The Transformative Power of Good Goal Setting

From the Board to the department level, a better goal setting process that results in clearer goals can be a simple and effective tool to move the school forward

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Good goal! (See what I did there? Heh heh. For some reason, Unsplash kept feeding me images of targets, not goals.) Photo by ÁLVARO MENDOZA on Unsplash

I hope you are all enjoying the fresh excitement of back-to-school, whatever phase of back-to-school you’re in right now.

I am deep into drafting my article exploring how we might be able to make contemporary headship a more sustainable and fulfilling job. The topic has many complicated tentacles - being stuck in old mindsets that no longer fit the current moment; head search norms, including everything from board readiness and the deep groundwork that ideally happens to the position description (excuse me, the opportunity statement!) and appointment announcement and a central question of “how do you get to the heart of the matter in what a school needs in its next leader when the future is, at some level and for most schools, uncertain?”

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And one routine topic that kept bubbling up to the surface was how schools set goals - institutional goals, head of school goals, board goals, but also, but how do all the leaders in the school proceed with setting goals that promote forward movement? Given the time of year, I thought it might be more helpful to do a shortish article on that topic. (And I think this headship article is going to end up being a multi-part one. Stay tuned!)

So for your start-of-school planning pleasure, below are five pitfalls in goal setting and four thoughts on how to create goals that are meaningful and get to the heart of the matter. (Plus - a quick summary of SMART goals.)