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Goal setting involves the development of an action plan designed in order to motivate and guide a person or group toward a goal.^[1] Goals are more deliberate than desires and momentary intentions. Therefore, setting goals means that a person has committed thought, emotion, and behavior towards attaining the goal. In doing so, the goal setter has established a desired future state which differs from their current state thus creating a mismatch which in turn spurs future actions.^[2] Goal setting can be guided by goal-setting criteria (or rules) such as SMART criteria.^[3] Goal setting is a major component of personal-development and management literature. Studies by Edwin A. Locke and his colleagues, most notably, Gary Latham^[4] have shown that more specific and ambitious goals lead to more performance improvement than easy or general goals. Difficult goals should be set ideally at the 90th percentile of performance,^[1] assuming that motivation and not ability is limiting attainment of that level of performance.^[5] As long as the person accepts the goal, has the ability to attain it, and does not have conflicting goals, there is a positive linear relationship between goal difficulty and task performance.^[6]

The theory of Locke and colleagues states that the simplest, most direct motivational explanation of why some people perform better than others is because they have different performance goals. The essence of the theory is:^[7]

1. Difficult specific goals lead to significantly higher performance than easy goals, no goals, or even the setting of an abstract goal such as urging people to do their best.
2. Holding ability constant, and given that there is goal commitment, the higher the goal the higher the performance.
3. Variables such as praise, feedback, or the participation of people in decision-making about the goal only influence behavior to the extent that they lead to the setting of and subsequent commitment to a specific difficult goal.

History

Goal setting theory has been developed through both in the field and laboratory settings. Cecil Alec Mace carried out the first empirical studies in 1935.^[8]

Edwin A. Locke began to examine goal setting in the mid-1960s and continued researching goal setting for more than 30 years.^[6][9][10] He found that individuals who set specific, difficult goals performed better than those who set general, easy goals.^[5] Locke derived the idea for goal-setting from Aristotle's form of final causality. Aristotle speculated that purpose can cause action; thus, Locke began researching the impact goals have on human activity. Locke developed and refined his goal-setting theory in the 1960s, publishing his first article on the subject, "Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives", in 1968.^[11] This article established the positive relationship between clearly identified goals and performance.

Main idea

After controlling for ability, goals that are difficult to achieve and specific tend to increase performance far more than easy goals, no goals or telling people to do their best. It therefore follows that the simplest motivational explanation of why some individuals outperform others is that they have different goals.^[12] A goal can be made more specific by:

Setting goals can affect outcomes in four ways:^[13]

Choice

Goals may narrow someone's attention and direct their efforts toward goal-relevant activities and away from goal-irrelevant actions.

Effort

Goals may make someone more effortful. For example, if someone usually produces 4 widgets per hour but wants to produce 6 widgets per hour, then they may work harder to produce more widgets than without that goal.

Persistence

Goals may make someone more willing to work through setbacks.

Cognition

Goals may cause someone to develop and change their behavior.

Secondary ideas

Goal commitment

People perform better when they are committed to achieving certain goals. Through an understanding of the effect of goal setting on individual performance, organizations are able to use goal setting to benefit organizational performance.^[5] In addition, another aspect that goes with goal commitment is also goal acceptance. This is an individual's willingness to pursue their specific goal.^[1] Locke and Latham (2002) have indicated three moderators that indicate goal setting success:

Expanding the three from above, the level of commitment is influenced by external factors. Such as the person assigning the goal, setting the standard for the person to achieve/perform. This influences the level of commitment by how compliant the individual is with the one assigning the goal. ^{[citation needed]} An external factor can also be the role models of the individual.^{[citation needed]} For example, say an individual looks up to their manager and cares about their opinion, the individual is more likely to listen to goal-setting strategies from that individual, and ultimately become more committed to their desired goal.^[5]

Internal factors can derive from their participation level in the work to achieve the goal. What they expect from themselves can either flourish their success, or destroy it. Also, the individual may want to appear superior to their peers or competitors.^[14] They want to achieve the goal the best and be known for it. The self-reward of accomplishing a goal is usually one of the main keys that keeps individuals committed.^{[citation needed]} For example, if an individual was working toward becoming the president of their company, if they achieve their goal, they could reward themselves with something of importance to them.^[10]

Another route individuals can take to set their goals is to follow (STD) that is, setting their goals to be Specific, Time-bound, and Difficult. Specifically, an individual's goal should be set at the 90th percentile of difficulty.^[1]

