Proven Goal Setting Strategies to Help You and Your Team Achieve Big Things This Year

Looking for goal setting strategies that work? First, leaders must set goals for themselves. Second, find an accountability partner. Third, work with your team and other leaders to achieve organizational goals.    

At the beginning of every year, one of the most frequent executive leadership coaching requests I receive is around goal setting. It is scientifically proven to be a powerful practice: 

1. Leaders and their teams achieve more when they set goals. 
2. Goal setters are comfortable with risk, prefer innovation, and are energized by change. 
3. Individuals who have highly ambitious goals have a better performance and output rate than those who don’t.

Goal setting can also restructure your brain, especially if the goals are highly emotional goals and/or ambitious goals. With highly emotional goals, you are more motivated to succeed and more likely to downplay the difficulty of achieving the goal. With ambitious goals, you are more motivated to succeed than if the goals are easy to achieve. 

Goal setting starts with you, the leader

Do you want your team to be excited about your plans for this year? Energized to work with you and be on your team? 

Great! What are you doing to become an even more effective leader so people want to be led by you?

Pick one area of your life to work on. Just one area will make a tremendous impact on you as a leader, whether that area is personal or professional.

A few years ago, a leader I know wanted to improve his health, so he started running a few times a week. Once he committed to carving out time for running and his health, the changes rippled through his work life. He is happier and more inspiring as a leader, works shorter days, and connects more deeply with his team. 

Find an accountability partner or create a small accountability group

I just met with a company leader. Her two direct reports were just finishing up a six month coaching engagement, and the leader wants to make sure the progress and growth continues for her and her direct reports. She told me that she decided to schedule monthly accountability meetings.

The leader’s goal for this year is to be more strategic and no longer mired in the day-to-day. She also needs to make sure her direct reports are running with their projects so she can focus on reaching big organizational goals. 

Every month, they will meet for 45 minutes to focus on goals. During the first meeting this month, each person will share their word of the year and goals for 2026. In subsequent meetings, each person will have 15 minutes to share their progress, challenges, and successes. And they will ask for help as needed.

Accountability is key to achieving goals, and it is even more effective if everyone creates milestones and schedules due dates.

Let’s say one of your goals is to be promoted to a specific position. You may have to take several steps to ensure this happens. Each step is a milestone. Write them down, and then schedule the tasks you need to complete to reach each milestone on your calendar.

Don’t forget to celebrate those achievements – yours and your team’s. During your team meetings, recognize their achievements. The more specific the praise, the more it will foster positive emotions, increase your connection, and improve their performance. 

Work with your team and other departments on organizational goals

If you haven’t yet, share organizational goals with your team, along with how you envision your team will help meet those goals. Then, ask them for input. Give them space to brainstorm and talk through their ideas. Maybe they’ll suggest different ways to achieve those goals. 

After you get input from your team, talk to the other leaders in your organization. Share your goals with them, and ask, “What can you and your team do to support our goals? And how can we support yours?”

Imagine the impact on your organization’s performance this year if every leader and team is working together to support each other. 

My favorite goal-setting tips  

In my nearly 40 years of working with leaders, I have learned a lot about what makes a goal motivating and achievable – and what doesn’t. When setting goals, I often remind leaders to keep these tips in mind:

Use positive language. “Build a team of people smarter than me” is much better than “Don’t hire the wrong people.”

Set performance goals over outcome goals. Let’s say your goal is to increase revenue by 15% this year. Your team goes above and beyond and increases sales by 25% – but one of your biggest clients filed for bankruptcy. You may miss revenue goals, but you can celebrate exceeding performance goals.

Make sure it’s your goal. Your goal must truly be your goal, not the organization’s goal. The same is true for your team. Your team will be much more effective if they’re working toward their individual goals, not yours or the organization’s. 

Let generative AI help improve your goal. Once you determine your goal, prompt a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to help you make it positive and performance-oriented. It might just have some suggestions you hadn’t thought of!

Consider goal-setting an agile reset for you and your team in 2026

If you had a really hard 2025, use goal-setting as an opportunity for an agile reset for you and your team. Ask yourself, “What do I want to accomplish this year?” 

I did this for myself, and that simple question brought my professional goal into focus. (I’m still working on my personal goal!)

If that question doesn’t help clarify your goals, a goal planning power grid presentation definitely will! We can do the presentation virtually or in person for you and your team. Depending on your needs, it could be as short as 30 minutes or up to 90 minutes. Contact us at info@winningwaysinc.com to learn more about it.