Setting Goals

By: Dan Gould & Cliff Mallett

Originally Published in: Sport Coaches Handbook

Setting clear goals helps coaches and athletes achieve success. Goals offer direction and purpose for our day-to-day activities; in addition, by providing tangible objectives, they enhance our motivation. Clear goals also help us determine whether we are going in the right direction at a given point in time.

Goals can be classified according to either their content or their time frame. In terms of content, they can be categorized as follows:

Dreams. Dreams, and ambitions, get us out of bed in the morning, bring smiles to our faces, and light up our eyes. They may also help us pull through difficult times by reminding us of our ultimate objective - for example, a college baseball player who dreams of playing in The Show. By themselves, however, dreams and ambitions rarely get the job done.
Outcome. Outcome goals focus on the end result of a particular 'performance - prevailing in a game, race, or fight; winning a medal or championship; or simply finishing in a particular position. As with dreams, outcome goals do not achieve much by themselves. Nonetheless, they are sometimes necessary because they focus our efforts on a particular target. For instance, they help coaches and athletes analyze the components of performance that eventually lead to success. These elements give rise to the next category - performance goals.
Performance. Performance goals set the standard that must be met in order to achieve outcome goals. Thus they allow coaches and athletes to translate outcome goals into specific, tangible objectives and measuring sticks. For instance, in order to have a chance of winning the 100-meter Olympic final, you need a time of about 9.7 seconds. Thus setting performance goals is a fundamental step for coaches in planning how to help their athletes reach desired standards. It also informs the development of process goals.
Process. Process goals help coaches break desired performance into its key components. This analysis enables them to plan training cycles and sessions around specific, measurable objectives that provide clear direction and reference points. For instance, in order to achieve the performance goal of holding opponents to no more than 60 points, a basketball coach might create per-game process goals of limiting the opposition to fewer than 7 offensive rebounds, 10 trips to the foul line, and 12 fast-break points. In turn, each process goal leads to a set of actions (and training tasks) that contribute to its achievement.

With regard to time frame, goals have traditionally been classified as either short-term (1 to 4 weeks), mid-term (4 weeks to 12 months), or long-term (12 months or more). Your own timing, of course, will depend on the duration for which you anticipate working with a particular group or athlete. In any case, athletes need both a long-term view of development and a sense of the milestones they need to hit at key times. At the same time, goal setting also requires review and adjustment due to the fact that progress tends to occur nonlinearly.

Effective goal setting requires the application of certain principles. Specifically, effective goals are specific, moderately difficult but realistic, applicable to both practice and competition, recorded, linked to achievement strategies or action plans, tailored to the athlete's personality and motivations, agreed with and owned by the athlete, and frequently evaluated. Goal setting failures often happen either because the athlete does not understand the process or because of insufficient planning and support for strategies that could enable success.