Add Value Instantly: Incredible Team Goal-Setting Activities
The time of year has come for managers and their teams to consider and commit to their goals. If you've already established your goals, it's time for a check-in to ensure everything is on track and aligned with the team's overall direction. Team goals help everyone stay focused and unite around common objectives. But, despite its importance, this annual milestone needs to be addressed.
Setting team goals is crucial to creating a dynamic, high-performing organization. They help managers articulate what “good” looks like, develop a sense of purpose and understanding, and positively impact driving performance. This post provides inspiration for activities leaders can leverage to make their teams happier and more productive.
4 steps to co-create goals with your team.
Clarify the vision - your goals must align with your organization's vision and objectives. (check out our Vision Building Guide)
Identify challenges - what prevents your team and organization from achieving the vision?
Brainstorm Solutions - explore how you and your team can contribute to your company's vision.
Align on goals - determine what you plan to accomplish over the next 6-12 months.
Clarifying the Vision
Clarify the team or company vision and your goals at the outset of the conversation. If you are in the early stages of building a vision or are sharing it for the first time, here are a few reflection questions to help the team better understand your purpose and direction:
Think about what your company is all about. Why do you exist?
What does the organization value? What fundamental problem are you solving?
How is the organization delivering against its purpose and values?
It is your responsibility as a manager to make the vision clear and ensure that your team is aware of how their efforts support the entire organization's goals. Use the vision to inspire your employees and get ideas and feedback on aligning and achieving your goals with the vision.
After you have mapped out your vision, discuss barriers that challenge or threaten your success next.
Identify Challenges
Clarify the challenges you have ahead. What is threatening the team’s success? What barriers do your users have related to your product or service experience? Effectively defining the problems you want to solve will help your team set ambitious but attainable goals and ensure you are solving problems based on the needs of the user or team you are supporting.
Prompts you can consider when discussing barriers and challenges:
1. Who is having the problem?
2. What outcome do they expect?
3. Where does the problem arise?
4. Why is this problem happening?
5. Why it Matters?
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Activity - Problem Funnel
Break your problem into smaller chunks. Start by describing it in simple language, using 40 words or less. Then, keep shortening your explanation until you've got a clear, concise message in 5 words or less. This method allows you to convey the problem accurately.
The Problem Funnel is a great tool that can help you. It can help you understand your problem better, break it down into parts, and explain it quickly and precisely. This clarity means you'll save time and be less frustrated. It's also a big help if you need more confidence in explaining yourself or struggle to express your thoughts clearly.
TRY A PROBLEM FUNNEL!
State your problem in 40 words.
Then, reduce it to 20 words.
And then 10 words.
Finally, 5 words.
Download our FREE Problem Framing Template for Digital Whiteboard & PDF
Brainstorm Solutions
Once you've clarified the goals, you'll want to brainstorm ideas and solutions for meeting them. Discussing the issue and generating fresh solutions can be exciting and fun. In addition, brainstorming helps the team identify limitations and explore hypotheses.
Here are some tips for brainstorming:
Have team members come up with ideas in groups. A group setting can promote collaboration and creativity.
Share ideas on paper or a whiteboard. This format allows you to share views, focus on new perspectives, and give everyone the pen.
Make sure each team member feels comfortable sharing their ideas. A safe space will encourage them to voice their opinions and make suggestions.
Uses the problems you identified in the previous step as a jumping-off point. Set the parameters of your ideation around the team’s or user’s needs.
Brainstorming Activity - Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is a valuable tool to help you organize your ideas. In addition, mind mapping can help you collect and arrange your data. Make a "mind map" to help you solve a problem. This activity helps break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces. It's a great way to unlock new, exciting solutions to issues that might seem tedious or complicated.
Create a mind map to help with creativity. Start by writing down the task you want to solve in the middle of a sheet of paper (or on a computer or whiteboard). Then draw branches outward and add ideas and solutions to the branches, building on the original stem.
For example: If you have a problem with low website traffic, you can expand the problem using other terms. These might include "organic traffic," "trusted content," "SEO," and "video strategy." These terms can give more information on your issue and how to solve it.
Continue to build outward, adding new features that solve the problems raised in the previous section.
For example, to solve SEO problems, you might need a topic cluster strategy, someone with knowledge of SEO, and a video marketing course.
Download our FREE Mind Mapping Template for Digital Whiteboard & PDF
Brainstorming Activity - S.C.A.M.P.E.R.
SCAMPER is a way to develop new and improved ideas by thinking about them in a different light. To use SCAMPER, ask yourself questions for each letter:
S - Substitute: What can I use instead?
C - Combine: What can I combine with this?
A - Adapt: How can I change it, so it works better?
M - Modify: What parts can I alter or adjust?
P - Put: to other uses: How else can I use this?
E - Eliminate: What parts can I take away?
R - Reverse or Re-arrange: How can I turn it around or switch it up?
This method makes you think of your project or problem in different ways. Every question asks you to explore the issue more closely and explore new ideas.
Download our FREE S.C.A.M.P.E.R. Template for Digital Whiteboard & PDF
Align Goals
Now that you’ve discussed the problem, identified challenges, and ideated potential solutions, you can wrap up your team goal-setting session by aligning on a few pointed statements that articulate your goals. Compare the team’s and company's goals and determine if they align. This step is significant if managers want their team to be successful and influential contributors. The team is likelier to succeed if the goals are clear and attainable but still aspirational.
Here are some tips for creating clear goals:
Clear and specific. Goals should be short, precise and quantifiable to help your team focus on the task and avoid becoming distracted by other goals or tasks.
Meaningful. Ensure the goals align with the company's mission, and strategic plan and team members understand how they can contribute.
Outline Success. Measures like revenue or profits do not define goals, and the team will need help to measure progress and achieve success. Speak to the outcomes you are trying to drive and why this is important.
Realistic and Time-bound. Ensure goals include attainable milestones and deadlines and keep the team accountable.
Goal Activity - Fast Forward
Do you want to improve your team's productivity by exploring people's strengths and weaknesses? Then you'll love Fast Forward, our Goal Setting Team-Building Activity! Thanks to this creative, interactive game, any meeting can become a motivating and inspiring experience, encouraging your team to define its objectives.
This exercise will foster leadership principles and assist your group in establishing shared objectives. First, each team member will create a game card with meaningful goals and critical challenges. Then, the game board - with included slides, prompts and action items - will guide the team through setting objectives and help them take action towards those objectives.
The game includes templates, resources and fun activities to help keep the team motivated. As a result, the members will learn to think critically, collaborate and stay focused on the task.
Prompts to consider:
“By June, I want to be/do the following...”
“One thing I've always wanted to do but haven't done yet is...”
“My favourite part of my field/industry/job is…”
“If I could go back and change one thing about my career path, it would be…”
“One step I will take this year toward my 5-year plan is…”
“I feel most fulfilled in my career when…”
Setting clear team goals is essential for creating a thriving workplace. Managers can use goal-setting activities to plan, work together, and hold people accountable so everyone can be productive. By doing these activities carefully, teams can accomplish their team’s goals and build strong bonds.
Final Thought
Setting team goals is essential in ensuring a successful and high-performing organization. This article outlines four key steps managers can use when creating team goals; clarifying the vision, identifying challenges, brainstorming solutions, and aligning on goals. These activities help to develop a sense of purpose and understanding, define success, and support teams to stay focused and united toward a unified goal. We know these incredible team goal-setting activities will add value to your organization.
Want us to facilitate your team goal setting? Connect and let DesignACE for a free 15-min consultation.
