Outcome, Process and Performance Goals

Goal Setting: Making Things Happen!

Goals act as a compass to help direct us to where we want to go. Having goals gives us a clear sense of direction and helps keep us motivated. 

Outcome, performance and process goals is a method of goal setting that helps break down something really big and potentially intimidating, and transform it into smaller, bite size and more manageable pieces. 

This process highlights the fact that while outcome goals are important, too much focus on them can cause you to lose focus on the process. If we are only thinking of the outcome goal, we can lose sight of what we need to do in the moment to enhance the likelihood of achieving that goal. 

So let’s break it down. 

Outcome Goal 

• Big picture, long term goal, something that feels intimidating but also realistic
• IE. result or accomplishment 
• We have the least control over this goal. There are so many variables at play with outcomes, for example if your outcome goal is based on a result, we can’t control who shows up on the day and how well they perform. 
• Connect to your “why?”… Why do you want this outcome goal?

Performance Goals  

• Aspects of our performance that we can control
• Measure our process goals
• Build around doing your personal best, regardless of the outcome 
• Bridge between process and outcome goal

Process Goals

• Small measurable actions and practices
• IE. Weekly/daily practices to work towards performance goals

A key feature of this method of goal setting is that, if we don’t achieve our outcome goal for whatever reason… Having performance and process goals gives us more parameters to measure our success on. We can do our absolute best and still not achieve our outcome goal. If this happens, we can look at our performance and process goals and ask ourselves if we achieved those. If we did, then this is something to feel proud of. If we didn’t, then maybe we need to rework our goals and ask ourselves what went wrong in the process. 

Exercise: Here’s a resource with an empty chart for you to create your own goals. Make sure your goal is meaningful (ie. what would it mean to achieve this goal?) Goal Setting – Outcome, Performance & Process Goals (1)