Why SMART Goals?
Edwin Lock and Gary Latham have undertaken a great deal of leading research about goals and goal-setting and neatly suggest that setting goals implies dissatisfaction with the current condition and a desire to attain an outcome Locke and Latham, 2006.
Why Specific and Stretching?
In Locke and Latham’s 2006 study and previous articles, there is an emphasis on the positive relationship between goal difficulty and performance. Locke and Latham, 1990; Locke and Latham, 2002. That is, the more difficult the goal is to achieve, the higher the level of performance is manifest – allbeit moderated by commitment to the goal. Earlier studies had already identified that specific and difficult goals led to greater performance than easy and/or vague goals Latham and Lee, 1986
Commitment to achieving a goal – Attainable and Realistic
Hollenbeck and Klein, 1987 suggest that an individual’s commitment to a goal (building on Locke’s research and many others) is dependent on a combination of the expectancy that the individual has of achieving success, and the difficulty of achieving the goal. In the commonly used nemonic, SMART goals, this is usually considered as the ‘AR’ of SMART – Attainable and Realistic. Though Hollenbeck and Klein help point out that when we set a goal, it may well seem that the goal is attainable – I can do everything that I need to do to achieve this and am prepared for the cost in time, effort, etc. – and it may well seem to be realistic – Given the resources that I have and the current environment, this goal can be practically achieved.
Measurable and Time-bound?
I don’t think it would be possible to undertake research on something that had no measure nor a time restriction – how would you know that you had achieved success if there was no measure, and if there is no time limit, when would you stop measuring or even not measuring. So these remain ‘common sense’ though a post-modernist might disagree.
So there is support for the concept of SMART goals – now why is it so important that we ‘write’ them down?
There are some who suggest that writing something down increases commitment to the goal but the evidence is anecdotal. For some individuals, the act of writing something down assists clarity through a conscious process because they consider something written to be a personal commitment. Does that mean it is true for everyone? To help answer this, we undertook primary research to mirror the mythical Yale Study. Through a simple questionnaire, respondents were asked if they had set goals for themself on leaving school, college or university, when this was and if they had written it down. They were then asked to estimate their total personal wealth now. The results are quite shocking.
Results from our survey
215 individuals completed the online questionnaire over a seven week period. Respondents were mostly UK-based (80%), with further respondents from Asia (11%) and the USA (9%). This researcher invited respondents through social networks, Ecademy and LinkedIn and direct contact with companies across the UK, Asia and US. 70% of respondents are in full-time employment, and the remainder either self-employed or business owners.
Only results shown to be significant at 0.05 are discussed.
- At the end of their formal education, 69.8% had a personal goal of whom only 11.2% had written their goal down.
Goals and personal wealth
- Of those that had written their goal, their average personal wealth is GBP115000, whereas those who had not written their goal down, their average personal wealth was GBP295000. That’s more than two and a half times as much! Completely contrary to the supposed Yale Study.
We asked respondents when they left formal education and analysed this against their estimated personal wealth.
- Those leaving formal education in the 1970’s have a average wealth of GBP475000, 80’s GBP195000 and 90’s… GBP325000!
It seems reasonable that those who have been in the workforce longer would have greater personal wealth and so it is… almost. The anomaly appears to be those who left formal education during the 80’s.
- Those leaving in the 70’s have generated on average 13,500 each year since leaving. 80’s grads a miserly 7,800 and those bright young things from the 90’s, a whopping 21,600!
So what’s going on?
It may have something to do with SMART goals.
SMART goals and personal wealth
- Those who set Specific Measurable only goals average a low 25,000
- Add Time-bound to specific and measurable and this goes up to 50,000
- Just Attainable and Realistic goals – now this is averaging 150,000
- Specific, Measurable, realistic and time-bound and we rise rapidly to 475,000
- Go the whole hog, Specific, measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound – and we reach 605,000
We seem to be finding some useful answers here. Don’t worry so much about writing your goals down, just so long as they’re SMART.
So is that it?
No. There’s a couple of very interesting additional significant statistics in our survey. They deal with the type of goal.
Goal focus and personal wealth
Respondents were asked if they were willing to share their own personal goal, 60% did so and these break down into four main focuses: Career, Lifestyle,Money or Ability. We also asked how satisfied respondents were with their achievement.
For those with a Lifestyle goal focus, average wealth is 95,000 and ‘satisfied’ with their achievement.
- A Career focus, average wealth is just over 100,000 and ‘somewhat satisfied’
- A Money focus, average wealth is 162,500 and ‘satisfied’ and lastly,
- An ‘Ability’ focus, average wealth is 780,000 and ‘very satisfied’!
Go on, have a guess on the statistical conclusion… yep, those who left formal education in the 90’s focus more on ‘Ability’, 80’s focus on career and lifestyle, whilst the 70’s predominantly Money. Surely a reflection of the environment of the time.
