Coaching is a goal-directed process. Whether the coaching intervention is about enhancing sales skills, helping people to improve their performance over time as in business coaching, or development coaching for leaders who need to change their leadership style, clients want to achieve their goals.
Simply put, goals are our internal representations of desired outcomes. Coaches often focus on setting Smart goals; specific/stretching, measurable, attractive, realistic, and timeframed. Although this approach can be effective, it is also rather simplistic.
To get optimal results in coaching, coaches need to identify and work with different types of goals to help people stay on track. The time framing of goals can affect perception of the attainability of the goal. Types of goal Distal goals are longer-term goals, broad vision and allow for greater flexibility in action planning – they can also be highly motivating. Proximal goals are shorter term, can stimulate more detailed planning than distal goals and are important tools in action planning. Combining both can increase motivation.
Much coaching focuses on setting outcome goals. These are often a straightforward statement of some desired Smart outcome, for example “to increase sales of widgets by 15 per cent in the next three months”. This is useful for individuals who are committed and have the necessary ability and knowledge. Smart outcome goals that are difficult and are specifically and explicitly defined allow performance to be precisely regulated and lead to high performance.
However, there are times when overly specific performance goals will actually alienate the client and may well lead to a decline in performance. For individuals who are in a deliberative mindset or in a contemplation stage of change, it may be more useful initially to purposefully set more abstract or actually quite vague goals and focus on developing a broad vision. Vague goals can be perceived as being less threatening and less demanding.
Avoidance goals are expressed as a movement away from an undesirable state, for example, “to be less stressed about work”. Of course, these goals do not provide a specific outcome target. There are a wide range of behaviours that might be associated with such a goal.
In contrast, an approach goal is expressed as a movement towards a specific state or objective, for example, “to enjoy a fulfilling balance between work demands and personal relaxation”. People who set avoidance goals tend to have higher levels of depression and lower levels of well-being.
The long-term pursuit of avoidance goals is associated with decreases in well-being, whereas approach goals are associated with improved performance and well-being. Performance goals focus on doing and are often felt as competitive. A performance goal might be “to upgrade the widget sales process to best-practice standards”. They can be powerful motivators, especially when the individual strikes success early in the process. However, once again, performance goals can impede performance, particularly if the task is very complex, or the goal is perceived as highly challenging, and the individual is not skilled or lacks confidence.
In that case, learning goals (or mastery goals) may better facilitate task performance. They focus on the learning associated with task mastery rather than its performance. An example of a learning goal in executive or workplace coaching might be “to learn how to implement to best-practice standards”. Learning goals tend to be associated with a range of positive processes, including the perception of a complex task as a positive challenge rather than a threat, greater absorption in actual task performance, and enhanced memory and well-being.
Furthermore, individual performance is enhanced in highly complex situations when team goals are framed as learning goals. One benefit of learning goals is that they tend to be associated with the improved intrinsic motivation that is, in turn, linked to performance.
Although the differences in the articulation of these different types of goals may appear to be minor, or merely semantic, a goal’s expression is very important. Great coaches need to be finally attuned to such nuances, ensuring goals they set with their clients are congruent and genuinely aligned with the client’s needs and personality style.
Personality style-goal alignment
The goal alignment process is profoundly personal. Knowledge of common personality traits can alert the coach to possible derailers, and frequently provides a useful point of references in aligning the goals to the client’s needs.
This approach is particularly useful in coaching the more “challenging” client.
Case study: the narcissistic executive “Charlie” has many of the traits of a narcissistic or “bold” leader. He is a stockbroker who manages a sales team of 20 and also has his own client base. He is well dressed, extrovert, entertaining and charming. His clients love him and his sales track record is one of the best in his industry.
However, he was recently passed over for promotion and, as part of a company organisational leadership development programme, was assigned a coach. His 360-degree feedback indicates that many of his sales team reported that they felt undervalued and sometimes intimidated by his pacesetting style.
