New Year goals leaders can set for their teams

By John Rampton, Founder of Palo Alto, CA Calendar < em>, a company that helps your schedule be much more productive.

New beginnings and renewed motivation are inherent in a new calendar year. Now is the perfect time to set ambitious but achievable goals for your team. Defined milestones will mark the way forward if you clarify them, monitor progress and measure results.

Targets for KPIs such as sales quotas and profit margins are common and valuable. But employees have realigned their priorities. They are less driven to achieve sales heights and more driven to achieve feelings of value, belonging and purpose. Your goals should also pay special attention to this transformation.

Setting collaboration and team engagement goals requires a bit more thought and planning than, say, setting a customer churn goal. But especially now, those goals are just as valuable to your team as they are to the business as a whole. Here are some ways to jump-start your efforts to make next year a great year.

You know how important cross-team collaboration is to creating great products and services, happy customers, and happy employees. You also know that collaboration can be a big challenge in a remote or hybrid workplace. That's why it's worth setting a goal to increase it.

There are several strategies you can use to improve team collaboration, but how do you measure it? Too often, leaders rely only on observation and instinct. However, measuring collaboration is possible if you know what to look for.

If you don't already have a baseline, establish one by surveying team members to find out their current perceptions of collaboration on a scale of 1 to 10. Ask them to rate statements such as "Team members are open to discussing project options," "Team members have the resources they need to produce their best work," and "Important decisions are discussed before Once you've worked on resolving the identified issues, ask employees to take the survey again to see if the scores increase overall.

You can also inventory individual activity on your collaboration software. How many times per day does each team member report status, ask questions, share documents, or send messages to other team members? It will be obvious who is collaborating and not collaborating on a project. Use your one-on-one interviews to encourage increased participation by setting individual goals and a team meeting to set an overall collaborative goal.

Remember to track KPIs related to employee and customer satisfaction and employee turnover to see if increased collaboration is meeting or exceeding the targets for these indicators. Collaboration can be measured. You might just need to get a little creative to do it.

Engaged team members are more productive, dedicated, and invested in the success of their team and the company as a whole. They are also more satisfied with their jobs, which means they stay for the long haul. Setting bold goals to increase your team's commitment and working towards them is a valuable leadership exercise.

Work-life balance, support for career goals, health and safety concerns, and other fairly subjective issues are drivers of employee engagement. In addition,