Why a High-Low Goal Range Works Better

If you want to achieve a goal, you first need a target. But how do you choose your target? What’s the best way to create that target? You can’t just shoot for something. You have to aim for something. That’s where range goals come in. They’re not as easy to set as target numbers, but they’re better at driving long-range success.

When you’re leading a team, it’s tempting to devise just one goal for everyone to shoot for. But if you want your team members to get the most out of themselves, you must give them many different targets rather than setting unrealistic goals for employees. This article will sort through all the jargon and show you the range of goals, the science behind why they work, and how to set them up in practice.

Using science to set goals:

The science of goal-setting shows that setting a one-size-fits-all numerical target for your employees can be a mistake. Too often, these goals are too high and leave an employee feeling lacking — or just demoralised if they fail to meet them because they are unattainable goals.

Recent research shows that people are more likely to re-engage (i.e. decide to continue pursuing a goal over a while) if the goal is a range and not a single number. How we set goals influences our behaviour, and feelings of accomplishment drive this.

Read more on the science behind game-based learning and gamification.

Goals can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Once you’ve set them, goals can become self-fulfilling prophecies. A classic example of this phenomenon is the story of Dr Temple Grandin and how she overcame her autism to become an accomplished professor and author in animal sciences. As a child, Temple had many sensory issues that made it difficult for her to socialise or focus on tasks. 

Still, as she grew up, she learned to motivate herself through robust visualisations that helped her overcome those obstacles. She says, “I would see myself walking down the school corridor with a crowd around teachers and me telling me how well I was doing… That sort of thing repeatedly happened until it became a reality.”

Setting employee goals:

When you give your team a goal, make it a range.

Research has shown that this approach is much more effective than having one idealised target. First, it helps to motivate people to work harder and smarter. Second, it creates an environment where teams can collaborate effectively because they know there’s no time for infighting about who gets credit for what. And finally, it allows managers to understand their strengths better to provide support where necessary without feeling threatened by the accomplishments of others (or vice versa).

Range Goals – SMART Goals

Range goals are SMART Goals; Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. They can be set for a shorter period, allowing you to adapt your goal based on feedback from the range goal. This makes it easier to achieve your range goal because there is no pressure to meet an exact deadline, and you don’t have to worry about falling short of the original target if things don’t go as planned.

You can also use range goals in conjunction with other types of targets—for example, setting unrealistic goals for employees will only create a pressurised work environment. How to set high goals or setting a high-end goal (e.g., $100K) while keeping a low-end (e.g., $50K). 

This provides even more flexibility when evaluating how well you’re achieving your overall objective by allowing you to focus on specific areas where improvement may be needed rather than feeling like everything has gone wrong if one area doesn’t meet expectations!

Goals Motivate Us to Stretch

When you set a goal, you select a target to achieve something. It is important to remember that not all plans are created equal; some are more challenging than others. Your mindset significantly impacts your ability to achieve success and set ambitious targets for yourself.

The best way to think about this is through the lens of range- goals versus specific ones:

• Range goals allow us to set challenging targets without feeling like we’re aiming too high or low. They help us stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zone while staying within reachable parameters to improve and grow as individuals. Read how gamification affects motivation.

• Specific goals can be great for achieving short-term results, but they only allow a little room for growth – which can lead down an endless spiral of frustration if things turn out differently than planned!

Encouragement of Behaviour

By setting a range for team members to aim for, you can encourage many kinds of behaviour that will help them boost their performance.

You’ll allow them to show off their best work and creativity. They’ll get a chance to play with ideas and experiment with new ways of doing things and they may discover something that makes your product or service better than ever before.

You’ll also allow them to show off their flexibility and leadership skills by deciding how best to meet this goal within your set parameters. They might decide that every team member, including themselves, needs more resources to achieve improved results,  than initially planned; in turn, they may need support from other departments or teams at your company (or even outside it). That kind of problem-solving is critical in today’s business environment!

Finally, when people set goals as part of a team effort instead of individually, they’ll have additional opportunities to collaborate on projects directly or indirectly toward reaching those goals, further enhancing teamwork skills while achieving those objectives!

Teams often do better if they focus on achieving multiple goals

A team’s collective focus is a powerful thing. If you give your team one goal, they’ll work hard to achieve it. But if you give them multiple goals, they’ll find ways to allocate their time and energy more efficiently and often do better at the prescribed task.

Teams can have both long-term and short-term goals at the same time. When they work on different types of goals at once, it gives them more flexibility in how they approach those tasks; instead of taking one road toward “success,” different parts of the organisation can take different paths toward achieving similar ends.

For example, A sales team might have a weekly quota of five deals they need to close each week (the short-term goal) while also having an annual revenue target of $25 million (the long-term goal). This allows them to see how their day-to-day activities align with their company’s overall mission, which helps them make smarter decisions about where they should invest their time and energy daily.

Conclusion

We think it’s clear that there isn’t one goal-setting template; goals of all kinds can accomplish big things. It’s not just companies that win the race by setting goals and sticking with them. The same approach is effective in our personal lives, too.

Ultimately, range goals are used to motivate people. The purpose of a goal is to provide challenge and support in reaching it. When you set a range as your team’s goal, its success may be hit-or-miss at first. It has to be large enough to be challenging but not so large that it overwhelms the program. The process is like wading into the ocean: You can wade straight into the waves or dip your toe first. 

Not sure where to start? Visit eVULX for more gamified solutions for your business.