Locke’s goal-setting theory explains the link between goals and motivation.
And the main idea consists of two key pieces: the goal itself (specificity and complexity) and the belief in your ability to achieve it (commitment). Both feedback and rewards are also crucial if you want to sustain long-term goal motivation.
Why is Locke’s theory important?
Well, most people have set goals before.
But achieving those goals, that’s where the real challenge is. However, you can increase your chances of persisting through the challenges if you set good goals.
That’s where the goal-setting theory comes into play.
Locke concluded in his research that motivation is the result of how you set and manage yourself around your goals. Here are the five ingredients that he identified:
- Specificity;
- Complexity;
- Commitment;
- Feedback;
- Rewards.
Let’s dive into each of them.
Specificity
You may be familiar with the “Specific goals” from the SMART goals framework. Locke also found that the more specific your goals, the higher your chance of success.
For example, setting a goal to walk for 30 minutes every morning straight after waking up is a very specific goal. Much more specific than: I will walk every day.
The problem with vague goals is that it leaves too many variables to chance.
Say your goal is to walk more. What happens if you don’t specify what, where, when, how, with whom, and why?
Now instead of doing the walk, you have to think about how long and when you want to walk. It creates more friction that increases the chance of procrastination.
Instead, what if you tell yourself to go for a 30-minute walk every day straight after waking up?
This will make it much more likely that you will go.
Take away: specific goals create clarity and direction, which increases focus and reduces the chance of procrastinating.
Complexity
Why do ambitious people tend to perform better?
The reason is not that they are more capable than others. Instead, they set the bar much higher for themselves than most other people do.
For example, say you and a friend want to get better at pushups.
You can easily do 8 pushups, so you decide to aim for reaching 10 this month. Your ambitious friend can also do 8 pushups but decides to aim for 20.
Imagine what happens next:
You increase your pushups and successfully do all 10. Your friend “fails”, only hitting 14 of his 20 pushups.
Who did better in your opinion?
And who would achieve better results in the long run?
Those who set harder goals tend to perform at higher levels than those who set easy goals. In addition, the more challenging the goal, the more satisfying its success.
Not to mention all the future benefits that come along with it.
Take away: challenging goals improve performance and produce better results.
Commitment
Many business owners set goals. Yet, it’s not uncommon for their employees to feel disconnected from these goals – no matter how specific or challenging they are.
You see, the final piece in achieving goals is your commitment to them. Not just for business goals, but your personal goals too.
Locke splits commitment up into 2 pieces:
First, do you believe that it is important?
If you don’t understand why a goal is important, it becomes much harder to commit yourself to the goal.
For example, if you want to give up smoking but don’t believe it’s that important, you simply won’t be able to do it.
That’s also the reason why people can drastically change their minds and quit cold turkey after a life-threatening experience. When the pain becomes too big to ignore, it suddenly becomes important enough to achieve the goal.
The second part is your belief in your ability to do it.
Committing to a goal is difficult if you don’t believe that you can make it happen. Instead, you will unconsciously look for evidence that you can’t and sabotage yourself.
But if you believe that you can do it, it is much easier to commit.
In other words, you should always identify how you feel about your goal. And if you feel like you can’t achieve it, try to break the goal up into smaller, more achievable ones.
Take away: your intent and commitment are key to success. So make sure to understand why the goal is important and that you can achieve it.
Feedback
While the first three elements help you set powerful goals, the goal-setting theory of motivation also identifies that feedback is important.
Feedback gives insights that help you identify challenges and how to get around these.
In addition, if you fail without understanding the reason why it happened, it will lower your motivation. And if you set challenging goals, you will fail often too.
Having feedback is a very valuable tool in the process of learning.
In fact, Locke states that goals without feedback are not very effective at all. So look for different ways to gain feedback from your goals if you want to grow fast and achieve more.
Take away: goals are only effective in combination with feedback. Learning from your mistakes is a key element for long-lasting and meaningful success.
Rewards
Rewards are a key piece in developing good habits. Whenever you get a reward for an action, you will learn – whether conscious or unconscious – to repeat that action.
That’s part of our animal instinct.
It also works in goal setting, which is why you should celebrate your successes.
But not only the big successes.
Instead, the goal-setting theory of motivation states that you need to use a multilevel rewards system to celebrate achieving smaller goals too.
For example, if your goal is to sell 1.000 products, you shouldn’t wait until you achieve that. Instead, you should set and celebrate smaller goals, like selling the first product, the first 100, and so forth.
And also don’t forget about process goals.
For example, set a goal to reach out to 20 potential customers on a given day. And when you achieve that – regardless of making any sales – celebrate the fact that you took action and achieved your goal.
Doing so reinforces that action and builds the habit. And as long as you keep setting and pursuing goals, you will eventually achieve success.
Take away: reward yourself to reinforce positive action. And do so not only for the big victories but also for the small successes.
Closing Thoughts
Locke’s goal-setting theory to increase motivation and achieve long-term and meaningful success is a great reminder of what is important.
After all, just setting goals isn’t enough.
But by using this theory, you will set goals that increase your chances of success. In short:
- Specificity: the more specific your goal is, the better.
- Complexity: make sure your goal is challenging (yet realistic).
- Commitment: understand why it is important and believe that you can do it.
- Feedback: provides valuable insights for improvement and growth.
- Rewards: celebrating small victories reinforces you to keep taking action.
If you want a tool to help you to achieve your goals, then check out my Goals on Track Review.
And if you want to learn how to more about setting better goals and creating the life you desire, check out the best books about goal-setting.
Enjoyed reading this article? Make sure you sign up below to receive even better content straight into your inbox!