Okuzeka
Management & Leadership vocabulary · Strategy and Planning

Goal

Meaning in management & leadership, with examples

/ɡoʊl/nounCore term

In management & leadership, goal means: Something a person, team or company wants to achieve, usually described in broad terms and over a longer period, such as becoming the market leader.

In Turkish: hedef, amaç

How it is used

One of the most frequent words in planning and performance talks. You set, reach, achieve or work towards a goal. In many companies goal, objective and target are used almost interchangeably.

Example sentences

  1. Our main goal this year is to cut customer complaints in half.

  2. Let's agree on three goals for the next quarter in our one-on-one.

Common collocations

  • set a goal
  • achieve a goal
  • shared goal
  • long-term goal
  • work towards a goal
  • objectiveA specific, measurable result that a team or organisation plans to achieve by a certain date, usually as one step towards a wider goal.
  • targetA specific number, level or result that a person or team is expected to reach within a set time, such as a sales figure or a cost limit.
  • SMART goalsGoals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound; a common checklist for making goals clear enough to act on and track.
  • stretch goalA goal set deliberately higher than what seems easily possible, to push a person or team to try new approaches and achieve more than usual.
  • OKRShort for objectives and key results: a goal-setting method in which each ambitious objective is paired with a few measurable key results that show whether it was achieved.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Strategy and Planning

Practise with graded reading

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