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Don’t Share Your Career Goals With Just Anyone
Share your plans with the right person though, and it’s a powerful motivator
On the Democratic presidential debate stage last week, candidate Andrew Yang offered up a nugget of career advice wrapped in an anecdote about the failure of his first business:
“One of the secrets to entrepreneurship: If you want to start something, tell everyone you know you’re going to do it,” he said. “Then you don’t have a choice. You put your heart and soul into it.”
He was kind of right, though the research on this topic is mixed. Some studies indicate that being too vocal about your goals can backfire, giving you an undeserved sense of accomplishment just for talking about them. (Chattering about your plan to open a Star Wars-themed food truck called Darth Tater will make you a little annoying at parties, but it might not have much meaningful effect beyond that.)
But sharing your plans more judiciously, with carefully chosen confidants, might be one of the best things you can do for yourself. In a new study out of the Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, researchers found that talking about your career goals with people you look up to — a boss, a mentor, an acquaintance who’s further along in your field — can be a powerful motivator in helping you achieve them.
In one part of the study, which was published online in the Journal of Applied Psychology, around 300 college students set ambitious academic goals for themselves; in another, the researchers examined workers’ commitment to reaching their professional targets. Across the board, people were most likely to hit their goals when they confided in someone they thought of as higher-status.
“Because you care about their opinion, you’re much less likely to give up or lower your goal,” says professor and lead study author Howard Klein, a professor of management and human resources at Fisher. “It’s a combination of wanting to be viewed positively and not wanting them to think less of you.”
For extra motivational juice, talk about your goals with a person you interact with fairly often, says Liz Bentley, president of an executive-coaching firm of the same name. “If you’re sharing it with someone who…
