Why managers don't but should create goals
Zig Ziglar spoke about the subject of motivation and being a better sales professional. One of the subjects that Mr. Ziglar spoke about is the four reasons that managers don’t have goals. There are four basic reasons people or managers don’t have goals: Fear, self-image, never been sold or they don’t know how. When thinking about goals, there are two distinct categories of people in every company that are a main driver of goals, managers and employees. Although one would expect that all managers or supervisors would have goals, the truth is that at many companies, managers struggle to either have goals for themselves or their employees. In today’s workforce, the competition for more customers and sales makes it important for everyone in the organization to have goals. Managers must not only create goals for themselves, but their team as well. This article will look at these four barriers and how they impact managers and employees.
Fear
As a manager, there are many things to be afraid of in business; loss of sales or high turnover. Failing in business could mean not getting the promotion you worked so hard for or worse, losing your job. For some managers, creating and maintaining goals is a fearful process. Creating a goal is committing to something in writing and potentially exposing to the company that you have failed. Another fear of creating goals is not having an understanding of how to properly create goals. This fear, of not knowing how to create goals, also has an impact on the employees. Managers must possess the skill to create their goals, as well as their employees’ goals and work to help their employee be successful with their goals.
Self-Image
The definition of self-image: self-image is related to what you see when you look in a mirror—however, it goes much deeper than that. Managers do not want to look or be seen as not being successful. Managers do not want to look at themselves in the mirror and see a failure. As a manager, your success or failure is dependent on how well you manage your team. Everyone wants to be part of the winning team and to be successful, managers must manage their teams and their team’s goals. By creating solid goals for yourself and your team, your self-image will be positive. At the end of the day, with good or bad results, solid goals will give you the knowledge that you gave it a fighting chance.
Never been sold
Although it is counter intuitive, some managers have never been sold on the fact they need goals to truly succeed in today’s ever-changing and demanding market. Some managers feel like whatever they have been doing has always worked and creating a goal is not needed. The unfortunate thing is that just because something has always worked, doesn’t mean the success will transmit to the team. It is important for managers to have an understanding of goals and then teach the employees the value of goals and how they will make them successful.
Does not know how
It very common for people to not understand how to write goals. Although everyone has goals, but not all understand how to truly write a goal that will allow you to measure success or failure. As a manager, it is important to understand how to create goals and to spread that knowledge to the team. There are many tools to allow managers and teams to create and track goals today on the internet. As a manager, it is important to learn and help the team learn goals for your organization.
By overcoming these barriers to goals, managers will be more successful; managers will be able to help their teams overcome these barriers as well. By learning how to create goals, managers and employees will learn a skill that can not only be used at work but at home as well. Although goals can be daunting and the commitment to goals can be scary, managers need goals for companies to flourish. Managers don’t want to see themselves as failures; once they are sold on the importance of goals, then teaching the basics of goal planning and letting the team run with it, will make companies more successful.