Episode 48- Effective Goal Setting: Joanne Love on Why Winning Is the Wrong Goal

Jane Anderson High-Performance Expert Joanne Love

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Is the goal you set for the year quietly setting you up to fail?

In this episode of The Jane Anderson Show, I sat down with Joanne Love, a high-performance expert with more than 25 years' experience. Joanne began as a swimming coach who represented Australia at the Beijing 2008 Olympics. A failure with one of her athletes sent her back to university to study psychology, and she now helps everyday professionals as well as elite athletes.

I have known Joanne for around five or six years, and she has been part of my Women With Influence program. I asked her on the show because her thinking has shaped my own approach to goal setting, including what holds me back from achieving my goals. I wanted her to be the first guest of the year, when so many of us are working out what we want to achieve.

If you run a practice or build a business around your own name, this conversation is a practical guide to effective goal setting. We covered why winning is the wrong goal, how to find your why, why Joanne prefers small, frequent goals to a single SMART goal, and how to plan for the moment things go off track.

From a Coaching Failure to a High-Performance Practice

Joanne told me her path into this work began with a failure. One of her athletes didn't perform, and it upset her enough to send her back to university to study psychology. When she returned to the competitive environment, she could see athletes struggling with common problems that nobody knew how to fix.

That led her to stop coaching and start speaking to other coaches about improving their performance. It was a big learning curve. Coaching had been a very narrow band of learning, she said, and now she had to learn how to sell herself, tell her story and help other people. She described that as a whole education in itself.

Her work has since taken her to Sweden, where she spoke at an aquatic development conference about effective goal setting and how to protect the athlete mind. Joanne pointed to the growing number of sports people speaking publicly about mental health issues, and said that setting goals appropriately can protect their wellbeing for years to come.

High Performance Isn't Just for Olympians

Many of us wonder whether we need to be an elite athlete to work with someone like Joanne. She says no. What works in sport can be applied every day, because people have the same sort of performance issues. Some are scared to speak in front of other people. Others are frightened to talk up in meetings. Joanne compared that to an athlete standing behind the blocks before a race: "there's really no difference."

She also sees small failings in all of us that we don't recognise, and little tweaks that can help us perform better. And we all compete, she reminded me, whether it is for jobs or for work.

Key takeaway: Treat everyday work as a performance. The nerves an athlete feels before a race are the same kind of performance issue a professional feels before speaking up in a meeting. Joanne's view is that small tweaks, starting with how you set goals, can make you perform better.

Start With Your Why

When I asked Joanne what stops people achieving their goals, her answer was that many don't understand why they want something. They set big goals without knowing why they want them, and when the goal and the why don't align, that is where the issues start. Many people also assume success means money or possessions. She used a car as an example: do you want a sports car or a four-wheel drive? It depends on your values. Is your value family, or is it driving fast down the freeway?

Joanne agrees with Simon Sinek that it all starts with why.

I asked how this differs from the why behind a personal brand. Joanne's answer was that the goal-setting why must be driven by purpose. Her own purpose is helping other people realise their potential, and seeing performances improve is what makes her happy. She believes people need to know what makes them happy and what drives them, because having a purpose behind your goals also helps you stay mentally well.

She pointed to people who have been through adversity and hit rock bottom. It is a big wake-up call. They ask what their purpose is, think about what they really want, then plan and implement it. The same applies to our everyday goals.

Joanne also asked a question worth sitting with. A goal of making a million dollars is great, but is it really going to make you happy, and is it what you stand for? Or would you be happy with $100,000? It is up to you what you deem as being happy. She says we can have a perpetual drive for a better car and a better house, yet many people who reach those things are not any happier. When your goals are in tune with your values, she says, you will succeed and be content with your life.

Key takeaway: Connect every goal to your why and your values. Before you set a target, ask what is behind it and whether it matches what you stand for. Joanne's warning is that a goal can leave you no happier, even when you reach it, if it doesn't align with your purpose.

Set Goals You Can Control, Not Goals About Winning

At an event I ran on the Gold Coast, Joanne spoke to a group of female influencers and experts, and one of her insights has stuck with me ever since. It is about what we can and can't control.

In high-performance sport, she explained, athletes want to win. But you can never control winning, so there is no use setting goals you can't control. The pressure of expecting to win is unbelievable, and mentally it is hard to control and cope with. In her words: "goals should never be set towards winning."

The same goes for KPIs. You can't control how other people perform. In a race, you can't control the other athletes, but you can control the time you want to swim, or some part of your performance. So when you set goals, she says, you need to be totally in control of what you are doing.

I have applied this to myself and to the clients I work with. I don't think I am a naturally competitive person, at least not outside of myself. I don't look around and think I want to make more money or have more clients than someone else. But some people are naturally competitive, and an external rival can motivate them while also becoming a trap. My lesson from Joanne is to focus on progress and keep improving: "what's the time goal, not the who you're better than goal."

Key takeaway: Choose goals within your control. Aim at your own time, output or standard rather than at beating someone else. Writing more books or earning more than another person depends on factors you can't control. Your own progress doesn't.

