How to Set Goals That Actually Work (and Stick)

Effortless Goal Setting with the C.L.E.A.R. Framework

Why do most goals fall apart within weeks? In this episode of Change Agent Leadership, Executive Coach Jonathan Hankin reveals the 5 reasons goals often fail—and introduces a powerful, practical tool to fix them: the C.L.E.A.R. Goal Framework.

C.L.E.A.R. stands for:
 • Clarity – Define success in measurable, actionable terms
 • Link to Purpose – Connect your goal to what really matters
 • Evaluate – Break goals down into weekly, trackable steps
 • Accountability – Share goals with someone who will challenge and support you
 • Reflect & Adjust – Review regularly and adapt to stay on track

Whether you’re a leader driving change, a professional aiming for growth, or a team looking for alignment, this framework will help you set goals that actually work—and stick.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
 • Why vague goals and lack of structure sabotage progress
 • How to align your goals with your personal values and team mission
 • The exact questions to ask when creating new goals
 • How to build habits and systems that make change sustainable

00:00 Introduction to Effective Goal Setting
01:00 Why Most Goals Fail
02:31 The CLEAR Framework: Clarity
04:26 Linking Goals to Purpose
06:22 Evaluating and Breaking Down Goals
08:33 Accountability in Goal Setting
09:56 Reflecting and Adjusting Goals
12:25 Building Habits to Support Goals
14:12 Recap and Final Thoughts

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/sGgJPHgElHk

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Transcript

 Welcome to another episode of Change Agent Leadership.   📍  📍  📍  📍  📍 Today we're talking about something that sounds simple, but often isn't setting goals that actually work and stick. Let's be honest,  we've all set goals before, maybe it was the start of the year. Or a new quarter or after a performance review and for a week or two maybe we made progress, but then life happens, right?

Distraction set in or the goal lost its clarity or motivation is faded.  You name it. But for some reason, , the end result was the goal, lost its focus, and it's not really a goal anymore. Does that sound familiar? Well, if so, you're not alone. We've all been there and actually studies show that most people abandoned their goal within weeks, but it doesn't have to be that way.

 In this video, I'll walk through with you what I believe is a powerful yet simple framework for setting and sustaining goals that work.  You'll leave with steps that can give you clarity, whether for yourself or for your team, and help you move from vision to real traction.   So I guess the real question is why most goals don't work.

Really it is because there are three main reasons why goals fail. One, they're too vague. Um, we've set goals like improved communication. Well, what does that even mean? How do you know when you've achieved it? How would you, how would you measure that you've improved communication? If that is just the goal, those two words.

Two, they often lack connection. If your goal doesn't connect to the bigger why. A purpose, a value, a vision that you care about that means something to you, and that's the key part. It won't hold up when life happens. When life gets hard, it's just gonna go by the wayside. And then three, there usually is no support or structure.

We need. We all need systems and habits,  help us make our goals stick.  And so I would just encourage you as we dive into this, just the first action step here as we go through this,  is take one goal that you've had this last year that didn't work.

I hate to start negative, but let's just go with something that didn't go as well as you expected and ask yourself one, was it clear? Two, was it connected to something meaningful to me? And three, did I have a plan to support it? I would encourage you to write this down and reflect on that because reflection, when we were able to reflect back on things, whether good or bad, it helps us set a stage for change.

 And the goal here is to change, right? To get better. So how do we move from goals that don't work to goals that work? Well, I want to introduce you to a framework that I use with my clients, my teams, and myself, and it's called clear, it's an acronym, C-L-E-A-R. , each letter gives you a building block, , for effective goal setting.

So we're gonna go through these five letters together.   So let's jump into the first one is C for clarity. And this is where you really do want to be specific about what success looks like. ,  instead of, for example, get better at delegation, which is very vague, try delegate three tasks this month that I normally hold onto.

So again, it's bringing more clarity to it or. The one I mentioned earlier, improved communication instead of improved communication.  So again, you want to break it out, whatever that is for improved communication to you.

What are some actual clarity, first steps that you can measure? And it could be, I'll give you a couple here.   So if you wanted to create an outline for improving communication, maybe you agree that all of your communication emails are going to start with a greeting. They're going to then set the stage with a sentence.

You're gonna have information in the body of the email. Then you're gonna have anything that you need a response from. So what's the next step from the recipient? Then a date that you need the response by, and then a closing. So again, those, uh. Five, six steps I listed. I'm not sure. I think it was five or six.