Peers indicated that they saw him as brash, rude, arrogant, and pushy. Charlie was quick to highlight numerous examples of his successes. When questioned on how he managed and developed his team, he said he felt deeply for “his team” and that he would do anything for them, but there was no justification for failing to meet sales target. “After all”, he said, “if I can make the figures, so should they.”
He is sure that he did not get the promotion because the managing director and his peers were jealous of and threatened by him.
The key themes of Charlie’s narcissistic personality style are a sense of entitlement, grandiosity, a need to be envied and admired, a lack of empathy, and a need to be considered special, unique and the centre of attention.
The broad goal for the coaching engagement was to increase Charlie’s ability to develop his direct reports and to build more collegial relationships with his peers. Clearly, this is not naturally concordant with his personality. So, in establishing a coaching relationship and setting a frame of reference for working on this broad goal, the coach needs to be mindful of how best to discuss the benefits of working on the goal.
Set the right frame of reference Frames of reference that emphasise empathy for others and a need to acknowledge deficiencies or personal failures are not likely to engage Charlie in the coaching process. Indeed, such an approach may well lead to defensiveness and increased resistance.
However, the coach can connect the more adaptive behaviours associated with the goal with the client’s needs – in the case of Charlie, increased public profile and personal gain.
Although such pragmatic approaches may be seen as “Machiavellian”, when used appropriately at the beginning of the coaching relationship, they are invaluable in aligning the goals with the client’s needs, and facilitate the formation of a collaborative working relationship from which to start the coaching engagement. Over time, during the coaching engagement, the goals can be, and should be, revisited. Once the client is engaged in the coaching process, other frames of reference can be introduced that offer other and more challenging ways of understanding.
Keep on track for change Keeping the client focused on the bigger picture and reminding them of the benefits of maintaining action is a central and vital part of the coaching relationship. To do so, the coach needs to be aware of the dynamics of change, and match the goal and the coaching process to the client’s readiness to change.
Schlossberg’s adaptations to transitions model outlines some of the key factors mediating transition through change:
- The characteristics of the transition itself. These include role change (gain or loss), source (internal or external), timing (gradual or sudden onset), effect (positive or negative) and duration (permanent, temporary or uncertain).
- The characteristics of the pre-transition and post-transition environments. These include internal support systems, intimate relationships, social networks and the physical environment.
- The characteristics of the individual going through the transition. They include personality, sex and sex-role identification, state of health, race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, value orientation and previous experience with a similar transition.
To facilitate movement towards adaptation to change, coaches should help clients to:
- develop a clearer picture of their work-life goals;
- evaluate how they presently manage strain, stress and decision-making;
- identify and evaluate their present typical response patterns to a new situation; as well as facilitating:
- a clearer understanding of their present needs; and
- the acquisition of new skills that will help the client to cope more effectively with their objectives. By understanding the different types of goals and their relationship to the process of change, and by facilitating the goal alignment process, we can work more efficiently with our clients, helping them towards the insights and behavioural change that enhance their workplace performance, their working lives and, most importantly, their well-being and sense of self.
Key learning points
- Understand the goal setting research and how it applies to coaching.
- Use informed flexibility when setting goals with clients: go beyond Smart goals.
- Understand the characteristics of the change the client is trying to make.
- Ensure the coaching goals are aligned with the client’s personality.
- Constantly monitor the client’s progress to keep them on track.
References
- R Hogan and J Hogan “Assessing leadership: a view from the dark side” International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 9(1/2), 40-51 (2001)
- S Berglas “The very real dangers of executive coaching” Harvard Business Review, 87-92, (June 2002)
- N K Schlossberg “A model for analysing human adaptation to transition” Counselling Psychologist, 9(2), 2-18 (1981)
Dr Anthony Grant is a coaching psychologist. Widely recognised as a founder of coaching psychology, in January 2000 Grant established the Coaching Psychology Unit at the School of Psychology at Sydney University, where he is the director. This article is adapted from Evidence-based Coaching Handbook by D Stober and A M Grant, New York: Wiley, 2006