Many leaders have been taught to set realistic goals. Realistic usually means achievable. Otherwise, they think they risk demotivating the team. Psychologically, this is based on the concept that people are motivated when they believe their effort can lead to success.
Some have learned that this isn’t enough. If you want to perform better than others, you should chase ambitious goals. Ambitious means aiming for 130% to eventually achieve 110%. This is rooted in what psychologists call the Pygmalion effect, which suggests that higher expectations can lead to stronger performance because people often rise to the expectations placed on them.
What I’ve observed when working with the best leaders, however, is that they choose “conflicting goals.” These are goals that seem to be at odds with each other. This means that in order to succeed, you need to be very good at both. It’s not an either/or. It’s an “and.”
Take Southwest Airlines as an example. It set out to be both a low-cost airline and, at the same time, a leader in customer and employee satisfaction. On paper, those goals seem to exclude each other. Low cost usually means cutting service. But because Southwest refused to give up either one, it had to invent solutions others never considered: faster turnarounds, a single aircraft type, and a culture where motivated employees became the service advantage. The tension between the goals produced the innovation.
That’s the purpose of pursuing seemingly conflicting goals. The friction forces your organization to stop choosing between trade-offs and start dissolving them.
If you set conflicting goals, three things matter:
• Both goals must be essential to long-term success
• Neither goal may become the default priority when pressure increases
• Progress toward both goals must be measured together, so one isn’t achieved at the expense of the other
Most leaders optimize within accepted trade-offs. The best ones know that most trade-offs are just decisions someone else made a long time ago.
Best,