The 5 Ws of Family Goal-Setting
At some point or other, you’ve probably decided to try to improve something in your family life. Perhaps you decided to start budgeting. Or maybe you began requiring that everyone be together for at least three dinners a week, no matter what.
Too often, attempted improvements to our family lives come from one individual family member.
Dad decides it’s time for a family budget, so he researches, makes spreadsheets, logs all financial information, and voilá! The family now has a budget that everyone has to stick to, whether or not they contributed to its creation. Or Mom decides to meal plan, but he doesn’t seek input from her teenagers on when they’re home that week or what meals they enjoy most. And so she spends an hour and a half on a new chicken cacciatore recipe, only to have everyone make gross-out faces when they get to the table.
In other words, when you go it alone in setting goals, you’re not likely to make progress.
One way to think about family goal-setting is to apply the concept of the 5 Ws, the most basic and important information you can gather about any problem you’re trying to solve. Below are the 5 Ws of family goal-setting, to help your family get started.
Who should be involved in family goal-setting?
This may seem obvious, but YOUR WHOLE FAMILY. Goal-setting for a team of people works best when the whole team works together to decide what goals to tackle, how to tackle them, who is responsible for which tasks, etc. This includes your kids. If Dad wants to make his meal-planning goal a reality, he’ll probably want to run the weekly meal plan by everyone to get input. Maybe they have suggestions, too!
What kinds of goals should families work on?
We’re all pretty used to hearing about specific individual goals: lose weight, work out more, pursue a specific hobby, continue education, and the list goes on. But what things apply to whole families? The answer is: anything you want! But it might be helpful to think about what types of things impact the family unit. Specific ideas might be to establish and maintain a family budget, improve a morning or evening routine, go on a family date once a month, plant a vegetable garden, plan for a major purchase, take a vacation together, or live more sustainably. Even personal goals might become more achievable if you work on them together. Let’s say, for example, that a few of your family members want to lose some weight. Could you make this a family goal, and commit to visiting the gym together three times a week and eating at least four low-calorie dinners? Individual family members can and should have personal goals, too, but goals tend to be easier to accomplish when you’re working on them with someone else.
Where should family goal-setting happen?
It’s really helpful to have new goal-setting happen at special family meetings throughout the year, so you can stay focused on just a few things at a time. We call these meetings “Strategy Sessions,” and they should happen at least once a year, but no more than quarterly. The Strategy Sessions are where you brainstorm as a family on what you want to accomplish in the coming months and how you’re going to get there. They can happen anywhere, including your home, but sometimes it’s fun to recharge by having them somewhere else. Consider going out to dinner, having a picnic, or even going on a special retreat weekend at a hotel where you can mix fun activities with more strategic discussions.
When should families work on family goals?
Every week! At your weekly family meeting, you should check in with all family members on how they think the family is doing. Once you log your goal in FamilyWorks, you can then designate the person responsible, set a deadline, and write notes about what tasks might be involved in accomplishing that goal. Then, every week, you can pull up the goals section of the app together. Think about assigning your goals colors every week. Green might mean all is going great; no changes needed. Yellow means you’re slowing down, and you need to figure out if there’s a block in the way of progress. (Maybe you’ve slipped in your gym-going but haven’t stopped altogether, and you need to revisit what days you can go together.) Red means you’re stalled, and you need to spend more time figuring out the problems involved. If your family has altogether given up on the fitness challenge, do you need a new workout routine? Or some guidance from a nutritionist?
Why should families work on goals together?
For individuals, setting goals is linked to higher motivation, self-esteem, self-confidence, and autonomy. Goal-setting is also associated with higher achievement. These benefits of goal-setting can also apply to families, with the added benefit of increasing connection and a sense of community and belonging with the people you love the most. We grow closer with people when we problem-solve together, when we work side-by-side, and when we see the fruits of all our strategic thinking and hard work and can celebrate successes together. What better group of people to grow with than the people we love the most?
Think about how to make real, lasting change for your family by setting family goals together. Don’t go it alone and try to impose change from on high. Instead, learn how to brainstorm together, think collaboratively, problem-solve, and improve your family systems rather than simply living in the status quo. Become the family you want to be.