 , those are really just ideas for a simple email. But if you had that in mind, so every time you're responding, you can just run through that so you have clarity for improved communication. So if some of those things happen, you don't have to do all of 'em. That would be an improvement in communication.

So if delegation or communication is a challenge for you right now, try one of these for a few weeks. See what happens. See what works, see what you need to tweak and go from there. 

 An action step for this first one. Next time you're assigned a goal or need to create a goal, ask yourself, what exactly do I do or will I do, and how will I know when it's done?

 So that's the question. What exactly will I do and how will I know when it's done?   The second letter is L, which stands for link to purpose. And you really want to important here to tie your goal to a deeper purpose, mission, or value. And you're gonna have to define that, but really the question is, why does this matter to me or to my team, or to the impact I want to make?

 Preferably all of those, right? I mean, so if it's a personal. Purpose. , maybe how does it impact you? But also it'd be great if it did move into, uh, significant other family team. Other things like that doesn't have to start with yourself. Why does it matter to you? If it doesn't matter to you, it, it's not gonna move forward.

So really the goal here is to get better at delegation, for example, was one of our things. So one response to linking to purpose for that one, if that was your goal. To get to delegate better is to think, well, if I delegate better. I will have more time to focus on what's important to me and to my family, my career progression, et cetera.

And so you really wanna tie it to a purpose, a outcome that's going to happen. So if it was improved communication, we're gonna stick with those two themes throughout this video.  So if communication is better. Clarity will happen, resulting in less questions, and others will be able to move forward on task without always coming to me.

So again, it's freeing up your time if you have better communication. Again, what is your purpose in this goal? And it's really important to clarify that because otherwise it's just not going to stick, but also helps you move forward. So an action step for this one is next time you create a goal. Write a sentence of why for that goal.

So this anchors you in your motivation, and when momentum dips, you will then come back to this.  This is one of the biggest hiccups people don't do, is they don't tie it to a purpose. And so write your why down. It will definitely pay off. That's the action for this one.  The third one is evaluate e. Stands for, evaluate and break it down.

So it's easy to get overwhelmed at larger goals.   They just seem insurmountable at times. So avoid this by breaking down big goals into bite-size steps.  So do this with asking some questions. What are the three or fourth steps that need to happen next? So again, we wanna break it down into smaller steps.

Then you wanna break those steps down into weekly actions, checkpoints or milestones. You can call 'em whatever you want. But basically, what will progress look like after one week? So what will progress look like after one week, after one month, um, in those action steps for those goals?  Because as you break 'em down.

They're not such a mountain.  So I'd encourage you to become better at delegation. And  one way to do that is to make a list of tasks you have to complete. Mark the ones you can delegate and put a name beside them.

So who can you delegate them to? So this is one way to delegate better. Then also put a timeframe with the task and the person assigned. So. If you gave it to somebody, what's the timeframe on that? Clearly communicate with the person,  the task and the timeframe, and then reevaluate after a week.

 So you've done this list of delegation, and then each month I'll do the same thing for larger tasks that are on the horizon, I. So just think of delegation is really important, tied to the evaluate stage of what you're doing for your goals. So as you evaluate, what do you need to do, break it down into steps.

And then also what can you delegate? And when you delegate, be specific. Make a list, have a date, have a time. Have a follow up. It'll really lower your stress level on that.  So an action step. Couple of 'em here. One, map out three milestones for your goal. Post them somewhere visible. One of the parts of making goals happen is to make them visible, so post them somewhere visible and then make a list of tasks and then identify which ones you can delegate.

  You may not be able to completely delegate all of the steps, but what can you delegate? What would it look like to delegate? Going through this process will help you help your goals stick.  The next one is a for accountability. And this is where you want to share your goal with somebody that is safe and on your side.

 You wanna set up regular check-ins? So think about, who will ask me how it's going? Will they accept? Fine, I hope not. You want them to be able to dive in. Will they actually say, well, what does fine mean? Well, do they have permission then to push back if you're not following through? So you really wanna have someone that's safe.

You want someone that can ask you the hard questions and can follow up. You wanna safe person. So keep in mind that teams that share goals are more likely to follow through. So an action step. Text or email someone you trust. Do it right now if you can, and ask them to check in with you on a specific goal next week at that check-in.

Let them know of your next next goal. So check in on that goal. Let them know of your next goal as well, what you want to accomplish by when and why that goal is important to you. So answer those key questions we've already covered and then give them permission to ask you the hard questions by doing this over and over again.

  It'll help you build that better accountability. And a lot of times I do this with people and they, they hold me accountable and then I hold them accountable as well. So hopefully if you can work with someone that's at or similar to your level that's safe is really helpful.   