• Specific: goals should give a clear definition on what needs to be accomplished. Vague goals lack direction and can spread resources too thin. A goal should be specific enough that someone outside of or unfamiliar with the situation can determine if the goal was achieved or not. ^[15]
• Time-Bound: goals should have a specific end date. Goals should not have unrealistically short deadlines. This causes stress and difficulty beyond what is intended with setting a goal. Alternatively, if a deadline for a goal is set too far in the future, people will not be motivated to work on this goal, and instead will focus on short term deadlines. To combat this, short term sub-goals can be used to maintain motivation.^[16]
• Difficult: goals should be difficult and reasonable. Easy goals do not motivate people to push their performance levels after the goal is quickly completed. ^[17]

Goal–performance relationship

Locke and colleagues (1981) examined the behavioral effects of goal-setting, concluding that 90% of laboratory and field studies involving specific and challenging goals led to higher performance than did easy or no goals.^[18] This is because if an individual is intrinsically motivated by a goal, they will want to conquer the goal to receive internal rewards, and will be satisfied because of it.^[1]

Locke and Latham (2006) argue that it is not sufficient to urge employees to "do their best". "Doing one's best" has no external reference, which makes it useless in eliciting specific behavior. To elicit some specific form of behavior from another person, it is important that this person has a clear view of what is expected from them. A goal is thereby of vital importance because it helps an individual to focus their efforts in a specified direction. In other words, goals canalize behavior.^[6] However, when faced with complex tasks and directions that are difficult to specify, telling someone to "do their best", with a focus on learning, can sometimes lead to the discovery of better strategies whereby specific goals can then be set.^[6]: 707 A solution to this apparent contradiction where the "do your best" condition can lead to greater task performance than a high specific performance goal under certain conditions is resolved when task complexity is taken into account. Specifically, in a complex task where the prerequisite skills and knowledge to perform the task are not yet in place, the "do your best" condition can outperform the performance goal condition. If a high, specific learning goal is set instead then the goal-performance relationship is maintained and the (learning) goal setting condition outperforms the "do your best" condition.^[19]

Feedback

Feedback and goal setting are highly interrelated and more effective when used in conjunction with each other.^[5]: 708 Feedback cannot be given without goals in the same way that goals can not be established without providing feedback.

Goal setting can lead to the creation of feedback loops, either negative or positive comparison of the output to the goal. Negative feedback loops lead to increasing the input associated with goal attainment to improve output in the next loop cycle. Positive feedback loops, if not sufficiently reinforced, can lead to subsequent setting of goals at a less difficult level. Negative feedback can be reframed and errors seen as beneficial to the learning and goal achievement process and in turn increase participant resilience.^{[citation needed]} This reframing process can be taught through error management training and with clear instructions about how to engage with errors. Error management training involves participants practicing metacognitive activities of planning, monitoring, and evaluation.^[20]

Negative feedback also interacts with goal type, perceived tension and conscientiousness. People with high conscientiousness and performance goals experience high tension following negative feedback which leads to lower performance.^{[citation needed]} This is not the case with learning goals where the effect of negative feedback is less detrimental.^[21]

Without proper feedback channels it is impossible for employees to adapt or adjust to the required behavior. Managers should keep track of performance to allow employees to see how effective they have been in attaining their goals.^[22] Providing feedback on short-term objectives helps to sustain motivation and commitment to the goal. There are two forms of feedback in which the employee can receive (Outcome and Process feedback).^[5] Outcome feedback is after the goal or activity is finished, and process feedback is during the completion of a goal.^[1] Feedback should be provided on the strategies followed to achieve the goals and on the final outcomes achieved.

Honing goal setting using temporal motivation theory

Locke and Latham (2004) note that goal-setting theory lacks "the issue of time perspective".^[23] Taking this into consideration, Steel and Konig (2006) utilize their temporal motivation theory (TMT) to account for goal setting's effects, and suggest new hypotheses regarding a pair of its moderators: goal difficulty and proximity.^[24] The effectiveness of goal setting can be explained by two aspects of TMT: the principle of diminishing returns and temporal discounting.^[24] Similar to the expression "the sum of the parts can be greater than the whole", a division of a project into several, immediate, subgoals appears to take advantage of these two elements.^[24]

Superordinate goals

Goals can be modelled as forming a hierarchy, within such a hierarchy superordinate goals are the goals at a higher level of abstraction. Superordinate goals tend to less concrete and lack a specific endpoint but have some advantages of more concrete subordinate goal.^[25]

Self-regulated learning

While the literature on self-regulated learning covers a broad variety of theoretical perspectives and concepts such as control theory, self-efficacy, action regulation, and resource allocation, goal-setting is a crucial component of virtually all of these approaches as the initiator of self-regulation mechanisms such as planning, monitoring, metacognition, attention, learning strategies, persistence, time management, environmental structuring, help seeking, emotion control, motivation, effort, and self-efficacy.^[26]

