As we come to the start of autumn, it’s a good time for refreshing our goals. That includes team goals as well as personal ones. Setting goals for our sports teams are crucial, providing greater focus at the start of a new season. Whether you play netball socially or in a club, it’s good to revise your squad goals every few months, as abilities develop, and you consolidate previously learnt skills. Here are some of the main benefits of setting squad goals:

1. It helps group cohesion

For a team to be successful, they need unity and cohesion. Having shared goals with team mates helps to create a sense of community, co-operation, unity and improves morale. Having a set of shared goals also encourages personal responsibility, with each player being held accountable with a common feeling of ownership towards the team’s ongoing performance. Improved cohesion leads to better communication and better teamwork.

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2. Improves motivation

Similar to the point made above, goal-setting helps to inspire greater motivation. Players are more inclined to make more effort to avoid letting the side down and to contribute towards that feeling of unity. Setting challenging goals is linked to greater performance, as each player motivates themselves to work harder towards a shared goal.

3. It provides direction

It helps to stay focused and motivated when you have something tangible to work towards. Shared goals mean everyone is working towards the same thing using their individual strengths.

4. It helps planning

When you know which direction you want to travel in, planning how to get there becomes easier. A plan can be drawn up establishing the steps required to reach that goal. Perhaps this could be in the form of specific training sessions to improve a certain area of the game. For Netball Training drills, visit https://www.sportplan.net/drills/Netball/Roles-responsibilities/Centre-c.jsp

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The types of goals that are useful to set include:

1. Outcome goals

You cannot directly affect these goals as they are out of your control and represent the bigger picture, such as coming top of the league that season.

2. Performance goals

These you can affect as these are the goals you are trying to achieve to help you towards the outcome goal. If you want to top the league you need a considerable goal difference so elements of attacking and defending need to form part of a training plan.

3. Process goals

These are the goals you can directly control, the steps you take every day in training to improve the performance and outcome goals success rate. This means showing up to training on time, not missing games and always giving 100{57b0634ca8edc852d4c554c357e5dc7005a4e9db173c1fa8d3e43ea6724f15a4} effort.

By breaking these goals down into different stages, it should be easier to discuss and set up your own squad goals for the season ahead.