Collective Goal Setting Leads to Team Success

**This post was originally published on iB-LIEVE's blog (www.GOiBELIEVE.com/blog)**

Many of the other iB-Bloggers have written about the great importance of breaking down goals to be manageable. I couldn’t agree more! Peter Athans highlights the necessity for mountain climbers to plan before hiking up Mt Everest. Eddie McCaffrey discusses action-planning. And Joe Villapiano provides insight from his experience of running marathons. Most of these posts focus attention on creating smaller goals in order to ‘realize the dream’ and accomplish the lofty, ultimate goal. As I stated above those are absolutely essential. In fact, I believe that the dream can only be realized and lofty goals accomplished if we break them down and work towards actualizing them in smaller bits and pieces.

However, one of the most important facets of leadership is to dream big and pursue the loftiest of goals. It is essential that we, as leaders, be persistently focused on what we are ultimately working towards. Those dreams we are realizing and ultimate goals we are working towards should always stay front and center in our mind – no matter how “impossible” or lofty they are – no matter how much criticism we receive. By doing so, we make the mundane action items and smaller tasks compelling – simply because they lead to the deepest and most sincere sense of accomplishment.

In essence, the first step for us as leaders is to understand what we are pursuing. The second then, is to reflect upon and decide, at every single decision, if my choice will help me get closer to realizing my dream or accomplishing my ultimate goal. The third and final step is to act – to work towards realizing the dream and accomplishing the goal!