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How to Choose Goals That Motivate and Inspire Your Team

by ConantLeadership | Oct 12, 2026

We originally published this post in 2017. It’s now updated with fresh insights, as part of our “Golden Anniversary” collection, to help you meet the current moment as we celebrate Doug Conant’s 50^th year in leadership.

One of Stephen Covey’s most well-known habits, of his famed seven, is to begin all pursuits “with the end in mind.” Envision your desired outcome. Then proactively work to bring it to fruition.

Think: What does your ‘future self’ need to make things happen? Work backwards from there. It’s a strategy that is doubly important for business leaders.

To lead your employees, organization, and community to higher ground—and to achieve the kind of success that makes you stand out as a leader—you must prioritize clarity. Whether it’s an incremental quarterly sales goal or a big-picture direction for the entire scope of your company, be abundantly clear about where you’re headed. Otherwise, you risk misdirecting resources, wasting time, and toiling in vain.

Your people need to know which way to go. Without that shared vision and direction, employee engagement will suffer, and so will the bottom line.

So how do you decide on a direction and communicate it effectively? How can you choose goals that motivate and inspire your team: goals that are highly aspirational, but are also practical and achievable?

The key is to remember this motto: Pursue the Ideal; stay anchored in the Real.

The goals that inspire engagement and activate your team should be both idealistic and realistic.

If you dream too small, nobody gets excited. Where’s the rush in maintaining mediocre standards? There’s no opportunity for growth. And the feelings of fulfillment after the goal is accomplished are muted, even dull. Nobody had to exert too much effort so they don’t feel the pride of a tough job well done.

You have to start where you are.

If you dream too big, everybody gets burnt out. People become demotivated and failure-adverse, which can trap them in a cycle of inaction. What’s the point in trying if the goal is unachievable anyway? Why expend so much effort if the inevitable result is disappointment, and worse, a blow to one’s self-esteem and personal pride? People need to feel that there is a meaningful opportunity to show what they’ve got. They want to thrive.

The sweet spot for leaders lies right in the middle (as it often does). By embracing the tension between the ideal and the real, you can create space for a direction that unifies, inspires, and invigorates the people around you.

As you learn to choose the right goals, you’ll be able to rally everyone around a shared vision and keep the momentum going—even when obstacles inevitably pop up. The icing on the cake? The challenge of meeting shared goals becomes a fun and deeply satisfying endeavor, which happens to align with the core tenets of ‘leadership that works.’

If you are serious about pursuing the IDEAL while staying anchored in the REAL, there are three things to consider.

1. Confront the worst, first

To effectively honor the “real” part of the equation, you’ll need to make a clear-eyed assessment of where you are right now. The ugliest stuff. The things that get swept under the rug, skipped over, and omitted completely in glossy quarterly reports. To move forward, you have to start where you are—where you really are. Before you begin crafting your goals, you must, in Jim Collins’s words, “confront the brutal facts,” facing you, your team, and your organization.

Ask questions like these.

What are the obstacles we face?
Is there anything toxic about the team or company’s culture?
What are the resource constraints?
What assumptions have you been making that might not be true?
What’s the level of trust?
What old paradigms are impeding progress?
What’s your biggest strength?
Your largest weakness?
What grandfathered-in behaviors and practices need to be updated (or abandoned)?

Get input from everyone involved. Query, push, probe. There are no wrong questions. Be rigorous. This is the time to do it, before you’re already awash in the exciting complexity of your new direction. Do an audit of your team’s performance as it stands right now. List all the issues of concern. Strengths and opportunities too. Doing this exercise is not just academic. It will put you in the right position to choose your goals wisely.

2. Honor every stakeholder

If you’re going to choose a goal that is aspirational and achievable, you must ensure it motivates the most people possible. You might not be able to inspire everyone, but the more stakeholders you consider, the better the chance the direction you choose fires the organization up in a productive way. Take the time to think carefully about all the voices that touch the core issues.

What are the different outcomes that drive them? Some might be solely interested in shareholder return, others in talent recruitment, others societal engagement and CSR.
How can you build a bridge between all these different drives and influences?
How can you creatively find ways to manifest a uniting vision?

Be thoughtful and thorough. Through a mix of personal touchpoints and data analysis, your imagination might be kindled in ways you never imagined. Look at it from another person’s perspective. Maybe what motivates them is the key to reimagining your goals in ways that spark your levers, too. After all, you must honor the agenda of all parties before you can ever expect them to honor yours as a leader.

Have enlightening conversations. Ask people what propels them forward.

When did they feel most engaged in their work? How can you choose a goal that helps replicate those conditions, but pushes it even further?
What does the data say?
When the things you’re measuring were good in the past, what were the conditions in the organization that led to that positive performance?
How can you re-engineer those same conditions in the future and lift results even higher?

3. Be crystal clear

Once you’ve done your due diligence and developed a direction that pushes people and gives them ample opportunity to deliver, it’s time to make absolutely, certainly, indubitably, beyond a shadow of a doubt, 100% sure that everybody is on the same page. This sounds like overkill. But there’s no such thing. At ConantLeadership, we always say, “clarity is next to godliness,” and in the words of Brené Brown, “clear is kind.”

Dispel ambiguity. No matter how many people you’ve spoken with, how many times you’ve refined the vision, how precisely you’ve honed the message, you probably weren’t as clear as you thought you were. Triple-check that the expectations of the new direction are clear to everyone, and that people are equipped with the tools they need to bring the vision to life.

Don’t be afraid to be bold.

Shout it from the mountaintops. Being crystal-clear is a step that occurs in perpetuity. You have to repeat the goal(s) earnestly and often. Don’t be afraid to be bold. The goal (if you’ve picked the right one) is the focal point of mobilization for the entire effort! Paint it on the wall. Put it in your email signature. Shout it from a megaphone. If you’ve completed the other two steps and arrived on an aspirational, achievable message that honors all stakeholders, then hearing it reinforced and celebrated shouldn’t be a drag. It should be a rallying cry that spurs exhilaration and determination.

All of this may sound like a tall order. But it is possible. And it’s worth, ”beginning with the end in mind” to make it happen. When you follow the three steps above, you’re well on your way to paving a path of enormous achievement, growth, and enthusiasm.

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About the Authors

Amy Federman is Editor in Chief and Director of Content at ConantLeadership and co-author with Doug Conant of The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights