Goal setting theory and gamification: ideas put into practice
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We’re all familiar with setting ourselves goals or targets to help aid our motivation. From school, extra-curricular activities, through further education and training, and perhaps most frequently, in the workplace. Every quarter, every 6 months, a performance review, goals for the coming quarter, for the coming year. New objectives, new personal goals that fit into the grand plan of the organisation.
We’re very used to being taught to set SMART goals or SMART objectives to ground them in reality and make them quantifiable. That acronym stands for:
- Specific: the goal should be quite targeted and not have too broad, or diffuse a focus
- Measurable: whether it’s quantifiable or qualitative, or can be measured based on results in some other criteria
- Achievable: you don’t want to set yourself up to fail by setting crazy, pie-in-the-sky goals you’ll never hit
- Relevant: it should be relevant to your job role
- Time bound: you should put a deadline on it for motivation and to keep your honest
This tends to be a commonly incorporated standard for goal setting in business. It is undeniably better than just plucking objectives out of a hat and throwing them at employees, but isn’t there more to think about there? Are those 5 things, neatly as they fit, really all that need to be considered? Have you, either as a business owner or a business leader, challenged this construct to set better goals for your teams, and potentially get more out of them?
Locke’s goal setting theory of motivation
At school, every single student had at least 1 or 2 teachers who were fond of saying: “Shoot for the moon, and you might just hit the ceiling, shoot for the ceiling, and you’ll be lucky if you leave the floor.” This statement wildly diverts from being achievable with a capital A. However, in higher performers, this statement actually seems to produce better results.
Elite athletes are an incredible example of this. In any discipline, from the juniors to the seniors and collegiate levels, local heroes rise up the ranks believing they’ll go on to win an Olympic gold medal, or step on to court Philippe Chatrier to play in the final of Roland Garros, or lift the world cup above their heads after receiving the Golden Boot. Less than a small fraction of a percent of these local heroes make it that far, invariably falling off their path as more talented or harder working individuals beat them to the next stage. However, consider how far they would have made it without that initial motivation, without that big dream?
That’s really a cornerstone of Latham and Locke’s goal setting theory: setting challenging goals. In his article “Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentive,” Edwin A. Locke began developing goal setting theory, positing that not only were employees more motivated by well-defined goals and constructive feedback, but they were better served by more challenging goals. Essentially, having a goal that is too easy is not motivating.
Motivating individual commitment and involvement
A few years after Locke published the aforementioned article, Dr Gary Latham studied the effects of goal setting in the workplace. His results tallied with Locke’s: effective goal setting was undeniably a huge driver of workplace performance. In 1990, the 2 men published A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance, where they set out their 5 principles essential when goal setting for the best chances of success:
Locke & Latham’s 5 principles
1) Clarity
This is simple. When your goals are clear, it’s easier to be focused, and it’s easier to measure.
2) Challenge
The goal needs to be challenging. If something is easy, anyone can do it, and there’s no point writing it down. Equally, it can’t be so challenging that you’re just setting yourself up for failure. This builds on the achievable in SMART, which misses the need for a goal to be suitably difficult.
Certain line managers will be wise to the necessity of hitting a sweet spot when it comes to challenging individuals, but this part of the structure can be gamed by people not wanting to leave their comfort zone.
3) Commitment
Individual employees and teams of employees will be far likelier to buy into and commit to a goal if they have helped to set it. This is typically a part of most performance reviews with forward thinking companies but isn’t explicit in the SMART framework.
4) Feedback
Checking in on an employee every 3 to 6 months probably isn’t ideal to optimally help them achieve a goal. Regular feedback helps you keep employees and teams on track, and helps them as they can keep you updated on progress, and address any concerns as they arise, potentially adjusting expectations along the way.
5) Task complexity
This is another area where the SMART acronym doesn’t fully cover everything. Complex, challenging goals need to be broken down. This is more true the higher in an organisation and individual sits, and the larger a business function, or the more reporting staff they’re responsible for.
Gamification: a hard system for goal setting in corporate training
When it comes to applying goal setting theory to corporate training and upskilling, gamification can be highly effective at giving a structure through which to break down complex learning goals, give clarity to a long-term learning journey, and help to harness positive emotions.
By customising a Dynamic Path™, you have access to every game engine in the Drimify gamification platform to create a multi-level, playable learning experience. Through multiple, customised Quizzes, as well as additional content like videos, text, and audio, you can create constructive learning pathways that can serve as onboarding courses, or even more advanced leadership courses. Creating simulated scenarios based on industry happenings where employees can apply theory and soft skills in a low-stakes environment.
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