The Darkside of Goal-Setting: What Management Gurus Don’t Want You To Know
It is perhaps the most enduring formula for life & career success, and it has a Darkside they’d rather you didn’t know about
Goal setting is trendy, isn’t it? It has been that way for a long time, and you’ll find very few voices countering its elite status amongst management experts and business talking heads. Look at the acronym S.M.A.R.T.; it makes you want to make it yours, doesn’t it? After all, it is smart, therefore smart people use this tool, right? Goal setting is the starting point for all worldly achievement and material gain powerfully driving behaviour and boosting performance. We don’t doubt its theoretical foundation or its efficacy in achieving personal success in life. It is ingrained in the Western industrialised mind, pervasive and unquestioned in business & management literature and the popular press.
Mitchell & Daniels in their handbook on motivation from 2002 suggested that goal setting is, “quite easily the single most dominant theory in the field, with over a thousand articles and reviews published on the topic in a little over 30 years.”
Since Goal-Setting Theory first reared its head, we have been told persistently that those who have specific, challenging, and…
