When the goal stops boosting and starts to lock results

*By Denise Joaquim Marques, a business consultant specialized in Sales and Marketing, focusing on high performance strategies, commercial leadership and market differentiation  

You know that the team can do more and your team knows that you know. Still, the month closes below expectations. When this is repeated, it becomes standard. And standard, in management, usually points to a poorly calibrated decision. 

There is a silent point where the goal ceases to guide and starts to block. It does not appear in a meeting, does not arrive as direct feedback, does not become an agenda. But it is there. It is when the professional, before a goal that he considers unattainable, internally recalibrates what he believes to be possible and starts working within this limit. A lower limit than the real potential, lower than the historical and often lower than what he himself has already delivered. 

It is not a lack of commitment: it is an adjustment of expectation. When the goal seems too far away, the effort loses meaning. The energy changes, the pace slows down, the ambition shrinks. Although the team remains active, they play believing in great results.  

At the other extreme, easy goals also charge a price. The results are achieved, but do not build evolution. The team complies, maintains the routine and follows without tension. Only when the scenario changes and requires more, lack repertoire. Lack speed and preparation to respond. The comfort zone, in this case, becomes delay. 

It is in this interval that leadership really makes a difference. Setting goals is not only designing number IO is context reading, it is understanding the moment of the market, the history of the team, the resources available and how much that goal mobilizes without locking. 

It takes the team off the automatic and does not break the belief that it is possible to arrive, even if it requires more than has been done so far, without ignoring reality. Certainly, there will be tension, but enough to generate action and not to paralyze. 

This will also require a change in the way you follow. It is not enough to look at the number at the end of the month. You need to observe what is being built along the way, what attitude, behavior, consistency, quality of execution. When the focus is only on the result, you lose the chance to adjust what actually produces this performance. 

High-performance teams are born of goals that make sense, not extreme goals that are understood, assumed, and pursued, that call for evolution, and yet are recognized as possible. 

The balance point in setting a goal is not in a fixed place, between the difficult and the easy. Forget it! He is in the ability to read along the way, is in realizing whenthe challenge turned block and when the facility turned accommodation. And especially be attentive to the purpose, the meaning, the hunger for achievement that connects the team to the achievement of the proposed goal, and make adjustments, before the team literally pull the plug.