Clearly, the purpose of setting goals in the Church context is to achieve the things we want for our organizations. But, while goal-setting is important, I think we need to be careful with how we carry out these instructions. To introduce this point, let me relate a personal story.
Mission Goal
During my mission, I served as a zone leader. Every transfer, the zone leaders and the assistants to the president met at the mission president’s home for a Mission Council Meeting. Up until one particular meeting, our mission had not set any mission-wide goals. In this meeting, one of our objectives was going to be to set a mission-wide goal. As missionaries, we quickly came to the consensus that we wanted to set a mission-wide baptism goal. So, the majority of our discussion revolved around the number of baptisms we wanted shoot for as a mission. Up until that time, our mission averaged just over 20 baptisms a month. So, being the gung-ho missionaries that we were, we set a goal for 50 baptisms during the following month. While I was in favor of setting a more “realistic” goal, we prayed about it and most people in the meeting felt good about the goal we had set.
Over the next transfer, this goal become a huge push across the mission. We were to fast, pray, and work diligently to obtain the goal, knowing that nothing stood in our way but our faith. And, it was my job as a zone leader to ensure that our zone pulled our weight in accomplishing this goal. Thus, every week, my companion and I were going to each district meeting and making lists of those closest to baptism and discussing how the missionaries teaching those people could get those people to be baptized before our goal deadline.
So, how did our mission do in terms of baptisms in relation to our goal? Well, we did not hit our goal of 50, but we did hit a mark that had not been reached in over 5 years, which was 30 baptisms.
One of the things that was initially interesting to me was how the missionaries in our zone responded to our results relative to our goal. While I think we were all a little proud that we outperformed our typical results, I found that some of the missionaries that did not contribute to the goal with a baptism were discouraged, thinking that their “faith” was not great enough. Even some of the zone leaders and assistants to the president at the following Mission Council Meeting expressed displeasure with our performance. Rather than celebrating our accomplishment, we decided that we wanted to double-down on our goal. So, we set a similar goal for the next month.
Again, we over-performed, relative to our typical averages, but we fell well short of our goal. I saw the same mixture of pride and discouragement amongst the missionaries within our zone.
For the next Mission Council Meeting, I was asked to give a training on goal-setting. I put a lot of thought and effort into the training, and I tried my best to seek the Spirit in preparing. Based upon my experience seeing the discouraged reactions of the missionaries in my zone, I personally felt inspired to slightly alter the topic away from goal setting to “the importance of trying our very best.” In this training, I suggested that we should not judge our success/failure on how we performed relative to our goal, but on whether or not we tried our best. After the training, my mission president, in a very kind way, expressed disapproval with my training, stating that rather than change a topic I was asked to speak on, it would be better for me to tell him I wasn’t comfortable giving a training on that particular topic.
In all honesty, ever since then, goal setting has been a bit of a sensitive subject for me, and one that I have thought about and struggled over. I have learned a lot about goal setting since then, and I would like to share with you some of the pros and cons of goal setting, particularly in a church environment. In doing so, I will point back to this example and the longer-term consequences of our goal setting and actions.
Pros of Goal Setting
Let me first start with the pros of goal setting. There are three primary pros of goals.
First, goals provide focus. Without clear goals, our attention and behaviors get directed to whatever is shiny or urgent at the moment. This usually means that we make small steps in a variety of directions, and often no or little meaningful progress is made. With clear goals, our attention and behaviors get directed toward a single outcome or small set of outcomes. Focusing on a single direction or small set of directions allows the group to make meaningful progress toward the chosen outcome.
Second, goals energize. We do not need goals for everything. But, if we want to accomplish something that is unlikely to come about through natural behaviors, then we need goals. As mentioned previously, goals will provide focus, but they will also provide focused energy. As a quick example, I like to run, but only for about 2.5 miles. Without a goal to run a marathon, I will never run a marathon. But, if I were to set a goal to run a marathon (key here is that I self-select to do so), that will energize me to go beyond what I naturally do.
Third, goals enhance persistence. Goals provide a standard against which people can continually compare their performance. Just having a standard increases the striving to attain the standard. We hate to be seen as failures, and we are likely to go to great lengths to not fail. This enhances persistence.
An essential aspect of effective goal setting, that I briefly mentioned, is the importance of self-selection. In order for a goal to provide focus, energize, and improve persistence, the individuals must own the goal for themselves. One of the best ways to get individuals to own a goal is to involve them in the selection of a goal. However, in my church experience, it is common for organization leaders (e.g., elders quorum president) to select a goal for the organization without any discussion with the members of the organization.
