Before Your Team Commits to Any Goals, Consider This
I start every year warning educators against setting team goals too soon. Personal and leadership goals, no problem. But team goals, don’t do it at the start of the year.
Also, be cautious about turning team goals into a SMART goal. SMART-style performance goals can be useful when the route to improvement is already understood, but they are less suited to work that is complex, uncertain, developmental or requires the team to learn its way toward a solution.
Even George Doran, who introduced the SMART framework, cautioned that not every objective needed to meet all five criteria. Research by Nahrgang, DeRue, Hollenbeck and colleagues (2013), which I reference in my book, adds an important nuance: on complex team tasks, high specificity can sometimes narrow attention and interfere with the coordination needed for learning, so when the route forward still has to be discovered, the goal should create space for inquiry rather than prematurely defining the answer.
In this article my objective is to provide you resources and guidance on setting good team goals. This includes an invitation to Claire Peet’s MiLL webinar, From Goals to Inquiry: Leading with Purpose, Not Just Targets. AND, a very exciting offer to connect with a Peer Leadership Mentor.
Why Commit to Your Goals Now?
At the beginning of the school year, most middle leaders are working with incomplete information. You may know the school’s development priorities, but not yet what they will demand from your team, where your influence will matter most, or what colleagues realistically have the capacity to contribute.
As I argued in The First 30 Days, the early weeks should create clarity before chasing change.
By October, you have evidence.
You have seen your team at work. You understand more about competing priorities, existing capabilities, pressure points and what is genuinely non-negotiable. That makes this a better time to either set a meaningful goal or revisit one agreed earlier.
Ask yourself:
What has become clearer about our school’s priorities?
Where does my team have the capacity and capability to contribute?
What assumptions have changed?
Where could our effort make the greatest difference?
What would meaningful progress look like over the next 30 days?
The aim is not simply to set a bigger target. It is to choose work that is important, realistic and worth sustaining.
Turn the Goal Into a Question
In Don’t Set Goals, Ask Questions, I wrote: “A statement presumes you know where you are going and how to get there.”
A good inquiry question leaves room to learn.
Design Thinking reinforces a useful discipline: diverge before you converge. Before settling on a desired solution, broaden your understanding of the challenge. Inquire about what you have observed, what you might be assuming, whose perspective is missing and what evidence could change your thinking.
Instead of: “Improve collaboration in our department.”
Try: “How might we create routines that enable more purposeful collaboration across our team?”
A strong question gives you direction without prematurely deciding the answer.
Don’t Ask the Question Alone
This is where peer mentoring becomes powerful.
A good peer mentor does not solve the problem for you. They listen carefully, ask clarifying and probing questions, challenge assumptions and introduce perspectives from outside your immediate context.
That matters because between October and January there will be several pressures that you can’t anticipate. In Pick Up What You Put Down and The Second Half, I wrote about how meaningful goals often need to be revisited, reframed and recommitted to.
A peer can help you step outside the immediate pressure, notice what has changed and help you frame the right question for the right time.
If you would like to be paired with a Peer Mentor, someone that you can develop a reciprocal relationship with, to help each other achieve your goals, then click here to express your interest. Expressing your interest will also give you free access to Claire Peet’s October 12 MiLL webinar, From Goals to Inquiry: Leading with Purpose, Not Just Targets.
Additional Readings
Goals Gone Wild - This reading offers a classic, thought-provoking reality check on how over-relying on rigid targets can unintentionally narrow focus, stifle learning, and undermine team culture.
Fix the Framework: SMART Goals for Immeasurable Outcomes - A fantastic read on breaking free from the trap of measuring only what is easy, offering practical ways to embrace learning goals when facing complex or creative challenges.
Inquiry as an Essential Practice for Equity-Centered Leaders and Teachers - A 2025 brief on using cycles of questions, evidence and reflection for continuous improvement, with attention to whose perspectives are included.
How monitoring can support decision making in schools - A practical 2025 guide to combining evidence and staff perspectives to check whether an initiative is working and inform what to do next.
Sustained collaborative inquiry with teachers of multilingual learners - A recent study of collaborative inquiry with teachers of multilingual learners, relevant to international-school teams working across linguistic and cultural contexts.
