Goal Posts Move: Accepting It Improves Your Ability to Change It or Make the Best of It

I watched as a meet director moved the poles holding the backstroke flags.

The swim meet had already started. Warm-ups had ended. My backstroke race was coming up. I knew exactly how many counts I had on the old flags before I could flip for the final lap without getting disqualified. How would these few inches affect me?

“They feel like the goal posts keep moving on them.”

The moving backstroke flags reminded me of this statement, and many like it that I hear again, and again, and again. One of the biggest frustrations I hear when clients first reach out about team development and employee upskilling is that their team’s motivation is fading due to the perception that the goalposts keep moving on them.

INTENTIONAL UNFAIRNESS OR BAD COMMUNICATION?

Now, the idiom refers to changing the rules while someone is trying to do something in order to make it more difficult for them” (Cambridge Dictionary). The idiom conveys an intentionality behind the move.

Employees often feel this intentionality. Their perception is that the changing targets or policies are being changed unfairly or arbitrarily. Sometimes they are right. What I find is often they aren’t. The misperception stems from ineffective communication that leaves them guessing and interpreting the silence. And, by default, negatively fills silences.

This could have happened with the backstroke poles. I was not told why the poles were being moved. If I had asked, I am sure I would have been told. But I didn’t. I didn’t get too bothered by it, even. Why?

Because I knew that there were regulations galore governing the meet. I knew that what affected me affected everyone I was racing. I knew that while I had personal goals, others had world-record goals and would certainly be monitoring any unfair actions by the meet director, officials, and other swimmers.

So, while I didn’t know the reason for the change, I could trust whatever drove the action.

This isn’t always, even often, the case in organizations. We don’t have officials roaming the halls to disqualify unfair actions. We must trust that actions are intended to be fair and are, in fact, fair.

Trust is hard enough without the fast-paced, high-stress, deadline-driven, regulated fields I support. And that is just the work climate. When you add that to the fast-paced, highly scheduled, often lonely, high-pressure personal lives most of us live, most are in a state of fight/flight/freeze/fawn all the time. Which makes it hard to trust. We have research to back this up, including a 2025 study of 561 Chinese university students (Feng). When people feel chronically stressed, they trust others less. When they trust others less, they feel less supported by others, which further reduces their trust.

Sound like a lot of workplaces? We know that most people at work are stressed, lonely, and disengaged, lowering trust. This means, among other things, when communication from the top is subpar, employees are less likely to assume good intent because trust is missing.

Leaders can certainly take action here. But what about employees? What about managers who may also feel like they are being kept in the dark?

Regardless of where you rank on the org chart, here’s what you can start doing.

ACCEPT, OWN, CONNECT

First, remember, you have to accept where you currently are. Accept the reality of the situation and of your feelings about it. Related, you have to accept that “goal posts” move all the time, fairly.

Goal posts have always moved. It’s just that today, they move more rapidly at work and outside of it. And it’s a lot of change, coming at us fast, making it exhausting to try to keep up with. Making it tempting to dig in and resist it or blame others for it without holding on to our agency in the thick of it.

And that agency is what will reduce your feelings of stress and help you take productive action. This ownership of what you can control is powerful. It’s one way of problem-solving, which is considered a “positive coping strategy” shown to reduce our stress levels.

Next, identify what you can and cannot control. Break down what you can control into the smallest actions possible. Identify the resources you have and need to take those actions. Then lay out a roadmap and get moving.

Move with others. Connect with other humans. Feng (2025) and ample research have shown that when we feel supported by others, our ability to trust grows. As does our well-being. Our chronic stress dips. Human connection is another positive coping strategy. These connections can be made in and outside of work, ideally both.

OFF THE BLOCKS

When I jumped into the water for the start of my race, I wasn’t thinking about the posts. I had already forgotten they had been moved. I was solely focused on my positioning, the sound of the official’s cues, the pierce of the horn, and off into the swirl of water around me as I tried to propel through it. I accepted, I owned.

And after it was over, I made new friends in the swimming community who joined me, my teammate, and my family in celebrating a first-place finish. Connect.

Accepting that targets move without understanding the full reasons why is hard. It’s frustrating. It can feel like everything you worked for was pointless. It’s exhausting as you try to keep going, and you feel like even a small win is out of reach. It can feel like we have no control in a world where increasingly everything feels uncontrollable.

But therein lies the freedom and release from the frustration and the swirl of other emotions that can come.

We never had control to begin with. The only thing we can control is how we face what comes at us. Accepting that, accepting that goal posts move, is where peace and progress lie.

It reduces distress, allowing us to think more clearly and have the energy we need to act intentionally and meet whatever demands are before us, ideally in community with others, because we will have retained our ability to trust.