Setting better Goals with 10 simple Questions - A stress test to set quality goals, perform better and overcome illusory superiority

Setting goals weather they are personal or professional ones is always difficult. Sometimes even frustrating when we realize that what we have planned didn’t work out or failed. One of the many reasons why this happens is that we tend to scribble down some random goals without ever thinking in depth about them. We feel comfortable with our decisions and think we know exactly what we want.

The quest of self-awareness

Yet, the truth is that we are bad in understanding and judging ourselves preciously. We always tend to think way better of us than we actually are (The other way around is also truth). The gap between reality and perception is quit big when it comes to self-awareness.

The scientific name for this is Illusory superiority, often referred to the “above average phenomena”. You don’t believe me? Here are some scientific experiments that prove exactly that in interesting (sometimes even funny) ways.

The best known example is the assessment of car driving skills with the simple question “How would you grade your car driving abilities?”. Around 80% of the people say that they “are average drivers” or “are better than average drivers”. This is simply not possible.

Another example: Researchers from the university of Bielefeld asked a group of people to read out a single sentence about the weather to a stranger. Based on that the stranger was asked to estimate the IQ of the presenting people. In a second step the researchers asked the group of presenting people to estimate their own IQ. What do you think: Who made the better guess? The stranger who doesn’t know anything about the person or the person itself who knows everything from school grades to learning abilities and so on? Unexpectedly the estimation of the stranger was roughly 65% more accurate than the self-assessment IQ-prediction.

Need some more insights? Here a five more in a quick summary:

• 98% of high school seniors grade their leaderships skills above average.
• A quarter of people think they are in a certain skill in the top 1%.
• 94% of college professors grade their work as above average.
• The majority of people thinks they have a lower risk of deadly illnesses like cancer or heart attacks.
• And the funniest one: The majority of interviewed people report being more accurate in self-assessment than other people.

Side note: It’s not about overestimations only. In general human beings are just bad in self-assessments.

So when it comes to setting goals we are not different at all. We tend to define goals which sound great on paper but aren’t great at all. We also tend to set goals that seem to be good for us (because everybody is saying that) but actually aren’t matching our personality. We like to set the bar lower than we should to make it as easy as possible to reach it. And to make it look like we have “made” it. We simply set low-quality goals.

With a higher level of self-awareness we can set goals, which are much higher in quality. It helps us closing the gap between reality and perception. Self-awareness also is key to high performance as Erich Dierdorff and Robert Rubin found out in a recent study. A high level of self-awareness leads to a higher quality in the decision making process, improves coordination and affects conflict management positively.

But how do we do that even if science says that humans are quite bad in self-assessments?

To get to goals of high quality we have to add another step to the process that will trick our self-awareness:  Stress testing.

The 10 question stress test for goals

The good news: It’s simple to do. We just have to ask some questions about our goals and find a suitable answer. The bad news: It’s hard work. So we better get started right now. Here are the questions that you should ask yourself for each goal you ever set:

After you have run through all the questions and found satisfying answers to them chances are high that you have a quality goal that you definitely should go for and put your energy in. If not, you may want to take some time thinking about new goals.

Additional clarification based on FAQs:

• The critical steps reflect your timeline as well and can include a deadline or a roadmap.
• Make sure goals are realistic and that you have sufficient resources to archive them.

Key-learning’s from this post

• Be more critical when it comes to yourself
• Ask others for feedback
• Stress test each and every goal

Robin Weninger

Consultant. Coach. Strategist.

Guiding you through the wilds of management complexity.

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