For example, in one elders quorum, the elders quorum president set a goal for each member of the quorum to go to the temple once a month. I am sure this was something he discussed with his presidency, but there was no discussion with the general body of the elders quorum. In other words, we were given a goal, instead of being able to select a goal. Now, I think the goal is a fine goal, but it did not provide the focus, energy, or persistence that what might have been the case if the members of the elders quorum were able to self-select the goal.
Cons of Goal Setting
There is one primary con of goal setting, and it is not to be underestimated, especially within a church context.
One of the primary teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ is to have an outward focus. But goals often incentivize us to look inward first and outward second. This means that while we generally set goals around helping others, when it comes to the fulfillment of those goals, we are generally more concerned about whether or not WE accomplish OUR goals than we are about helping others in a way that is best for them.
Let me give you a couple of examples. First, when I was a ward mission leader, we had two missionaries in our ward that were both ending their mission at the same time. So, they set a goal to have a baptism by the time they went home, which at the surface was about blessing someone’s life by helping them make sacred covenants with God. But, what ended up happening is that the missionaries were more concerned about THEMSELVES seeing someone baptized than they were about blessing someone’s life. This led them to pressure a woman to get baptized prior to when she was ready. Although she was approved through the proper channels (which were rushed at the direction of the missionaries), she never returned to church after her confirmation, which was the last Sunday those two missionaries were in the ward.
Second, going back to my mission goal example, we saw very similar things happening. While baptisms were up because of our goal setting, missionaries felt a lot of pressure to get people baptized prior to the goal deadline. This led to (1) most of the baptisms occurring on the last weekend of the goal, and (2) people being baptized prior to them being ready or properly socialized into their wards. Thus, although baptisms were up, retention was very poor.
In each of these instances, while the goals increased the focus, energy, and persistence of the missionaries, they also incentivized the missionaries to do what was best for THEM, and not necessarily what was best for the people they were working with.
This presents a very interesting paradox. On one side, the Church Handbooks suggest that the primary area where we should set goals is related to missionary work, retention, and activation. And, surely it is a positive thing to help people join the church, become more active, and to stay active participants. But, on the other side, goals associated with missionary work, retention, and activation often incentivizes the attention to be on whether or not WE accomplish our goals (i.e., success), and less on the people that we are actually trying to serve and bless.
The Challenge
Thus, the challenge becomes: How do we set goals that direct, energize, and enhance persistence, but at the same time help us to stay outward and do what is best for those we are serving?
From my experience, in order to effectively set goals within a church context, we need to realize that there are tradeoffs between being other-focused, specific, and time-bound. At best, we can have two of these options, and to illustrate the point, we can think of our goals like a clock-face, shown below.
As illustrated in the figure, a goal can be:
- 12 o’clock: Other-focused, but not specific or time-bound
- 2 o’clock: Other-focused and specific, but not time-bound
- 6 o’clock: Specific and time-bound, but not other-focused
Where we run into trouble is when we try to have goals that are other-focused, specific, AND time-bound. This was the problem with our mission goals. We tried to have all three. But, what ended up happening in practice is that the emphasis was on specific and time-bound, and other-focused fell to the wayside.
Thus, when we set goals within a church context, we should realize that we will only be able to successfully achieve two of these characteristics in our goals, and we should shoot for a combination of two of the three options that we consider to be the most important. Because we are in a church setting focused on serving and blessing others, it seems appropriate that we always strive to include being other-focused in our goal-setting. Here are a couple of examples:
- Other-focused & Specific (2 o’clock)
- Example: Help 10 individuals return to full activity in the church
- It is tempting to set a timeframe on a goal such as this. But, the instant we do, it will force other-focused to go out of focus. Instead, it is better to keep working toward the other-focused and specific goal without a timeframe. Then, when you accomplish the goal, whenever that happens to be, celebrate it.
- Other-focused & Time-bound (10 o’clock)
- Example: Help at least one individual get baptized by the end of the year
- This example goal is similar to the “set a date” technique. We identify an other-focused outcome and put a time commitment to it, but we do not place any specifics. We let the specifics work themselves out. The instant we put specifics on it (e.g., five baptisms or a certain person), the other-focus goes out the door and we care less about blessing someone’s life and more about the numbers or our personal accomplishments.
