Is goal setting enough?

I was talking to 'Mike', a youth athlete, about their future goals. Like all well-schooled modern athletes, Mike had written his goals down and placed them on his bedroom wall. The list was admirable: make this team, get to this tournament, represent my country, etc. Mike had already achieved several goals and had proof that goal-setting works. It was a kind of magic.

However, recently Mike failed to achieve one of his goals. And he realised that there was more to the goal-setting game. Mike could easily have written down a new goal - overcome my recent obstacle. But he didn't. Instead, Mike scribbled across his old goal: pressure with more intensity, scan before receiving, explode on contact, rehydrate.

No one had told Mike to do this. But somehow, Mike had re-imagined his goal as a set of behaviours. They were verbs, not nouns. Mike had reasoned that it was behaviours that would scaffold him towards his goal.

Mike taught me an important lesson. Goals are important. They represent our hopes and dreams. They are easy to develop. But everyday behaviours make goals happen. Everyday behaviours are hard and often boring. It is important that we pay more attention to how we make these behaviours happen.

People struggle to focus on developing the right behaviours because it is much more exciting to luxuriate in end-state thinking. I recently worked with an experienced leadership consultant who observed that leaders often point to the summit when people require climbing instructions. That is the guilty flaw of the pseudo-transformational leader who is "all steak and no sizzle". James Clear once said: "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems". Your systems are your daily behaviours that make things happen.

To sum up. Goal setting, on its own, cannot make stuff happen. It is important and motivating, but behaviour monitoring must support goal setting. If you are looking to kick start some better behaviour today. Here are a few questions you could ask yourself as you put on your pyjamas. Did I act today like the person I envisaged? If so, how can I maintain that? If not, what should I do differently? There is something better than goal setting; it's called being honest about how you behave daily. And that's a bit frightening.