Goal setting in groups

Objectives and key results

Based initially on Drucker's management by objectives (MBO) model, a popular applied version of goal setting theory for business is the objectives and key results model (OKR). Originally developed at Intel by Andy Grove,^[27] the tool was designed to set individual and collaborative goal team goals that are specific, concrete, challenging, ambitious and have measurable and time bound key results.^[28] OKRs were later introduced to many other companies and foundations such as Google^[29] and the Gates Foundation by Grove disciple John Doerr whose book Measure what Matters outlines the use of OKRs across a wide range of organizational settings.^[30]

Goal setting in sports and fitness

The tenets of Goal setting theory generally hold true in physical domains. In a study of high school students using sit up tests all students set a specific and challenging goal out performed students with a non-specific goal supporting the principles of goal specificity and goal difficulty from general goal setting theory.^[31] Goal setting appears to be especially beneficial to athletes with self-inflated narcissism by protecting athletes with that personality trait from their tendency to underperform in tedious but necessary training with no audience present.^[32]

Goal setting in workplaces

In business, goal setting remains a popular evidence based approach to align efforts across organizations, communicate objectives, and improve motivation as well as task performance for individuals and groups.^[33] Goal setting encourages participants to put in substantial effort over and above a "do your best condition". Also, because every member has defined expectations for their role, little room is left for inadequate, marginal effort to go unnoticed

Employee motivation

The more employees are motivated, the more they are stimulated and interested in accepting goals. These success factors are interdependent. For example, the expected outcomes of goals are positively influenced when employees are involved in the goal setting process. Not only does participation increase commitment in attaining the goals that are set, participation influences self-efficacy as well. Additionally, feedback is necessary to monitor one's progress. When feedback is not presented, an employee might think they are not making enough progress. This can reduce self-efficacy and thereby harm the performance outcomes in the long run.^[34]

Workplace training

Goal setting is used to improve training outcomes. For example, Tomokazu Kishiki and colleagues performed a randomized controlled trial on surgical trainees to determine whether or not their participation in a goal-setting program would improve performance and testing scores; the addition of achievable goals appeared to be beneficial to the trainees.^[36] When goal setting is applied optimally during training processes, both employee motivation and organizational commitment can increase.^[37]

Furthermore, training in goal setting has been linked to higher levels of performance among adults and children with mild to severe intellectual disability.^[38]

Work-life balance

Goal setting is also used by some companies with a stated aim of ensuring that employee work life balance is maintained. The idea behind this is that employees set a non-work related goal to improve their well-being, and managers help team members stick to those goals. An example of this in practice is "One Simple Thing", a goal-setting well-being practice employed by Google.^[39]

Impact on individual performance

Managers cannot constantly drive motivation, or keep track of an employee's work on a continuous basis. Goals are therefore an important tool for managers, since goals have the ability to function as a self-regulatory mechanism that helps employees prioritize tasks.^[5][40]

Four mechanisms through which goal setting can affect individual performance are:

1. Goals focus attention toward goal-relevant activities and away from goal-irrelevant activities.
2. Goals serve as an energizer: Higher goals induce greater effort, while low goals induce lesser effort.
3. Goals affect persistence; constraints with regard to resources affect work pace.
4. Goals activate cognitive knowledge and strategies that help employees cope with the situation at hand.

Interventions in education

Domain general benefits from goal setting

Goal setting research has shown positive results as an effective, and inexpensive to implement intervention for a broad range of academic purposes across a range of age groups. Beginning with struggling undergraduate students, there is some evidence that when compared to a control group, students who had set general rather than domain specific academic goals experienced the following benefits in the semester after the intervention namely, i) increased GPA, ii) a higher probability of maintaining a full course load, iii) a reduction in self reported negative affect. While goal setting research tends to be domain specific, these results among others, does suggest that benefits from goal setting may have broader benefits for goal setters even beyond the domain of the goal itself.^[41][42]

Further work with undergraduates has suggested that these broader benefits apply even if non-academic goals are set. This could imply that the original goal setting theory can be modified to include a more domain general "spread" effect from superordinate life goals and that writing about general life goals regardless of domain can improve academic performance. Developing these life goals can include linked procedures such as i) reflecting on/envisaging one's best possible life, ii) listing good quality goals relevant to achieving this best possible life, iii) strategizing on how to achieve their attainment, iv) reflect in writing about anticipated obstacles, v) developing specific plans for overcoming these anticipated obstacles.^[43]

Closing achievement gaps based on gender and ethnicity

Goal setting interventions have shown promising and scalable results in terms of closing persistent gender (ongoing male underperformance) and ethnicity achievement gaps in the areas of academic achievement and increased retention rates. In one study persistent male underperformance in tertiary education was almost entirely closed to achieve parity with females after one year of the intervention. Similar albeit slower positive impacts in closing the ethnicity achievement gap by the second year of the same goal setting intervention were reported. These findings suggest that a goal setting intervention early in students' academic careers can significantly and substantially reduce gender and ethnic minority inequalities in academic achievement at least at the tertiary level.^[44] More work remains to be done to see if similar conclusions can be drawn at the level of secondary education.

