Share individual goals with team members to create trust.
What happens if we share our individual professional goals with our colleagues?
Setting goals for team members is one of the primary responsibilities of a people manager. From when I started my career as a team member until when I had become a people leader, we had always been coached to keep our goals confidential, only to be shared with our line manager or relevant human resource personnel.
Popular wisdom has always justified keeping our individual goals well guarded, as the right thing to do. But this popular wisdom was quite uprooted when my team decided to do things differently.
What I share below is something I experienced with my team and would highly encourage you to try, if you already haven’t.
‘Can we share our goals with each other in the team?’ asked one of my senior team members.
That was quite a radical idea.
‘OK, so how do we propose we go about it?’ I wanted to ensure I understand my team’s proposal.
‘Simple’ he said. ‘We all get into a room and just talk about what we want to achieve and do in the short and medium term’.
‘And why would we do that’ came naturally from me. (This was one of our team’s principles — to understand the reasoning before we did anything).
‘We think we will be able to support each other better if we knew what we wanted to achieve in our career’ pat came the response.
I suggested ‘How about requesting my manager in this discussion as well?’
At this point, as the team manager, I didn’t know exactly how this exercise would turnout. I told myself — ‘Boy, this is the opportunity where the team feels comfortable to share their personal goals, if nothing this becomes the breeding ground to enhance trust within the team’.
On the day:
- We all gathered in a meeting room and before starting we asked each other if anyone felt uncomfortable sharing their goals.
- We enforced the idea, that it is okay to share only what the individuals want to share.
- At this point, I didn’t set any expectations from the team and I wanted to let it flow organically and naturally.
- A bit of small talk to warm up and we went into the meat of it. I ensured the discussion was not made uncomfortably formal and people had the freedom to speak their minds.
- They talked about what they are passionate about, their reasoning and some of their blockers (some technical but some environmental, organisational, emotional and behavioural). This was gold.
Why am I recommending you try this as an experiment with your team:
- Clarity and alignment of goals across three layers, me, my team and my manager. At that time we still weren’t setting goals using OKRs but this exercise helped us understand the success measures/goals of our senior manager there by aligning our goals substantially to the organisation goals, within the microcosm of the team. While in most organisations team goals are cascaded top down, in this case there was a discussion about my goals and my senior managers goals, which created opportunity to ask questions and clarify. This has a direct impact on trust quotient.
- Team members organically agreed to help each other. The Sr QA in our team wanted to code more and be a better white box tester and eventually would like to become a developer. Two of the Sr Devs in my team, took on the responsibility to mentor the Sr QA.
Eventually they collaborated to create a mini training material for her to study and train.
- The team took accountability for their goals and behaviour. One of the full-stack engineers who had joined our team knowing that we did mostly back-end development, mentioned she wants to be in the team but would like to do more front-end work. Our team really didn’t have much front-end work. But knowing this team member's goals, the others naturally allowed her to work on any front-end build stories that came by, the other full stack developers started mentoring her and giving her the space to practice front-end coding.
These were behaviours that were developing naturally and positively.
- Increasing trust among each other. I did mention that given I had some background in product management and due to my interest, I would eventually like to move into product management. Hence, I would spend some time with the PMs in/around our teams, and participate in some of those meetings/deliverables without affecting my work.
Once I shared this with my team, we had an enhanced sense of trust. Now my team knows my goals and why I would be spending some time with the product managers/other teams.
- Psychological Safety: Since the team was discussing within themselves, there was an air of psychological safety. They confided in the people they asked for help. External studies have shown that haring your goals with people you trust and whom you think are experts in that area helps you gain more from their advice and achieve your goals more.
- Opportunity to know your team better: Being the line manager, I was aware of the individual goals of my team members, but as they talked passionately and openly about their goals, I got a perspective that I hadn’t had in my one-on-ones.
What enabled us to do this experiment?
1. Trust within the team is paramount
Typically we are coached not to share our goals assuming a multitude of reasons:
- This could induce competition within the team members for success
- People may feel being judged if the goal is not achieved.
- Feeling overwhelmed to prove that we have achieved the goal as it has been shared.
Not that we lived in paradise, but there was an abundant sense of security and helpfulness within my team. To mentor and coach, each other came as second nature.
2. Open to new ideas and experimentation
We were always open to new ideas. Every time someone came up with a new idea, we stuck it on our team idea board — debated it and if the team felt the idea was worth it, we always said ‘What stops us from experimenting?’ This was sort of our team motto.
3. Freedom to be creative
My senior manager gave me enough freedom to be creative and do things differently.
4. Participation of my senior manager
Participation of my senior manager in this discussion endorsed what we were doing but the fact that she shared her goals with the team brought in more transparency and alignment.
Further Reading and References:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/05/why-sharing-goals-with-someone-helps-you-achieve-them.html
