HR Managers: Help Your Operational Managers Set Motivating Goals
If goals lack clarity or motivation, performance drops. As an HR Manager, you have a key role in making goal-setting a real lever for engagement and structure.
When operational managers fail to set motivating goals
If goals are unclear or uninspiring, everything eventually collapses: performance, structure, engagement.
As an HR Manager, you don't manage teams directly — but you are always the first to suffer when management gets sloppy.
Here’s what happens, and what you can do to change it.
The consequences for HR managers
You are on the front lines when operational management lacks structure:
Social climate deteriorates:
Vague goals cause unclear roles, misunderstood expectations, and interpersonal tension — which all end up in your inbox.
HR processes are disrupted:
Weak goals block employee development, distort performance reviews, and complicate skills frameworks.
Impact on skills development weakens:
No clear goals, no real growth — making training plans ineffective by design.
The consequences for operational managers
When managers don’t know how to set motivating goals, they:
burn out chasing urgencies instead of driving real progress.
lose credibility with their teams, appearing vague, hesitant, or disengaged — and authority soon follows.
fail to develop their teams' skills, lacking clear benchmarks to drive progress.
The consequences for teams
Without clear goals:
Employees lose their direction:
It's no longer autonomy — it's abandonment.
And humans crave structure more than they admit.
Engagement drops:
Without a sense of purpose, motivation fades.
Conflicts take root:
In the absence of alignment, personal power struggles quietly become the default behavior.
HR Managers: your role in fixing it
You can't set goals for operational managers — but you can drive the change.
Here’s how:
1. Build a "goal-setting culture"
talk with managers: understand why goal-setting isn’t natural to them — then show how it strengthens their authority and credibility.
link HR needs to operational impact: explain how clear goals make your professional interviews, training plans, and internal mobility easier and more effective.
get leadership support: if possible, tie HR-quality objectives into operational managers' own performance evaluations.
communicate regularly: internal articles, podcasts, success stories — keep goal-setting visible and strategic.
Effect sought: change how goals are perceived, from a control tool to a growth and autonomy tool.
2. Make it simple to act
provide templates for goal formulation.
share real examples of good, motivating goals across roles.
offer mentoring or coaching support for writing better goals aligned with business priorities.
Effect sought: give even inexperienced managers a clear, reusable framework.
3. Support Without Taking Over
offer light-touch support: reviewing or helping refine goals without replacing the manager’s responsibility,
launch co-development workshops: help managers challenge and improve each other's practices, ideally under the guidance of a coach,
create a shared managerial calendar: defining goal-setting periods, reviews, and annual closures to drive collective momentum.
Effect sought: secure managers without disempowering them.
4. Highlight Solid Manager behavior
You can't impose behavior.
But you can:
showcase managers who set clear, motivating goals and stay the course,
collect feedback on managerial practices in psychosocial risk (RPS) and quality of work life (QWL) initiatives,
appoint Solid Manager ambassadors to share best practices.
Effect sought: make structured, aligned, and congruent behaviors highly visible — and aspirational.
In conclusion: your HR posture as a catalyst
The strategic vision your HR role gives you is far more powerful than any direct authority you may lack.
By helping managers set motivating goals,
you help them become stronger, more respected, and more effective.
You strengthen your company’s management culture and create lasting engagement.
This is what a Solid Manager achieves:
Holding the line, structuring progress, inspiring trust — even without formal authority.
To your solidity,
Olivier KAMEL
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