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Career development How To Set Goals as a Team: Steps and Examples

How To Set Goals as a Team: Steps and

Examples
By Indeed Editorial Team
Updated May 26, 2022
Published December 12, 2019

A team brings together a variety of experiences and skill sets. Setting goals as a team helps
an office community unite and solve problems as a group. Team-specific goals give
everyone something to work towards.

In this article, we define team goals, discuss how to set goals for a team and explore some
examples.

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What are team goals?

Team goals are the objectives or milestones that a team commits to working toward
together. Team goals often measure points in a process or develop skills across an
organization.
Team goals can also help employees feel more invested in the company’s objectives since
they contribute to developing them. Setting goals as a team gives everyone the opportunity
to display and develop their skills and contribute their unique experiences.

How to set team goals

Setting goals as a team is a process that requires collaboration and communication. In
order to help your team invest in these goals, you need to find a balance between
maximizing individual skill sets and finding the best way to achieve your ultimate goal.

With these needs in mind, here are some strategies you can use to set goals as a team:

1. Keep company goals in mind

It’s a good idea for your team goals to contribute to broader company goals. Before you set
your own team goals, ensure that the team understands the company’s objectives. For
instance, the company wants to improve customer acquisition rates, which is why you
decide to design advertisements that will drive more website traffic. This goal contributes to
the company’s objectives and shows how you helped the company succeed.

2. Use the SMART system

Before setting any goals, ensure that your team understands the SMART criteria for
setting goals:

Specific: The more specific your goal, the more focused your efforts can be and the more
likely you are to succeed. For example, the goal to “improve clickthrough rate by 25%” is
more specific than “improve clickthrough rate.” That specificity can better help you
measure your progress and create more actionable plans.

Measurable: Tracking your progress toward meeting goals is much easier if your goals
are measurable. A measurable goal is also easier to divide into smaller, more manageable
milestones that individuals and your team can monitor. For example, you can measure
your progress in increments toward a 25% improvement, but measuring progress toward
an ambiguous goal to improve can be far more challenging.

Attainable: Your team goals should be realistic to achieve within the appropriate time.
You will be more efficient with your time and resources if your goal is attainable.

Relevant: While your team may be motivated to address many issues, relevant team
goals guarantee that you are resolving the most pressing issues and that your team has
the resources and skills to accomplish the goal.
 Time-related: In order to be productive and efficient with your time and resources, team
goals should have clear deadlines.

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3. Generate an action plan

Setting a goal is only the beginning of the team goal-setting process. It’s advisable to also
create an action plan that your team can follow as they work towards their goal. Creating an
action plan requires your goal to be measurable so that you can establish clear milestones.
An effective action plan also involves guaranteeing that your team has the resources
necessary to fulfill their responsibilities, such as software, equipment or additional training.

4. Allow team members to create their own goals

You and your teammates can become far more invested in team goals by setting your own
individual goals . Once you have set your team goal, create individual milestones that take
into account your own skills, experience and resources. As your team develops these goals,
remember the SMART framework so you can build achievable and actionable goals for each
member.

Related: Ultimate Guide to Strategic Planning

5. Help your team with their individual responsibilities

While your team may share a group objective, each team member should have assigned
responsibilities and individual milestones.

You can help your team throughout the process by:

Scheduling regular one-on-one meetings with other teammates or with team leadership
to discuss the goal, your progress and any questions or concerns

Providing advice and individualized training on how each teammate can fulfill their
responsibilities

Working with team members to develop individual milestones that help them track their
own progress in addition to the team’s

Delivering regular feedback on elements of your progress that are working well and
aspects that need improvement

Promising, both in word and in action, that you are willing to listen to the concerns of
teammates and to answer questions

6. Follow up
After your deadline has passed, follow up with team members to celebrate successes and
prepare for future goal-setting. If the team accomplished its goals, reward them and
recognize your colleagues’ efforts. These rewards may take the form of recognition in a
meeting, a gift from the company or a team lunch.

Following up in one-on-one meetings can also allow you to gain feedback on what worked
ll d h ld b d b h h h f h l
well and what could be done better throughout the process of achieving goals.

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Examples of team goals

Team goals can vary widely depending on your company objective or the needs of your
team. Here are a few examples of team goals that you can adapt to your unique
circumstances:

Improve efficiency
Many teams may aim to improve the productivity of their department and make better use
of their resources. Goals to improve efficiency are especially common in teams that are
involved in labor-intensive work, such as production and assembly. Efficiency goals can be
used in any setting, however.

For example, your team wants to start submitting advertising campaigns ahead of the
deadline to impress your clients. This means that your team needs to work efficiently. Come
together and set a goal to submit your campaign a week in advance of the deadline. Then
you set other measurable milestones to help meet that goal, such as submitting a draft of
the campaign a week from your initial goal-setting meeting.

Generate ideas
C ll b i i ld b id h ki i di id ll B f hi
Collaboration can yield better ideas than working individually. Because of this, many teams
set a goal to generate ideas with another project or task in mind. Generating ideas as a

team allows multiple perspectives to contribute to solving a problem, and creates an

environment for discussion that can lead to more detailed goals.

For example, a marketing agency has acquired a new client, and that client wants to
rebrand their products. The team’s eventual goal is to help this client refresh their logo,
their tone and strategy. They may start with the smaller goal of brainstorming some
foundational ideas, then narrowing those ideas until they have a specific direction.

Build morale
While some team goals affect the day-to-day operations or objectives of the company,
others aim to improve the team itself. Your team may collaborate to find ways to build the
morale of team members. Maybe you want to set a goal to have activities once a week that
give employees more time to interact and work together. These types of goals allow team
members to network with one another, get to know each other, practice communicating
and improve teamwork through a variety of community-building activities.

For example, you want to improve relationships among your team, so you set a
collaborative goal to spend more time interacting. After some deliberation, you decide that
you will go to lunch one day a week as a team, and at another point in the week, one
member of the team will lead the rest in a short team-building exercise.

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