By Tricia Martin
Last month I had the opportunity to facilitate to ninety Year 9 female students. It was the end of term and a looming Splendor line up drop, a good beach session and general freedom was a few days away. My role? To explain the link between where the girls were at and where they wanted to be. Those dreaded words…goal setting.
When I walked into the auditorium I realised they had clearly been prepped for what was ahead based on slumped shoulders, glazed eyes and quick checks of Insta feeds.
It is a devastating sight to see. It is devastating that for young women and myself 'goal setting' has been absolutely butchered, now seen as a chore rather than something that we want to jump into like a new season of Brooklyn 99. The reason? Well, it is the actual goal setting part of goal setting. It is stale, rigid and irrelevant to the new strategic thinkers of Gen Z women. It is really sad to have to title my workshops "Forget goal setting. Do this instead" to start the process of 'unlearning' and supporting students to recommit to see further than where they currently stand.
So it is time to acknowledge why Gen Z young women do not have time for your SMART goals (or any acronym for that matter).
1. Enough Fluff
When I open conversations about goal setting with students I usually give a heads up that it will not be the type of goal setting where your mum says "believe and you can be anything." 99.8% of the time that line is met with a wave of relief laughter. The elephant in the room has been exposed: the idea that goals are motivational quotes with pastel-hued backgrounds that you stick on your mirror. On Instagram or any social media stream, the successes and finish lines of goals are constantly presented without the crappy pitfalls or direction changes that are kept safely hidden in the camera roll (if photographed at all). The message? We sell girls a package of 'believe in yourself' yet the actual tools and process to get there are not included when we read the fine print.
2. The Curse of Progress
A lot of Gen Z women are born onto a pedestal with a big fat banner that reads "you can be anything you want to be". In a holiday workshop with Year 12 female students, we unpacked that idea. From the girls perspective, this message and support from their parents added even more pressure. Not only could they do anything… they should be everything dedicating their time to sports, academia, arts and crafts, social life, an after-school job and smashing the patriarchy in-between the 7 o'clock news and dinner. How can we expect young women to know what they want when there are literally thousands of options running around their heads? Ironically, the Gen Z woman appears remarkably similar to the multi-talented 'Renaissance Woman' or 'Jack of all Trades.' More focused on being 'everything' to everyone over gaining clarity on that 'something' that truly drives them.
3. "You don't know us so don't put us in a mould"
When I mention to young people that I cannot stand SMART goals the reaction is equal to announcing that I will personally fund every students' Spotify subscription for the rest of the year.
Pure joy. The support is overwhelming.
Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound (SMART) goals are exactly the opposite characteristics of what being a young person is. Decisions change literally all the time, and we have seen enough entrepreneurs and game changers to realise that 'realistic' and 'attainable' are no longer the norm. Most importantly, depending on your socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender and sadly your last name we know that a SMART goal scrawled onto a printout isn't going to do much to improve our odds or opportunity.
The solution? Goal setting needs to be less about the end game and more about the habits that push us in a direction that we feel good about. It needs to breathable, diverse and adaptable like the young women who make up Gen Z.
Find out more about She Can's processual and habit-based goal setting here.
Tricia Martin is a trained behavioural change facilitator and founder of She Can, a movement to change the game plan for students in equipping them with relevant, future-focused skills. Tricia can be contacted at tricia@shecan.com.au
