Client reviews from By David Wright
Two 2026 studies add useful nuance to goal setting: feedback can strengthen the effect of goals, and goals that move too far from prior performance may undermine performance when they feel unfair or disconnected from reality.
The problem with “set a bigger goal”
Goal setting is powerful because it directs attention, clarifies priorities, and creates a reference point for action. But a goal can become less useful when it is detached from feedback, prior performance, resources, or the person who is expected to carry it out.
New 2026 research helps explain why. One study in the European Economic Review examined goal setting and feedback together, including differences between worker-set and employer-set goals. Another study in the Journal of Business Research found that large discrepancies between managers’ updated goals and employees’ prior goal attainment were associated with lower subsequent performance, with perceived fairness helping explain the relationship.
Feedback turns a goal into a learning loop
A goal answers, “Where are we trying to go?” Feedback answers, “What is happening as we move?” Without the second question, people can persist with the wrong strategy, misread progress, or abandon a goal because they cannot see whether effort is producing movement.
Useful feedback is specific, timely, and connected to behavior that can actually change. “Do better” is not feedback. “You completed four of five planned outreach calls, but follow-up lagged by two days; let’s change the follow-up trigger” is feedback.
Calibration is not the same as lowering standards
Calibrating a goal means using real information to set the next target. Prior performance is one input, not a ceiling. The Journal of Business Research study suggests that when new goals move too far from prior attainment, performance can decline—especially when the target is perceived as unfair.
In coaching, calibration can mean breaking a large goal into successive performance ranges, identifying what changed between cycles, and deciding whether the constraint is skill, time, resources, competing priorities, confidence, or execution.
A practical three-part coaching cycle
1. Define the outcome. State the result clearly enough that you can tell whether it happened.
2. Build the feedback mechanism. Decide what you will measure weekly or daily. Choose a small number of leading indicators that reflect actual behavior.
3. Recalibrate deliberately. At a scheduled review point, compare target, behavior, and outcome. Keep what is working, adjust what is not, and set the next target with both ambition and evidence.
When ambitious goals become self-defeating
A goal can become counterproductive when it is so broad that there is no clear next action, so aggressive that it encourages shortcuts, or so disconnected from current capacity that every review feels like failure. The answer is not necessarily to make the goal easy. It is to make the process more informative.
A good coaching system protects ambition while improving the quality of the path: better targets, better feedback, better interpretation, and better adjustments.
The practical takeaway
If your goals are ambitious but inconsistent, vague, or repeatedly abandoned, coaching can help turn them into a measurable system with feedback, calibration, and accountability.
Sources & Further Reading
- Altan B, Guney B, Uler N. Goal Setting and Feedback: The Power of Joint Use. European Economic Review. Available online September 13, 2026.
- Mo R, Fu X. Hitting the mark: How managers’ performance goal assignment and employees’ prior goal attainment influence employee performance. Journal of Business Research. 2026;214:116255.
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Educational and performance-focused information only. Coaching is not a substitute for appropriate licensed medical, psychiatric, or psychological care.
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