3 Types of Goals to Align Your Team
January 15, 2026 | By David M. Wagner
Is everyone on your team pulling in the same direction? Or is your boat spinning in circles?
Aligning your team’s efforts to shared aims is an essential leadership skill.
Individual goals are an often-overlooked tool that can help foster that alignment.
When each of your team members have individual goals that clearly connect with your organization’s desired outcomes, there are fewer opportunities for misalignment. Coordinated goals link incentives to shared outcomes and help your team recognize how they contribute to the bigger picture.
Related: the 4 characteristics of motivating goals
Make sure each of your team members considers these 3 types of goals – and how to align them to the bigger picture for your mission.
Performance Goals
Performance goals are the most familiar type. They set targets for what your team members will accomplish.
The simplest way to link individual performance goals with your organization’s strategy is to show the connection with your target outcomes.
That might be easier for program staff, whose work directly corresponds with mission outcomes.
Finding alignment might take more creativity with administrative roles, like marketing, fundraising, and supervision.
The connections are always there, though! Reaching x new supporters through outreach campaigns will generate y new dollars in unrestricted funds, increasing capacity to serve z additional beneficiaries of your work.
Behavior Goals
Behavioral goals specify the actions and habits a team member will exhibit.
These might be areas of growth or practices that will be necessary to successfully accomplish their performance goals.
A good point of alignment for behavioral goals is a connection to your organization’s values. Behavioral goals are a way to reflect that the way your team accomplishes their work matters just as much as the work itself.
For instance: “I will practice community focus (organizational value) by seeking input on every major decision from multiple, diverse viewpoints.”
Development Goals
For the purposes of goal setting, think professional development (as opposed to development-as-in-fundraising).
Development goals are about cultivating new abilities or honing existing ones. Aligned development goals will link clearly with your organization’s capacity needs.
Your team might not know what your capacity needs are – be sure to tell them the kinds of additional knowledge, skills, or qualifications you think will be important for your organization to succeed!
Encouraging your team members to include goals for their professional development in their annual planning – and then fostering opportunities to support their growth – is a powerful way to invest in your team.
And building your team’s capacity can only make your life easier in the long-run.
Whatever your team members’ goals, be sure to:
Write or review them together
Establish clear definitions of success
Capture connections to your organization’s target outcomes, values, and needs,
Discuss what your team member needs – from you or the organization – to succeed at each goal
Use agreed-upon goals (and not arbitrary standards) as the basis for a successful performance review
Realizing there’s more room for your team to pull in the same direction, and you’re not sure where to start? Schedule a time to talk with me about how to connect your strategy with your team members’ individual work.