And then lastly, r is for reflect and adjust.  And again, this is where , check-ins, regularly are so important. We also need to celebrate small wins. We need to make adjustments.  So goals are not static. I mean, some goals are static. You have a number goal, but they do evolve generally with feedback and with reality checks. So as you're setting goals, especially with I want to communicate better or I want to delegate better, those, and we talked about how to break those down more.

But they are going to adjust, and you may add things, you may add nuances to them. So remember, they're not in stone. 

So the que question is, how will you know if and when you're making need to make an adjustment? Or if you're just making an excuse like, well, that that goal isn't great. I'm just gonna move on to something else, or I need to adjust.

For me, a general rule of thumb is if I push out the goal three times or more, it's not important. Which means if a goal is your boss's goal and you keep pushing it out, it may be time to reflect on your overall tasks and the goals that you have to ensure that you're aligning with your boss's goals and your boss's desired outcome.

Again, be sure to understand the why behind the goal. And if that's not relevant to your boss, like it just doesn't matter. It's just a task because they just need you to do something. Then you should be asking other questions to reflect on, such as is this job a good fit? If that's all you're doing, if you're just doing things because you're told to do it well, is that really a good fit for you?

Does your daily work bring you joy? That's a legitimate question. Our daily work overall should bring us joy and one of the ways to find that out, I'm gonna just plug the Working Genius Assessment. I'm gonna do this with a lot of teams, and it's like what does bring us joy? And a lot of times people are in the wrong role because the tasks they're doing, they can do them, but they don't bring them joy.

So I just wanna encourage you, part of having clear goals is also being in a role that you enjoy.  So an action step, , add a 10 minute goal check in to your calendar every Friday. So just add it to your Friday calendar and ask three questions. One, what worked, what got in the way, and what shifts do I need to make?

 Asking those questions on a regular basis will really help you reflect and adjust. Ongoing and help you grow. 

So we talked about having goals and that's great, and I really do believe in those steps. I use them, I think they'll help you. But the thing here is we also talked about having them stick, right?

I mean, it's one thing to have goals, but making them stick. So once you set a clear goal, the next challenge is making it stick. And this is where habits come in. Goals without habits are like seeds without soil. I mean, honestly, you plant them. You have the best intention. And nothing grows. And then we're like, well, what went wrong?

  Well, there are really three habit building techniques I'm just gonna go over quickly. One, tie your goal to an existing routine if possible. That's number one. So for example, reflect on your goal every Monday during your first cup of coffee, so whatever your major goal is for the week. Whatever it is, personal work, whatever.

Set a time that you're going to reflect on it and ask some key questions. We put the thing on Friday on your calendar, that's a habit. Also, another habit could be, uh, coffee on Monday morning, whatever your favorite beverage is on Monday morning. Um, reflect on that goal. Two use a visual tracker, check boxes, sticky notes, uh, habit apps are out there.

, make your progress visible so that you're reminded it's not, it just isn't in the back of your mind and you forget about it. And then also celebrate small wins. Recognize effort, not just outcomes. This is a big mistake. People forget and it really does build momentum. Effort does count. So measure against what you actually did, not what the perfect outcome is.

 A lot of people are measuring against the perfect, perfect, perfect outcome, which generally doesn't happen. So what are the things you can measure against that you actually did and progress again? The accountability will hold you from making excuses. So don't worry about that.  So here's a couple action steps. One, choose one habit building technique that you're going to use. Try it for a month. Then after a month, evaluate and see how it works with your goal, having a good habit.

 Having a system in place will help you and I develop our goals and follow through. 

So let's recap. Most goals fail because they lack clarity,  connection to something and a structure. The clear framework, C.L.E.A.R. Framework gives you the five keys, clarity link to purpose, evaluate, accountability, and reflect along with turning your goal into a habit.

Which helps it stick for the long haul.   I'd encourage you to take one goal you've been thinking about, whether it's personal, professional, and walk through the clear framework. Take 15 minutes today. Set yourself up for success. You'll be amazed at  what shifts in your mindset. And in your actions can happen when your goals are actually starting to work for you, not against you.

And if you're leading others, try this framework with your team. Use it as an exercise. Help your people get clear on goals, get connected, and to see results together.  If you found this helpful, please like and subscribe and share with someone who could benefit from learning how to thrive in these types of situations.

I'm Jonathan Hankin, your change agent, coach. Keep questioning, keep growing and learning and keep leading change. See you next time.