Positive Psychology at Work:

Goal Setting

We talk a lot about goal-setting activity in organizations and perhaps don't pay enough attention to goal-seeking behaviour in people. There is no point in setting goals for someone unless that someone is motivated to seek that goal. We need to know, for each individual, what activates his or her goal-seeking behaviour. Most managers don't pay enough attention to any particular individual's learnt reward systems. If they did, they would be better at creating reward-rich environments for them. When a person is in what they perceive to be a reward-rich environment, they are likely to exhibit reward- or goal-seeking behaviour. This, I would argue, is the definition of the engaged employee. People are engaged because they are experiencing rewards. And because they are experiencing rewards, they are engaged.

We are just beginning to understand something of what constitutes a rewarding experience (as opposed to a rewarding outcome) for an individual through studying the state of engagement and the state of flow. It is all a bit circular: when we are engaged we are finding something rewarding in some way; when we are finding something rewarding we are likely to be engaged in it. The pattern of goals, rewards and engagement is going to be different for everyone: a unique crystallization of their genetics, their experience and learning, their thought patterns and strategies, and the environment. All this means that using goal setting to enhance employee engagement and performance ...