Paralysed by goals…

Under pressure, we know that people’s focus tends to narrow down onto just a few things and very often, this actually means missing out on some really important information that’s in the world around you. We think we’ve noticed quite a lot of attentional narrowing onto those wonderful things called “goals” and it hasn’t all been positive! Missing key details can happen when there’s no pressure around, thanks to the phenomenon known as inattentional blindness, but under pressure, attentional problems are further exaggerated.

As the economic pressure cranks up, so too does the obsession with delivering numbers and the reliance on those numbers to show no signs impending doom. In our elite sport work, we’ve seen much more pragmatic approaches to exploiting goals, which we’d like to pass on. We also remember from our days back at university that the science of goals can give a much more balanced view of how to use goals for a positive impact.

So, let’s broaden the view of goals and what they should be doing for you and have a conversation about making sure goals are adding value in these pressure times, rather than simply helping to reinforce the rampant perception that “we’re all doomed, doomed I tell you!”.

Read away and share your comments. We can’t wait to chat about this!