As a relatively new graduate trainee manager, last week was the first time you'd assigned both individual and team objectives. Each one of your team was told to work together and to complete all tasks by the end of the week. Unfortunately, it's now clear to you that none of the team objectives have been achieved. In fact your individually assigned objectives only had mixed success as well.
What would be the most effective reaction to this situation?
Use 1-on-1's to discuss effective targets and to jointly agreeing new ones.
Scrap the objective setting idea since it clearly doesn’t work.
Mail the team an urgent request to work more closely together.
Organise a team meeting to discuss attitudes and lack of effort being shown.
Correct answer is A
(A) is the MOST effective answer since it addresses both the key issues: investigating how to set more effective objectives ; whilst getting buy in to this week's targets from the start.
Answer option (C) does recognise the need for improved collaboration, although this is quite a weak solution. More importantly, it has to be the LEAST effective solution since it does not address the other key need to work more effectively (towards the set objectives).
Consider answer option (B) to be an in-between solution. Whilst the problematic objective settiong process is dealt with, removing it is an over-simplified, knee-jerk reaction.
Option (D) isn't the best or the worst option. Yes, a team meeting would be a good starting point for discussing the underlying performance and collaboration issues. However, your agenda is already assuming these are caused by a lack of effort.
