Customer Reviews

Motivation and Goal-Setting

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Motivation and Goal-Setting by Jim Cario is a short book. Compared to many other motivation books on the market, you need to be prepared for only quick tips here. The book has about 100 pages of content - but of that, about half is taken up by redundant empty worksheets for you to fill in. Here's an example of a full page form. It has a grid. You descrie a situation you've seen as a team member or leader. You say what type of reinforcement should have been used, and what results should have been seen. It makes you do this 3 times. Surely an entire page didn't need to be devoted to this exercise. It's not just once - it is all through the entire book. You're paying for empty forms.

What's in the other half? There are apparently 8 steps to achieving success. These are Identity, Values, Goals, Action Plan, Motivation, Discipline, Flexibility and Outcome. The book goes over each step of course, to help you understand it. Each section has a brief area showing you how to determine this trait in yourself, and then gives an example of "Margo", and unhappy 27 yr old office worker.

Most of us know these basic things and were getting a book to help us do them more efficiently. Some of the chapters therefore seemed very light and unhelpful - but I suppose they had to be included for the sake of going from start to end and not just "jumping into the middle". However, the actual "meat" chapters were given the same light treatment. I can understand the "identity" chapter only getting a few pages - it's important to really understand what you want in life before you plot out how to get it. That's fairly clear. On the other hand, people are getting this book because they ARE having problems getting to their goal, so you would think the "action plan" chapter would be thick and meaty. Nope! It's got a few tips, and then skips right ahead. Were they trying to conserve paper? Keep their book under $x price point? It's hard to know. Surely if those were concerns, they could have handled the 800 giant forms differently. But I digress.

So, their entire 3 pages (using large print) of action plan description tells you: Make a list of goals, start now, record your progress. Do planning at every level in your organization, and commit the energy and time to do it. Then they restate that same information, and have Margo do it. There's no actual help on how to do these things, or how to do them well, or what pitfalls to avoid, or so on. I knew to make a list! I knew to prioritize it. I got this book for help in doing these tasks.

OK, on to motivation. Luckily, motivation gets a much more thorough treatment. The book should really have been called "Motivation Techniques". You get info on motivating yourself and motivating others. A key message of this area is that people respond to positive motivation, while negative motivation only makes things worse. The book says to give positive reinforcement quickly, with explicit praise for the action (not general praise). It says to give private feedback when it's negative, and to do it quickly and specifically. Then the book says to keep score - to show graphs and charts constantly of the progress.

Here's my issues. The generic instructions tell you what to do, but not how to do it - and some are so generically Pollyanna so as to be nearly impossible. Say you have someone who simply is always late. This book tells you to "catch him being early and praise him". It assumes he IS going to do the good trait someday. It gives many warnings about negative reinforcement, but no real suggestions on how to handle problems in real life. It emphasizes keeping score - but in many work environments, that causes HUGE problem with inter-personal competition and unhappiness. Many organizations do much better without constantly keeping score.

The book could be helpful for someone just starting out, who has never done any self evaluation of any kind and who needs the very basics on how to work with others. However, again, it should be titled to reflect that - "The Bare Basics of Motivating". With an actual subtitle of "how to set and achieve goals and inspire others", I expected much more actual content to help me do these things.

This book examines motivation strategies through goal setting. It teaches readers how to define their goals or help employees define what their goals are. I have found through reading this book that setting goals are important for many reasons. It helped me discover that organizations must establish goals to give employees top down a foundation to build their own goals. It is important for employees to develop their own goals and for managers to help direct,and define their goals to help with motivation. Goal setting leads to motivation which in turn leads to increased productivity. This book strives to help managers as well as individuals establish goals and goal setting procedures as well as tips and tools that are beneficial. It has already proven to be a very beneficial tool for me in my business.

Motivation and Goal-Setting shows rather than tells. Instead of launching into long-winded sermons about discovering your "true" identity, author Jim Cairo poses a few simple questions that set the reader off on an interesting path of introspection. By forcing you to get involved with the book by answering these questions yourself, Cairo is using the principles that he writes about. The exercises he suggests will start building momentum that you can carry right over into your own personal goals. The book falters only in the sections on motivation and change, where Cairo lapses into generic sloganeering about learning from mistakes and embracing change. Regardless, we [...] recommend this book to anyone who feels that they could use a second wind, from a high-school student struggling to remain motivated, to a 55-year-old CEO looking for fresh challenges.

This book examines motivation strategies through goal setting. It teaches readers how to define their goals or help employees define what their goals are. I have found through reading this book that setting goals are important for many reasons. It helped me discover that organizations must establish goals to give employees top down a foundation to build their own goals. It is important for employees to develop their own goals and for managers to help direct,and define their goals to help with motivation. Goal setting leads to motivation which in turn leads to increased productivity. This book strives to help managers as well as individuals establish goals and goal setting procedures as well as tips and tools that are beneficial. It has already proven to be a very beneficial tool for me in my business.

Motivation and Goal Setting's strength lies not in the destination, but in the map. Chock-full of various strategies and tips on how to set the goal and then motivate yourself into attaining the goal, even when said goal seems more unattainable than ever. Well written and easy to follow, Cairo's book's ideas can be applied to all areas of life. It reminds me of Guerilla PR: Wired as both books deal with attaining your goals.

This book is not a very in depth piece, for that of motivation and goal setting, of course its length might suggest that. The first chapter or two are very bland and share only surface information... I initially kept reading it as I was trying to motivate myself to believe; there was more to it than what I was seeing... Granted as a person with advanced degrees i probably expected too much.... but then again i was looking for a rather simple read for a change... instead of a War and Peace kind of work... and this book is it...

I recommend you consider buying it as a reference in your quest to build more motivation... it does do itself justice by articulating that motivation is grounded in one's values, and that one needs to have an in depth understanding of one's values in order for motivation to really register in whatever it is one is doing... so for that reason i recommend it... it's basic. yet it carries a point, and its easy to read and has several exercises that will actually encourage you to view your life, and your work and compare them to your values... allowing you to flush out the inconsistency between the three, you can be sure of that.. so if you are serious about building more motivation in your life, this book will be a good starter in that direction... that is once you get passed the first two chapters which are relatively short too...

Kind Regards,

This book is clear and easy to understand. It does not deal with a lot of theory about motivation and how goal setting impacts the motivation.

It is a concise guide describing the goal setting process and all that is entailed in having an effective goal setting plan.

If you are looking for a detailed, theoretical book on dealing with the psychological components of motivation, this is not the book for you.

If you want a practical, easy to understand guide to use goal setting to motivate yourself and others, this IS the book for you.

Kevin Sivils