- Example: Help at least one individual get baptized by the end of the year
- Example: Help 10 individuals return to full activity in the church
While we could set goals that are specific and time-bound, in practice, it will often create internal conflict in a church context. Let me give you an example:
- Specific & Time-bound (6 o’clock)
- Example: Have 80% home teaching by the end of the month
- While this may be well-intended, it is a goal that becomes clearly about the numbers and not about the people being home-taught (although there may be some benefits there). This makes members feel like “projects,” which is the last thing we want members to feel like. In other words, when we try to make a goal that is other-focused, specific, and time-bound, it is often the “other-focused” aspect of the goal that is neglected.
- Example: Have 80% home teaching by the end of the month
Conclusion
It is safe to say that church leaders are encouraged to set goals. And, I personally like the idea of goals because they help us focus our attention and make progress toward a positive end result. The alternative is drifting where the winds or sea take the person, group, or ward.
But, and here is a fairly big “but,” if goals are not set appropriately within the church, they can have negative collateral damage for those the goals were originally intended to bless.
Thus, to set proper goals within a church context, it is important to recognize that of the three characteristics of goal-setting discussed here (“other-focused,” “specific,” and “time-bound”), we generally can only effectively fulfill two of the three characteristics. Thus, in a church context, our goals are going to be most beneficial if they are either:
- Other-focused and specific, or
- Other-focused and time-bound
If we set goals that involve being specific and time-bound (which is often a recommended practice in the goal-setting community; e.g., SMART goals), such goals will incentivize us to be self-focused, and to engage in practices that may not be the best for those that we are serving.
In all, I hope that this article will help you set goals that truly bless the lives of those you serve.
In the comments, and to further help church leaders and future readers, feel free to share what has worked and what hasn’t worked related to goal setting in your ward or organization.
Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D. is a cutting-edge leadership development author, researcher, and consultant. He helps organizations vertically develop their leaders primarily through a focus on mindsets. Ryan is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author of “Success Mindsets: The Key to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work, & Leadership” and “The Elevated Leader: Leveling Up Your Leadership Through Vertical Development”. He is also a leadership professor at the College of Business and Economics at California State University-Fullerton.
Our stake has a goal of achieving a certain number of baptisms this year. That means our ward will probably have a similar, smaller, goal. Both of these goals run counter to your recommendation.
As EQP, as I consider what my quorum needs, I’m asking, “Whether or not we achieve the goal, how will working towards a goal help us become more like Christ?” and I’m also wondering how I can keep the focus on becoming more like Christ. But after reading your article, that question may be too inward-focused, and maybe I need to be asking, “how can working towards this goal help us to bless the lives of those around us?”
Thanks for the food for thought.
Considering the other momentous news of the day, with the passing of Pres. Monson, you may need to re-post this later. It’s a good read. 🙂
Adam, thank you for the comment and example. A couple thoughts come to mind about your post. First, I wonder how much buy-in you will get from your elders since they likely did not have much part in self-selecting the goal, and what you can do to improve the level of buy-in. Second, I think your head and heart is in the right place when you think about how you can use the goal to become more like Christ. But, in an ideal situation, you would probably want to work the opposite way and ask, ‘what goals should we set to help us become more like Christ?’
The biggest issue with most goals, in and out of the church, is the Attainable piece of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound). Even though they will surely meet it, for a Latin American mission to set a goal of 1 baptism for year is technically not Attainable, because it relies on someone who you don’t control to do something. To be Attainable, a goal has to be something you can do in spite of whatever may or may not be going on around you.
Another way to look at it is that a SMART goal should be something focused on your inputs or actions, not on the outcomes. You measure what you do, and that is how you show you are successful, if you do what you said you would.
The Relevant part of SMART is what most people incorrectly set as their main goal – the outcome. You hope if you visit 20 inactives that 3 inactives will come to church. You hope if you work hard and pray and street contact for 60 hours that you will have 50 baptisms. The inputs you work with are relevant, because you think they will have an effect on others. So put any crazy outcome numbers you want in the Relevant column, but that is not the actual goal itself. The goal is something specific and measurable that you have control over.
The other-focused part you are talking about is the relevance, not the attainability of your goal. The work you are doing is relevant, because you think it will help others. But the goal can only be what you say you’re going to do to reach out to others, not whether they respond in the way you expect them to.
Great thoughts. They lead me ponder a question that I would be interested in your opinion on. The handbooks state that we should set goals around baptisms, activation, and retention. Those seem to all be things that are not “attainable” by your definition (which I agree with). So, if you had the ability, would you change the handbooks related to this topic? If so, what would be your suggested change?
I think a key element to remember in setting goals for baptism, retention, and activation is that we are verbalizing an inward commitment and letting our Heavenly Father know we are committed. I have come to understand that stating these goals and praying about them allows the Lord to use us to find those whose hearts and minds are being prepared. While these goals are based on someone else’s agency, how would they be given that choice without our making the goals, reaching out to them, and helping them to make that choice? I suppose all that ties into setting numbers but not making them time-bound.
