to pursue.


Step 1 (10-15 minutes)

  • Ask the question: Why does this team exist?
  • Let everyone think about the question and write down their understanding of why this team exists on a moderation card.
  • Let everyone share their vision and “why”

“Why” should not refer to short term key results but rather the bigger picture from customer’s perspective (which often includes an emotional component, values and core beliefs).

Example

Echometer: We enable teams to leverage psychological know-how in their continous improvement process.

Others: We create our product to help connect people all over the world.



Step 2 (5-10minutes)

  • Ask the following question:

    What is the most important goal that you would personally like the team to accomplish by the end of the next quarter/year (depending on your team’s context)?

  • Let everyone think about it and write it down on a moderation card.

Tip: This goal refers to a shorter and more visible timeframe than the “why”



Step 3 (20-30 minutes)

  • Have everyone share their team goal individually and let them explain why their goals are important to them.
  • Then, discuss the goals that have been collected as a team.
  • Identify similiar goals, cluster the goals according to their topic and prioritize them based on importance.

You can either write all goals down on a whiteboard or place the moderation cards (with the goals written on it) on a whiteboard/table etc.


Ending (10 minutes)

  • At the end, you must decide for one goal that all team members agree on and can pursue.
  • Make clear that common team goals are important for satisfaction and performance.

Example

“Now we have a list of the goals we want to achieve as a team. At the top of the list stands the goal with the highest priority, followed by the one with the second highest priority and so on. This helps us not to lose track in the every day work. Furthermore it makes clear for us which goals need most of our attention right now and helps us to develop a strategy to reach them.”



First Aid ⛑🩹

Didn’t go as expected? Check out the following tips.

  • Only a few shared goals

    This could be due to very diverse tasks the team members are responsible for. They focus more on their everyday work than on the bigger picture. Encourage them to remeber while the team was created and to find goals that include everybodays work.
  • A completely different goal

    Think about how these different perceptions of the team’s goal emerged. Was it due to misleading communication? Did the teams purpose change over time, which led to the confusion? Discuss what needs to change to have everybody on the same page.
  • Can’t agree on a priorisation of the goals

    It’s not a drama to have two goals at the top of the list or to have some goals that a similary important. Maybe in your team it is possible to reach two goals at the same time. One half of the team trys to reach one of the goals, while the other half trys to reach the other. This way you create sub-teams. But make sure not everybody is brewing their own soup. Team goals are not the same as individual tasks, they should stand above them.

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