The great thing about focusing on what you are ‘able’ to do will help the goal-setting process be more effective. Following Locke and Latham’s findings that ability to achieve the goal moderates performance – too difficult and uncommitted individuals do not perform, whereas, stretching yet within my potential ability aids commitment to goal attainment.
Respondents were asked if they were willing to share their own personal goal, 60% did so and these break down into four main focuses: Career, Lifestyle, Money or Ability. We also asked how satisfied respondents were with their achievement. The first three are ‘Outcome’ goals – that is, they specify a particular tangible outcome. Ability focus is a ‘Performance’ goal – such goals focus on an ability or capability of the individual.
- For those with a Lifestyle goal focus, average wealth is 95,000 and ‘satisfied’ with their achievement.
- A Career focus, average wealth is just over 100,000 and ‘somewhat satisfied’
- A Money focus, average wealth is 162,500 and ‘satisfied’ and lastly,
- An ‘Ability’ focus, average wealth is 780,000 and ‘very satisfied’!
Go on, have a guess on the statistical conclusion… yep, those who left formal education in the 90’s focus more on ‘Ability’, 80’s focus on career and lifestyle, whilst the 70’s predominantly Money. Surely a reflection of the environment of the time.
The great thing about focusing on what you are ‘able’ to do will help the goal-setting process be more effective. Following Locke and Latham’s findings that ability to achieve the goal moderates performance – too difficult and uncommitted individuals do not perform, whereas, stretching yet within my potential ability aids commitment to goal attainment.
Outcome goals – some issues
The problem facing many people with regard to ‘Outcome’ goals is that there is an element that is outside the power of the individual.
An example of the potential issues with an ‘outcome’ goal comes from a rather sad testimony from one particular research participant:
My goal was to have $3 million in the bank for my retirement by age 55. I achieved my goal with great satisfaction early at age 43. Unfortunately my bank was at the centre of a fraud and went under. 16 years later, I am still working and slowly rebuilding my goal. So, goals are important and we need to know what we want to achieve in life – just choose a goal only including yourself and don’t leave all of it in one place.
Outcome goals are most often subject to others and to the environment. The greater the attainability of a goal through yourself only – I.e. Your own performance – the more you are in control of goal achievement. Goals that have a high dependence on others and/or external circumstances are considerably more difficult to influence.
As an extreme example, one survey participant has goal to win the lottery! Now there are certain things that you can do to increase the likelihood of this becoming reality, buying tickets is a useful component, but how many? Interestingly, another participant who had a ‘money’ goal did indeed achieve their goal – through winning the lottery! Though that wasn’t the original plan and they rated themselves ‘somewhat satisfied’ in having completely achieved their goal.
Whilst touching on monetary goals, another participant reminds us that being specific about your goal is important:
My goal was to be a millionaire by 35… I achieved it the moment I stepped away from the foreign exchange counter at Jakarta airport!
Following up with our survey participants revealed commonality in the way they went about setting goals and their subsequent actions to achieve their goals. We’ve already seen how those with the greatest success in terms of personal wealth had SMART goals. This isn’t to say that success can only be measured by means of personal wealth at all – the original intention was simply to test the mythical Yale Study results. An, of course, someone could have set themselves a perfectly good SMART goal – but due to their own environment, had not accumulated as much personal wealth in terms of a standard currency – indeed, a person could have less in terms of monetary wealth yet be considerably better off in terms of the value they can obtain from less money.
Performance Goals
An interesting aspect that began to show itself through the results was personal satisfaction in goal achievement. People who set ‘Ability’ type goals, or ‘Performance’ goals reported to be ‘very satisfied’ with their achievements – whether completely achieved goals or not yet complete. In part, this suggests the importance of personal values and suggests a question about the process by which they set goals.
Through a random selection of fifty respondents we found that there is some commonality in the manner in which goals are set:
When we compare the groups of ‘Very Satisfied’ with their achievement and ‘Satisfied’ or ‘Somewhat Satisfied’ with their achievement. The first group were more likely to have SMART goals. The goal is described in sensory terms – what will be seen, heard and felt, and for a small number, smelt and tasted. Respondents were clear about what achieving the goal will do positively for them and the cost to themselves (and others) of achieving their goal. Their goal, they considered personally stretching yet ‘knew’ that they were capable of achieving it themselves. More than 60% stated their goal in the present tense – ‘I am’ rather than ‘I will be’.
This provides a template for a useful goal-setting process that we’ve turned into an easy-to- remember acronym: SWING.
Goal setting process
- A SMART and Sensory performance goal
- What will I positively Win and lose
- Am I In control of achieving this goal?
- Stated as Now
- Guarantee – this is an added psychological process to ensure personal motivation towards achieving the goal.
From our survey, those individuals who set performance goals using slight variations of this process represent a small, though statistically significant fraction of the sample that have a net higher annualised personal wealth accumulation (2.15 times) and are more satisfied than individuals who use only one or two aspects of this process.