In order to be cautious and not create baptisms of those who weren’t ready or turn someone into a project, we must remain prayerful and be willing to accept failure on our side, and recognize at the same time that agency is winning.
I appreciate this article and this discussion as I am preparing for our first Sunday council meeting in Relief Society. Guiding the sisters to make goals and feel ownership of them is very unfamiliar territory to me.
Bethany, I am glad to hear that you found the article helpful. As it seems you may have a lesson about goal-setting coming up, I think it is important to point out that my article was specifically about goals leaders set in the church (e.g., baptism, reactivation, home/visiting teaching). I think that personal goals are a different matter. Depending on the personal goals, I think that it is just fine for them to be inward focused (e.g., working out every day), and thus for personal goals, it is important that they are both specific AND time-bound.
No, I was not referring to a specific lesson I’m planning on goal setting. I was referring to the new curriculum for Relief Society, Elders Quorum, and High Priests in which we have been asked to council together on the 1st Sunday of every month. If you are not familiar with it, I recommend taking a look. Your article should be helpful to many who are preparing for their first council meeting this Sunday.
Your comments align with Elder Oaks’ teachings about goal setting from his talk on Timing (BYU Devotional, January 29, 2002):
“In the summer of 2001, Sister Oaks and I were in Manaus, Brazil. I spoke to about 100 missionaries in that great city on the Amazon. As I stood to speak, I was prompted to put aside some notes I usually use on such occasions and substitute some thoughts on the importance of timing—some of the scriptures and principles I have been discussing here.
I reminded the missionaries that some of our most important plans cannot be brought to pass without the agency and actions of others. A missionary cannot baptize five persons this month without the agency and action of five other persons. A missionary can plan and work and do all within his or her power, but the desired result will depend upon the additional agency and action of others.
Consequently, a missionary’s goals ought to be based upon the missionary’s personal agency and action, not upon the agency or action of others.”
Great quote! Thank you
Ryan, good thoughts as per usual. I’m wondering if you’d read the Power of Everyday Missionaries and the author’s thoughts on goal-setting. I was very pumped up by the thoughts, but I’ve never been a goal-oriented person (and not a very competitive person, either–I wonder if there’s a relationship?). Do you have thoughts as to whether being goal oriented is a trait that some folks have and some don’t or whether it’s a learned behavior?
Good question Chris. It has been a while since I have read the Power of Everyday Missionaries, so I had to pick it up again. Clayton Christensen’s chapter on goal-setting related to missionary work was largely about his experiences with the set a date program, which to my perspective, involves an other-focused and time-bound goal (not specific). And, his goal involves a focus on someone taking the discussions, something more in his control as opposed to someone getting baptized.
Regarding your question dealing with goal-orientation as a trait, I think our traits play a role, but there are other individual attributes that play a role. For example, in the book Now, Discover Your Strengths, the Gallup organization designed an assessment to allow people to identify their top strengths, with strengths dealing with how our brains our wired. Everybody has different strengths and some people have strengths that lend themselves more to goal-setting than others. For example, my top strengths are responsibility, focus, achiever, competition, and futuristic. I think all of these strengths lend themselves to me being a goal-setter, but goal-setting is something that I have gone back and forth with.
I actually think that the personal attribute that most strongly affects our goal-orientation is our mindsets. Mindsets are our mental fuel filters that guide how we think, learn, and operate. For example, some people have a mindset that stress is a good thing, while other people have a mindset that stress is a bad thing. Their mindset around stress has been found to predict their performance and engagement on the job. The interesting thing about mindsets is that they can be rather easy to change (most experiments on mindsets deal with 3-minute video clips), and that once changed, they become fairly stable. There are two primary mindsets that I think influence our goal-orientation more than our personality or strengths (quite stable personal attributes). One is a difference between growth and fixed mindsets. When someone has a growth mindset, they see their abilities as things that they can change. When they have a fixed mindset, they see their abilities as being fixed (Carol Dweck has a fantastic book on this called Mindsets). People that have a fixed mindset are going to be less likely to set goals because why set goals if they can’t change and there is a high likelihood of failure (people with fixed mindsets really want to be seen as smart and successful and are less likely to take on challenges where they might fail). Another set of mindsets is promotion and prevention. Someone with a promotion mindset seeks to win. They have a destination in mind and they seek to make progress toward their destination. Someone with a prevention mindset seeks not to lose. They don’t really care about a destination, rather they just want things to run smoothly. People that are promotion focused are going to be much more inclined to set goals.