Use of reflection diaries for goal setting

Goal-setting activities with final-year university students focused around self-reflective and personal growth through setting three growth goals and recording progress in reflective diaries shows that goal setting and making progress towards the goals can have many positive impacts. These include increased self-esteem, time and improved stress management and self-monitoring skills as well as motivating, and energizing effects. These suggest that, at least with undergraduates, the setting of growth goals with a reflective diary element can be a useful addition to academic programs.^[45]

Online learning and massive open online courses (MOOCs)

Goal-setting activities including the setting of both performance and learning goals have been associated with both increased performance and completion rates for MOOC participants. Students who completed a goal setting writing activity at the start of a course achieved more over a longer period of time than those who did not set goals.^[46] For online learning more generally, students who have a better understanding of the tasks set better more detailed goals and in turn achieve higher performance suggesting that instructional time spent explaining learning tasks can be beneficial.^[47]

Behavior management

Properly implemented taught goal-setting programs are effective in K-12 schools for behavior and emotional management interventions.^[48] In particular, programs that included student input on the goal setting process as well as the collection of targeting data to monitor progress and ensure the delivery of high quality feedback to students on progress towards goals were more effective behavior management interventions.^[49] In order to ensure a properly designed goal setting intervention for behavior management some variation of a checklist can be an effective addition to behavioral management programs. A typical such checklist could include the following factors:

1. Identify and define behavior
2. Establish a behavior monitoring plan
3. Collect baseline data
4. Set goals
5. Monitor progress towards goals
6. Review data^[50]

Goal-setting also works effectively either or its own or as part of a package of other behavior management interventions.^[51]

In personal lifeedit

Identifying sub-goalsedit

Common personal goals include losing weight, achieving good grades, and saving money. The strategy for goal setting begins with the big picture; taking a look at the big picture before breaking it into smaller components allows one to focus on the primary goal. Once the main goal is set, breaking it up into smaller, more achievable components helps in the planning portion of setting the goal.^[52] These smaller, more obtainable objectives promote self-esteem and provide instant feedback to keep the individual on task.^[53][54]

Time and task managementedit

Time management is the practice of systematically finishing tasks assigned by superiors or one's self in an efficient and timely manner. Time management steps require identifying the objective and laying out a plan that maximizes efficiency and execution of the objective.^[55] There are many useful mobile apps that help with personal goal setting; some of the categories include budgeting, wellness, calendar and productivity apps.^[56][57]

The book What They Don't Teach You in the Harvard Business School is known for citing a study which found that written goals have a significant effect on financial success, but in 1996 Fast Company determined that this study did not occur.^[58] In 2015, a research study on goals found those who wrote them down accomplished them at a significantly higher rate than those who did not.^[58]

Life goalsedit

There is evidence that setting and reflecting on progress life goals are an effective intervention to provide both a sense of purpose and increase happiness.^[59] In particular, setting life goals based on others leads to more positive emotions and therefore has a more positive impact on happiness than goals focused on oneself. Further evidence for this effect is provided by the more broader personal benefits of prosocial behavior and acts of kindness towards others rather than self care/focusing on oneself.^[60]

Recovery from illness and injuryedit

There is evidence from randomized control trials that goal setting treatments improved executive function, attention/working memory, and learning in stroke patients. As well as suggesting that there is a motivational element to vascular cognitive impairment caused by strokes, or at least in terms of recovering from them, goal setting does appear to be a useful, easy to implement and cost effective solution to improve cognitive outcomes in stroke patients.^[61]

Limitations and side effectsedit

Goal-setting has limitations and there is some evidence of potentially harmful side effects to both individuals and organizations from misuse of goals and in particular the use of performance/outcome goals.

Leader and organization goal misalignmentedit

In an organization, a goal of a manager may not align with the goals of the organization as a whole. In such cases, the goals of an individual may come into direct conflict with the employing organization. Without clearly aligning goals between the organization and the individual, overall performance may suffer.

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