Keep Your Ego Out of Your Goals

Joanne added a warning about ego: "our ego can actually be our worst enemy." Trying to write more books than somebody else, or trying to win more market share, is ego at work.

When ego takes over, she says, we overestimate our ability and our worth, and we underestimate the effort and skill the job requires. Then we start to self-sabotage and make excuses about why we can't do certain things. Her answer is to control the ego, focus on what we can do to the best of our ability, and stay in control.

Key takeaway: Check your ego before you set the goal. Inflated confidence in your ability, and too little respect for the effort required, can lead to self-sabotage and excuses.

Effective Goal Setting vs SMART Goals

I asked Joanne whether there are rules for how many goals to set, and how she helps people work out what their goals should be. I also raised SMART goals. Joanne said straight away that she is not a fan.

For anyone who needs a reminder, she described SMART goals as specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. Her concern is that a SMART goal usually sits far in the future, six months or a year away, with no small goals in between. When the goal is that far off, she says, our brain fills the void with how we might get there, with no direct pathway.

She prefers what she calls effective goal setting, which she described as a step above SMART goals. It has three parts:

  • Focus: your why.

  • Influences: your values and what you stand for.

  • Effectiveness: a well-defined strategy to get there.

Together, she says, they give you a map that provides motivation and momentum to keep going. She then sets goals along the way, so there is a constant pattern of daily, weekly, monthly, three-monthly, six-monthly and yearly goals.

Two Small Goals and One Stretch Goal

Joanne is a big believer in setting two smaller goals that you can achieve, and one goal that pushes you to a stretch. Her rule of thumb for a stretch goal is that when you say it out loud, other people laugh and say they don't think you will make it. The catch is that you have to believe in it yourself.

She contrasted this with the sporting world, where SMART goals have to be realistic and some coaches will dismiss an ambitious goal as unrealistic and try to knock it out of the athlete. Joanne thinks a goal should challenge you and make you work towards it. That creates stress, but she says most stress is good. The problem is only too much of it. A goal that scares us makes us work towards it.

The two smaller goals do a different job. When you achieve them and reward yourself, Joanne explained, you give yourself a boost of dopamine, and that pushes you on to more goals. Her advice is to set lots of small goals and reward yourself regularly.

That matters for anyone building a personal brand, because resilience is a big part of this game. You don't have a sales manager turning up on Monday morning asking how you went last week. You have to come up with it yourself, unless you have a coach.

I see the problem in my own conversations. When I ask people about their revenue goal, I often hear that they want to replace their income from a job, or that they want to do $3 million a year, or that they have no idea what is realistic. By the end of the year, they have achieved little, either because the goal was too big or because there was no plan. Joanne's three-goal approach is something I have really taken on for my own year ahead. If you have a practice, even if it is just you and a business manager, the daily and weekly goals help keep the momentum going.

Key takeaway: Pair two achievable goals with one stretch goal, and break each into small steps. Small wins, rewarded regularly, keep you moving. The stretch goal should feel big enough that other people doubt it, as long as you believe in it.

Plan a Backup Strategy for When Things Go Off Track

Joanne also likes to have a backup strategy. Her example is a diet. You decide to go on a diet, somebody brings out a plate of cookies, and you take one. Then you think you have broken the diet, so you might as well quit.

Her question is what your backup strategy is. What obstacles might you run into? It might be that you have so much work on this week that you know it will be hard, so you go lighter on yourself this week than next. You are prepared and you know you may not achieve your goal this week. In her experience, many people just set goals, break them, and never get back on track.

It reminded me of a client who contacted me a few years ago and said, "This is my last-ditch effort in launching my practice." She told me they couldn't have any failures. But failure is a big part of launching a practice.

Joanne agreed: "Failure's part of life. Failure's about where you learn." Because you have set goals and identified your obstacles, you are more resilient and better prepared for the failures you know will come. Her point is that the obstacles are basically the failures you are going to have, so the question is what strategies you have put in place to overcome them.

Key takeaway: Plan for obstacles before they arrive. Name the likely obstacles and decide in advance how you will respond, so one slip doesn't end the whole goal.

Write Your Goals Down Where You Can See Them

Setting goals in your head is no good, Joanne said. Write them down and make them visual, so you can see them all the time. That makes you personally accountable, and she says there is a lot of research on the value of having them written down.

The place doesn't matter much to me, whether it is your office wall or the fridge. Joanne's favourite spot is the back of the toilet door: "The back of the toilet door is a really good one." Her reasoning is that when goals are on your office wall you get so busy you stop looking at them, but when you are sitting there you have nothing else to do, so you look at the wall. I loved it. I have my goals in other spots, but I had missed this one.

Joanne also talked to me about telling people some of your goals. It gets you excited and pumped, and it makes you a little more accountable too.

Key takeaway: Write your goals down and put them where you can't miss them. A goal kept in your head is easy to ignore. A written, visible one keeps you accountable.

What Joanne Would Do Differently: Plan Your Personal Brand Sooner

I asked what the biggest insight was that she would pass on to someone early in building a practice. Her answer: planning, and knowing more. She was generous enough to say that our work together has helped her with her branding, and she said that not having enough skills in that area was probably her failure.

