Moving the Goalposts
One-liner: Changing the criteria for success right after you meet the old ones. Also known as / related terms: “Raising the bar,” goalpost-shifting; originates as a named informal logical fallacy. What it is: Moving the goalposts began as a named informal logical fallacy: dismissing evidence that satisfies a stated claim and demanding new, often greater, evidence instead, a British-origin phrase drawn from the literal act of shifting a sports goal after play has already begun. As an interpersonal and workplace tactic, it takes the same structure: a target is given a specific requirement (a metric, a skill, a deliverable) and, once they meet it, a new and previously unstated requirement appears in its place, so the goal of “success” or “approval” never becomes reachable. Documented workplace applications include promotion cases where an employee is told they need a particular skill, and upon acquiring it, is told a new skill is now required, a pattern that researchers and legal writers note is commonly used to facilitate discriminatory blocking of women and other marginalized employees from advancement, and more broadly to erode morale and enforce endless compliance. What it looks like (workplace): An employee is told a promotion requires leading one major project successfully; after delivering it, they’re told they also need “more executive presence,” and after working on that for months, a new manager arrives and adds yet another undefined requirement, the promotion criteria have shifted three times with no fixed finish line. Why they do it: It keeps a person perpetually striving and compliant while withholding the reward indefinitely, and it can function as a low-visibility way to block advancement without ever stating an outright “no.” How to protect yourself:
- Get success criteria in writing, with specifics, before you begin working toward them, a documented baseline is what exposes a later shift.
- When a new requirement appears, name the shift explicitly and ask for it in writing too: “This is different from what we agreed on [date], can we confirm the updated criteria?”
- Track the history of stated requirements over time; a pattern is far more persuasive to a third party (HR, a mentor) than a single instance.
- Set your own exit criteria, a personal limit on how many “one more thing” cycles you’ll accept before treating the goal as unreachable by design. Cross-links: Weaponized Incompetence, Future Faking, Hoovering. Sources:
- Moving the goalposts, Wikipedia, origin, definition, and sourced discrimination/workplace-abuse applications.
- Moving the Goalposts, Logically Fallacious, formal logical-fallacy definition and structure.
- The Fallacy of ‘Moving the Goalposts’, Explained, Snopes, accessible explainer with real-world examples of the pattern in practice. Label note: Originates as a named informal logical fallacy (argumentation theory), colloquially extended to describe a workplace/relationship manipulation pattern, not a clinical psychology term.