7 Ways To Help Team Goals Stick

Written By Debut Group
 

Scientifically-backed ways to keep your team motivated and engaged

The start of a new year always inspires change. You’ve got exciting plans for your team this year. But how will you motivate them towards these goals?

Science shows that the steepest drop-off in New Year’s resolutions occurs in the first 7 days¹. To help your team push past this tempting offramp, we’re introducing 7 scientifically-backed ways to help your team stick to their 2023 goals.

 
 

Start fresh!

Motivation is naturally highest at the start of a new temporal cycle. It’s literally called The Fresh Start Effect² wherein a temporal landmark such as a special calendar date can elicit a boost in motivation. So as your team returns from the holidays, they are more motivated and ready than ever. Don’t miss this window! 

 
 
 

Set clear steps.  

The more specific the action steps towards a goal, the more likely behavior change will take place. Behavioral science refers to these as ‘implementation intentions’³ and they show us how we’ll achieve the steps to reach our goals. Consider breaking a goal down by what/where/when to make it easy for your team to act. The more specific the steps, the better.

 

Get your foot in the door.

Beginning with small, easy to achieve steps, helps to encourage acting on subsequent steps towards the greater goal. This is based on the ‘commitment bias’⁴. Once we make a choice, we are more likely to make additional similar choices, perpetuating more goal-directed behaviors. Once your team starts, they won’t want to stop. Start small to go big.

 
 
 

Seeing is believing.

The closer a goal appears to be, the more intensely it will be pursued. Progress towards a goal that is made visible, trackable, or measurable in some way offers a motivational boost, especially as you get closer. This is what behavioral science calls a ‘goal gradient’⁵. By showing your team their ongoing progress, they’ll be more motivated to forge on. 

 

Make it a group thing.  

Sharing action and progress updates with other participants provides social recognition as well as encouragement that increases motivation. The science-ier term is ‘social accountability’⁶. We are more likely to stick to our goals if we are accountable to another person. Create channels and cadences for your team to share and cheer each other on. And doesn’t it just feel better knowing you’re in it together?

 
 
 

Look how far we’ve come.  

Whenever there’s a tendency to give up, remind your team how much has been invested. The ‘sunk cost fallacy’⁷ has a way of encouraging us to keep going due to how far we’ve already gone. Surely, we can’t abandon ship now, so much hard work has been put in, we’re almost there! 

 

Seek progress, not perfection

All-or-nothing mindsets are a cognitive bias⁸ that lead to abandoning goals as soon as there’s a mistake, because we are focusing on perfection, and not progress. Remind your team that as long as they’re moving forward, they’re headed in the right direction.

 
 

And there you have it! 7 ways to helping your team stick to their goals. For more on engaging your teams and working through behavior change, talk to us. We’d love to help.

Happy Goal Reaching!

 
Debut Group
Previous

Summer Reading List
Next

5 Ways to Wind Down for the Holidays