With goals, she said, we should always backward plan, but that is hard when you don't know what you need to do. If she had her time again, she would learn a lot more and plan more about personal branding, because she left it a little late. For her to take the next step, she needs more brand name recognition so that people know what she is about. She is still working on that process.

I think it is always evolving as your practice, your message and your programs grow. Joanne now has a diagnostic as well, which is a whole other level of positioning.

Key takeaway: Plan your personal brand earlier than feels necessary. Joanne's regret is that she left it late. Building recognition is a process, and it takes time and skills you may need to learn.

Take the Effective Goal Setting Indicator

Joanne's diagnostic, the Effective Goal Setting Indicator, shows you whether you are setting goals appropriately. You can find it at proactiveperformanceaustralia.com, which is all one word. It looks at three things:

  • Whether your focus is clear, meaning you know your why.

  • Whether you are standing by the values you want, which she calls your influence.

  • Whether you are setting appropriate goals, including whether you are planning, have short-term goals and know how to set goals effectively.

There is also an online course that goes with the indicator. Joanne has been adding research to what she already knows, and she is seeing that different people have different strengths.

I have taken the indicator myself, and we did it with a group of fantastic women. I got so much out of it. Joanne has written three books: Champions Are Made When The Stands Are Empty and Head Games, both for athletes, and a book for women. The best place to connect with her on social media is LinkedIn.

Goal Setting in Schools

Joanne is also taking this work into schools. She told me she thinks many schools aren't willing to acknowledge mental health issues. In her experience, public schools are more open about it, while she feels private schools can be reluctant, worried that parents might not want their children to attend if the school admits it has issues.

I compared that to workplaces that can't put on a stress management program because it would mean admitting they have a stressful workplace. For anyone whose expertise sits in mental health and wellbeing, finding the right angle to sell the message is a real challenge. Joanne's focus is on clarity: coming at it in a way that is open and transparent, without presenting it as being just about fixing mental health. She said that is still a bit of a challenge.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is effective goal setting?

Joanne Love describes effective goal setting as a step above SMART goals. It has three parts: your focus (your why), your influences (your values and what you stand for) and your effectiveness (a well-defined strategy to get there). Together they provide motivation and momentum.

Why shouldn't you set a goal to win?

Joanne says you can never control winning, because you can't control how other people perform. Setting a goal you can't control puts you under huge pressure and sets you up for failure. She recommends goals you control, such as the time you want to swim in a race.

Why isn't Joanne Love a fan of SMART goals?

She says SMART goals are often set far in the future, with no small goals in between, so your brain fills the gap with how you might get there. She prefers a pattern of daily, weekly, monthly, three-monthly, six-monthly and yearly goals.

How many goals should you set?

Joanne is a big believer in setting two smaller goals that you can achieve and one goal that pushes you to a stretch. Rewarding yourself for the small wins gives you a boost of dopamine, which helps you keep going.

What is a backup strategy for goals?

It is a plan for the obstacles you expect to meet. Joanne's example is a diet broken by one cookie. Without a backup strategy, many people break a goal and never get back on track. With one, you are more resilient and prepared for failure.

What is the Effective Goal Setting Indicator?

It is Joanne's diagnostic, available at proactiveperformanceaustralia.com. It shows whether your focus is clear, whether you are standing by your values and whether you are setting appropriate goals. An online course goes with it.

Do you need to be an elite athlete to benefit from high-performance coaching?

No. Joanne says what works in sport can be applied every day, because people face the same sort of performance issues, from being scared to speak in front of others to being frightened to talk up in meetings.

About Joanne Love

Joanne Love is a high-performance expert with more than 25 years' experience. She was a swimming coach who represented Australia at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, studied psychology after a failure with one of her athletes, and now works with athletes and everyday professionals through Proactive Performance Australia. She is the author of Champions Are Made When The Stands Are Empty, Head Games and a book for women.

Proactive Performance Australia | Connect on LinkedIn

Conclusion

Effective goal setting, as Joanne describes it, is less about how big the goal is and more about how it is built. Start with your why and your values. Choose goals you can control rather than goals about winning. Keep your ego honest. Set small goals along the way, with two you can achieve for every one that stretches you. Plan for the obstacles, then write your goals down where you will see them every day.

If there is one thread through our conversation, it is that the goal and the person setting it have to line up. When your goals match your values, Joanne says, you are more likely to succeed and be content with your life.

Work With Jane Anderson

If Joanne's story resonated with you, here are some ways to take the next step:

  • Women With Influence: Join a community of B2B women consultants, coaches and advisors building world-class practices.

  • 1:1 Coaching: Work directly with me on your personal brand and business growth strategy.

  • Grow With Influence: Explore my coaching for B2B practices.

  • Toolkit: Try my free scorecards and assessments.

✨ Tune in to hear Joanne Love on setting goals you control, finding your why and building momentum with small wins.


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Most of the guests interviewed are current or alumni members of the Women With Influence community. Click here to find out more

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