It is not the writing down of the goal that makes the difference, it seems to be the emphasis on performance or ability and the process of thinking through the goal. And for those of you, like me, who just didn’t get round to setting goals way back and worry that you might have missed out – well you can’t go back and revise history, but you can create a new one now.
SMART Golfing goals
I want to with the British Open next year is a SMART goal. It’s specific (The British Open), it’s measurable (Win), it’s attainable (it’s an ‘Open’), it’s realistic (a good, consistent golfer can achieve this), it’s timely (next year).
Now there’s a whole lot of sub-goals, or outcomes, involved in getting to this point, but as a goal, it’s pretty good. So, what’s your SMART goal for your golf?
Some SMART examples:
- I want to win the Augusta Masters in ten years time.
- I want to break 80 this year.
- I want to play 40 times this year.
- I want to drive over 240 yards by October.
Whatever your goal, I’d like to ask you this: “For what purpose?”
Your answer is important. Keep asking yourself that same question for each response. This can take some time, but it’s so worth while – at the end you find the real driver (no pun intended) to help you achieve it. Here’s an example from one of our coaching sessions:
- “I want to break 80 this year”
- For what purpose?
- “To improve my game”
- For what purpose?
- “So that I’ll know I’ve improved”
- For what purpose?
- “So that I can beat my friend”
- For what purpose?
- “‘cos I want to win”
- For what purpose?
- “Because I like to win”
- For what purpose
- “To prove I’m the better player
- For what purpose? This went on for a while in a loop from winning to better player and round.
- For what purpose winning and being the better player?
- “To be happy”
- For what purpose?
- “To be at peace with myself”
- “and satisfied”
- “and joyful”
Once the loop is broken through, the real drivers often come flooding out.
For this individual – the ‘real’ reason to break 80 is to be satisfied, at peace and joyful – the winning and being the better player is just a confirmatory result.
The best and easiest way to do this is to work with someone else. They coach you through the ‘for what purpose?’ and not let go until you say something ‘valuable’. Again, you’ll know when this happens – you’ll in fact observe a big change in physiology – a ‘warm glow’ is how it is frequently described.
What is your goal? The trouble with golf is that it is simple yet so amazingly complex. You might have a goal to reduce your handicap, play in the 70’s, win a tournament, beat your best buddy, win the Masters, drive the longest distance, get a hole-in-one. Whatever that goal is, we need to be absolutely clear about what it is.
To make this goal tangible, we need to describe it in our five senses: see, hear, touch, smell and taste. For those few people who say “I’ll just know it when it happens” – yes you probably will, but that doesn’t help you achieve it.
- What is your goal?
- What will you see when you have achieved it?
- What will you hear when you achieve it?
- What will you feel when you achieve it?
- Where is that feeling? Can you touch that feeling now?
- What will you taste when you achieve it?
- What will you smell when you achieve it?
Don’t over-worry if you don’t get answers to the last two – but maybe it’s the taste of champagne or the smell of rose petals cascading down from the ceiling at the celebratory dinner (you get it now?)
Now, there is an important distinction to make here. Your goal MUST be a positive goal. Let’s go though this because it’s at the heart of transforming your game and it is the essence of what every mental game coach, sports psychologist and peak performance consultant is trying to help you do.
Now, whatever you do, “don’t think of a blue tree!”
What just happened? You thought of a blue tree didn’t you! I know you did, because that’s how your mind works.
Your unconscious mind cannot process negatives – it only receives commands. Your unconscious mind does not screen thoughts – that’s the job of your conscious mind. Your unconscious can not, not do something!
Basically, and this is not meant to be a scientific explanation of the way the brain operates, rather a much simplified understanding, when you read “Don’t think of a blue tree”, in order for you to consciously not think about it, your unconscious had to provide an image of a blue tree to your conscious mind to not think about! What
this means is that your actions and behaviours will be the opposite of your desire if your present it with a negative.
As you settle in for your tee shot, you wiggle, you waggle and look up the fairway and think “I must not send the ball into those trees on the right”, guess what. Your ball goes straight for those trees. Why, because you just told yourself (not) to do it. “Whatever I do, I must not put the ball in the water”…. splash! “I must remember not to bend my arm at the elbow during the swing”… hook, topped, sliced – all depending on just when you did bend your elbow.
This inability to process negatives is why, for example, smokers trying to quit, fail. “don’t have a cigarette, don’t have a cigarette, DON”T HAVE A CIGARETTE!” as they slide one out of the pack, light up and inhale deeply (and with great satisfaction mixed with self-loathing and revulsion). I know, I’ve been there.
Dieters, have the same problem. “Don’t eat fatty foods, don’t open the fridge, don’t eat chocolate”.
Consider your golfing goal. Is it SMART? Can you describe your goal fully in your five senses?
Many people set goals for themselves when young. Often in response to questions from aged relatives: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
