SETTING GOALS

FOR SUCCESS
The Importance of Goals

 Setting Goals helps trigger new

behaviors, helps guides your focus
and helps you sustain that
momentum in life.
 Goals also help align your focus and
promote a sense of self-mastery. In the
end, you can’t manage what you don’t
measure and you can’t improve upon
something that you don’t properly
manage. Setting goals can help you do
all of that and move.
 We will also look at how goal setting
can lead to greater success and
performance. Setting goals not only
motivate us, but can also improve our
mental health and our level of personal
and professional success.
Bandura’s Self-
Efficacy
 Psychologist Albert Bandura
has defined self-efficacy as
people’s beliefs in their
capabilities to exercise control
over their own functioning and
over events that affect their lives.
One’s sense of self-efficacy can
provide the foundation for
motivation, well-being, and
personal accomplishment.
People beliefs in their efficacy are developed
by four main sources of influence, including

I.Mastery Experiences
“Mastery experiences are the most influential source of
efficacy information because they provide the most
authentic evidence of whether one can muster whatever it
takes to succeed. Success builds a robust belief in one’s
personal efficacy. Failures undermine it, especially if
failures occur before a sense of efficacy is firmly
established” (Bandura, 1977).
II. Vicarious Experiences

Bandura (1977) posits that “Seeing people similar

to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises
observes beliefs that they too possess the
capabilities to master comparable activities to
succeed.”
III. Social Persuasion

Receiving positive verbal feedback while

undertaking a complex task persuades a person to
believe that they have the skills and capabilities to
succeed.
IV. Emotional States

However, Bandura (1977) states “It is not the sheer

intensity of emotional and physical reactions that
is important but rather how they are perceived and
interpreted. People who have a high sense of
efficacy are likely to view their state of affective
arousal as an energizing facilitator of performance,
whereas those who are beset by self-doubts regard
their arousal as a debilitator.”
 Building Self-Efficacy

“People’s belief about their abilities have a

profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a
fixed property; there is a huge variability in how
you perform, people who have a sense of self-
efficacy bounce back from failure, they approach
things in terms of how to handle them rather than
worrying about what can go wrong” (Bandura,
1977).
 Emphasize Peer Modeling

Learning from examples set by those around you

happens at any age.
 Seek Feedback

The problem with understanding feedback is that

some people tend to believe that getting no
feedback is the same as being told that one is
doing their job well.
 Encourage Participation

Participation tends to be essential in any work

environment, it encourages the person to be active
and engaged, great qualities in someone that are
usually influential in a person’s levels of self-
efficacy.
Allow people to make their own choices
 Another important reason to emphasize self-
accountability making one’s own choices and
decisions allows them to make their own mistakes
and most importantly gives them the opportunity to
learn from them.
 Dweck’s Mindset
(Growth VS Fixed)
 Carol Susan Dweck is an
American psychologist. She
is the Lewis and Virginia
Eaton Professor of
Psychology at Stanford
University. Dweck is known
for her work on the mindset
psychological trait.
 Growth Mindset

A person with a growth mindset finds freedom in their

thoughts and beliefs. They understand that certain people
have special talents and that intelligence varies from
person to person, but it’s increased with effort and hard
work.
They take joy in the learning process that comes from
seeking new information, forming new strategies and
taking inspiration from others. They embrace difficulties
and challenges as a means to develop new skills and
grow.
 Fixed Mindset

A person with a fixed mindset is constrained by their

beliefs and thoughts. They believe people are born with
special talents and every person has different abilities and
intelligence that cannot get better with time, persistence
and effort.
They think of failures as a validation of their lack of
intelligence and their limited abilities that prevents them
from achieving their goals. They give up easily with the
fear of failure and a belief that they cannot improve.
 Five effective strategies to shift
fixed mindset to a growth mindset
Choose to tell yourself a different story

 There’s a lot of power in the story we tell ourselves. When we come across
hard problems or difficult situations, how we interpret and react to them is
based on our story. Our actions are nothing but a manifestation of our
beliefs.

First step, make a choice and shift the language you use.
Instead of telling yourself,
*I am not good at it
*I can’t do it
*I do not have the ability to learn
Choose to say,
*I can do better
*I can do it
*I want to try and not give up
 Set Learning goals as opposed to
Performance Goals

Focusing on the process as opposed to the

outcome helps we look for small continuous
improvements that add up over a period of time.
By shifting to learning, we can consciously choose
a path in which hard work, effort, deliberate
practice and persistence will be the key to
success.
 Capitalize on your failures

Failures teach us what success can’t. Instead of

running away from failures and giving up when
faced with a setback, you can take advantage of
your failures by reviewing them identifying what
did not work and then devising a plan to correct
your mistakes.
 Choose Goldilocks tasks for continuous
improvement

Goldilocks tasks are activities that are neither too

easy nor too difficult, just a little over your current
abilities. They provide a perfect opportunity to step
outside your comfort zone without leading to
anxiety. By investing in Goldilocks tasks, you can
set up a path for continuous improvement by slowly
building upon your current abilities.
 Be Consistent and Flexible

Be consistent in reflecting on your past behavior by asking

yourself some of these questions

How did you act last time?

Did you choose a fixed or a growth mindset?
What made you choose one mindset over the other?

By asking these questions on a regular basis and being

flexible to learn from them, you can identify your fixed
mindset trigger points and develop new strategies to adopt
a growth mindset.
When we push ourselves out of our comfort zone,
we give permission to our brain to form new
connections. With practice, these connections get
stronger and what seemed like an effort at first
may soon be trivial.
 Do not praise intelligence

Their intelligence and current abilities cannot be a

sign of what they can and can’t do
 Recognize and appreciate process,
engagement, strategies, perseverance, effort
and progress

These are strong indicators of their desire to learn

and grow
 Do not engage in false praise

Effort leads to no progress should not be praised.

Establish vulnerability not a sign of weakness,
but a powerful mechanism to realize their full
potential
 Provide them with Goldilocks task just above their
current abilities to enable them to realize benefits of
hard work and consistent effort.
 Locke’s Goal
Setting Theory
 In 1960’s, Edwin Locke put
forward the Goal-Setting
theory of motivation. This
theory states that goal setting
is essentially linked to task
performance. It states that
specific and challenging goals
along with appropriate
feedback contribute to higher
and better task performance.
 Advantages of Goal-Setting theory

Is a technique used to raise incentives for

employees to complete work quickly and effectively.

Leads to better performance by increasing

motivation and efforts, but also through increasing
and improving the feedback quality.
 Clarity

Your goal should be clear and well-defined

 A sense of Challenge

Your goal should be achievable bur it should also

stretched you.
 Commitment

It seems obvious, but to successfully achieve your

goals you need to be fully committed to them. It is
the commitment that will keep you going when
you encounter obstacles along the way.
 Getting feedback

Regular reflection of your progress will help you to

stay on track, stay motivated and ensure that your
goals are still relevant.
 Managing Complexity

You don’t need to do everything all at once, whilst

a challenging task can be motivating and help you
focus, it’s important to give yourself the time and
space you need to work through complex task.
 Limitations of Goal Setting Theory

Very difficult and complex goals stimulate riskier

behavior.

Goal conflict has a detrimental effect on the

performance if it motivates incompatible action
drift.
THANK YOU…