Here is an awesome TedTalk on mindsets: https://youtu.be/0tqq66zwa7g. Also, here is a little video that I put together on the same topic: https://youtu.be/qr6FKbmoxLA.
Wow, this is one of the best articles I’ve read on goalsetting. Thanks for sharing your mission experience, and specifically your diagram on other focus, time bound, and specific. Other peoples comments are amazing as well.
As I contemplate goalsetting, I’m realizing it’s much more of an art, and in some cases goals may not be as built out, and as well defined as we would like, specifically when it comes to specific outcomes. But we can control our efforts, and Systems we use to encourage a certain end result. I do consulting and training in this area with small business owners, and many times people struggle because they want to fill out the smart goal template completely, where many times I think we should be OK getting to 70 or 80%.
This is a great discussion, hopefully this will bump to the top of the discussion list as many wards/stakes are having/or had the “What are our goals” discussions.
Ryan, great article and something I have wrestled with in various church callings since my mission.
What do you think about measuring efforts instead of results in our goals?
For example, instead of measuring how many people were baptised, we measured the amount of invitations we extended? It then takes the agency of others out of the equation. We don’t beat ourselves up when they say no because we have done our part by inviting them.
Would be interested to know if this is something you have considered before.
I think that there’s a gaping hole that exists here: You can’t set goals that are dependent on other people’s decisions.
It would never occur to me to set a goal for a number of baptisms, because getting baptized is someone else’s decision, not mine. If I set a goal for someone else to accomplish something, then while there are things I can do to hopefully facilitate that decision, the end result is out of my hands. In my opinion, that’s a recipe for failure.
As a writer, I never set goals to have a certain number of pieces accepted for publication in a month or a year, because I have no control over which of my pieces will be selected for submission. Instead, I set goals for the number of submissions I’ll make, because I know statistically, the more I submit, the more likely it is that I’ll be published. If I leave the accomplishment of a goal in the hands of others, then if I fail, I’m likely to become bitter and place blame on them. But if I keep it in my own hands, the only person I have to blame is myself. And I get to celebrate when I do reach my goals, knowing I accomplished exactly what I set out to do, regardless of circumstances beyond my control.
It makes much more sense to me to set specific, measurable goals that I can complete as an individual (or that a group of individuals can work to complete together). If my ultimate hope is for others to be baptized, then I can set goals for the number of people I talk to in a day, or the number of times I bear my testimony in a week. I can set more specific goals for how I’m going to interact with an investigator. But I can’t set a goal for them to act, because that is out of my control.
Maybe this is a faithless approach- maybe if I prayerfully tried to set a goal, the Lord would inspire me to set one that is in keeping with what He knows about the hearts of His children. I don’t know. But from my experience, the best way to reach a goal you’ve set is to eliminate as many variables as possible, especially the actions of others.
“I think that there’s a gaping hole that exists here: You can’t set goals that are dependent on other people’s decisions.”
Bingo!
If you haven’t already, pick up a copy of former Area Seventy Clayton M. Christensen’s The Power of Everyday Missionaries and study his insights on goal setting. He makes the case that we should focus ONLY on that which we can control. You can also search YouTube for “We Succeed When We Invite.”
His insights completely transformed our ward mission when combined with the outwardly focused ideas in this article.
This is a GREAT article, but the author misses the mark in regard to “time-bound” being incompatible with an outward focus. It appears he has been introduced to the work of The Arbinger Institute (Leadership and Self-Deception, The Outward Mindset, etc.), but as we continue to study Dr. C. Terry Warner’s breakthrough in the human sciences (Arbinger’s founder), we will eventually come to see how we can–and should–set outwardly focused timebound goals. In other words, there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In fact, this is very similar to another false dichotomy where managers and leaders think they HAVE to choose between “people” and “results.” meaning you can’t have both. Dr. Warner’s discovery resolves this “apparent” dilemma as well.
And no, I have no commercial relationship, affiliate or otherwise, with the Arbinger Institute. Just a fan.
Just came across this article. I was so grateful to read it and the comments. I’ve struggled to figure out why I have such a bad taste in my mouth for missionary work. I served in Spain and, by the time I left, the few people I had seen baptized had already faded from activity. I was just at a stake leadership training where the focus was missionary work and I instantly tuned out. It was precisely the combination of those three things that made it an inward focused, frustrating experience. Thank you so much for helping me reprocess this in terms of having an outward focus. I suppose that’s why they’re now pushing the ‘Love, share, invite’ message.