Ambition is oxygen for business. It gives teams a sense of possibility and leaders a reason to press forward in uncertainty. But like oxygen, too much can suffocate.
When goals stretch so far beyond reality, they stop fueling progress and start eroding it. The intention is noble—set the bar high, inspire belief, force innovation. Yet what often follows isn’t boldness but quiet disillusionment. People lose faith in themselves, in the team, in the vision.
The paradox of leadership is that the very goals meant to energize can also demoralize. And this happens not because ambition is dangerous, but because its expression is misplaced.
The Illusion of “Big Goals, Big Wins”
Our business culture is obsessed with scale. Go big or go home.10x thinking.Moonshots. These phrases ring through boardrooms, accelerators, and leadership seminars. The belief underneath is simple: the larger the goal, the larger the outcome.
But psychology tells a different story. Research on goal-setting theory shows that when goals are too far out of reach, motivation collapses. Instead of striving harder, people disengage. The very size of the goal signals its impossibility.
This isn’t just theory. Consider WeWork, whose ambition to “elevate the world’s consciousness” disguised an unsustainable business model. Employees weren’t short on talent or energy; they were asked to believe in something structurally unrealistic. The result wasn’t inspiration. It was collapse.
Unrealistic targets don’t just risk being missed. They shape how people see themselves. A team that consistently fails to hit goals eventually stops believing in its own ability to progress at all.
The Consequence Leaders Overlook
The obvious downside of unrealistic goals is missed performance. Targets aren’t met, shareholders grumble, projects stall. But the deeper damage is psychological.
Each time people are asked to chase the impossible, they carry away more than failure—they carry doubt.
They stop trusting their leaders’ promises. They stop trusting the process. And worst of all, they stop trusting themselves.
This erosion of belief is far more costly than any single missed number. It weakens the foundation of performance itself.
As I’ve written in more detail about the most likely consequence of setting unrealistic goals, the real danger is identity erosion. A person who fails at an impossible task doesn’t simply mark a missed objective. They internalize the failure. Over time, the story becomes: I am not capable. Management research has captured this pattern. As noted in the Harvard Business Review, the stretch goal paradox dictates that overly ambitious goals can often widen the execution gap, leaving organizations disillusioned rather than motivated.
The short-term miss is recoverable. The long-term loss of belief rarely is.
The Shift: Why Small Wins Build Certainty
Granular goals aren’t glamorous. They don’t make headlines or stir adrenaline. But they do something more valuable: they build conviction.
Behavioral psychology calls this the goal-gradient effect: the closer people feel to achieving a target, the harder they work toward it. Progress accelerates as the goal feels attainable.
The late Harvard professor Teresa Amabile called this the progress principle—people are most motivated and creative when they make consistent, meaningful progress on their work. Momentum, not scale, is the real driver of innovation.
Even outside academia, this shows up everywhere. In Atomic Habits, James Clear describes how identity is built not through proclamations but through action: “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” Small wins accumulate into self-belief.
For leaders, the lesson is clear. Confidence isn’t manufactured by bold slogans. It’s earned by evidence. And evidence comes from goals that are challenging but believable.
A Better Way to Lead Ambition
Leaders don’t need to abandon vision. They need to structure it differently.
Break down the horizon. Large goals should be decomposed into tangible milestones that teams can reach and measure. Each step builds belief in the next.
Celebrate visible progress. Recognition of small wins reinforces collective identity: we are capable, we are
moving forward.
Iterate, don’t protect. Goals should be treated as drafts, not commandments. When new data emerges, leaders earn trust by adjusting instead of doubling down.
Anchor goals to meaning. People will endure difficulty if the purpose is clear. Connect milestones to a larger narrative of growth rather than a vanity metric.
This approach doesn’t dilute ambition it sustains it. A team that trusts in its own progress is far more likely to attempt the extraordinary than one that is repeatedly asked to pursue the impossible.
Closing Thought
Unrealistic goals don’t simply waste time or resources. They corrode belief. They convince capable people that progress is futile. And once conviction is gone, leadership has lost its most powerful tool.
Ambition will always matter. But if leaders want to inspire, they must design goals that are both daring and believable. Success doesn’t come from stretching people thin it comes from compounding their belief, one win at a time.
Author Bio:
Dillon Hayes, MD, is a psychiatrist and author. He is the founder of Elephant, where he writes about self-mastery, leadership, and the psychology of performance.
Read more:
Why Leaders Set Themselves Up to Fail With Unrealistic Goals
