CHAPTER
8
Goal Evolution
AS THE COACHING RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR CLIENT STRENGTHENS, DEVELOPMENT AREAS BECOME CLEARER AND ACTIONABLE GOALS EMERGE. THIS PROCESS OF GOAL EVOLUTION, WHICH WAS DESCRIBED BRIEFLY IN Chapter 4, begins with general needs and progresses to development objectives that become part of a well-founded action plan. While subtle, this process adds value to your client’s development by facilitating the identification of goals that both resonate for your client and incorporate the organization’s viewpoint.
Development goals need to be shaped, not imposed, and tied to the reality of the client’s context. One of the pivotal moments in any coaching engagement happens when the client realizes, “That’s what I should be working on!” These aha! moments occur after you and the client have bonded in a professional alliance and are in alignment regarding the client’s challenges. Merely reiterating organizational descriptions of what the client needs to work on will not generate insight or commitment.
As development goals evolve, keep in mind these important considerations:
While the time frame contracted in a coaching engagement needs to be respected, goal evolution should not be unduly rushed, since it is one of the key benefits of coaching.
By the conclusion of goal evolution, development objectives have been informed by a variety of perspectives—client, coach, sponsors, and often other colleagues.
Typically, the emergence of goals occurs in stages, although they are always open to fine-tuning and action planning.
You may encounter organizational policies that are not sensitive to the time needed to allow resonant goals to evolve. For instance, you may be expected to define coaching goals as early in the process as possible. Indeed, protocols for coaching often assume that the coach will define developmental objectives by the end of the first session and sometimes even before coaching starts! This requirement offers the benefit of establishing a focus for coaching from the beginning but compromise clarity, depth, and sense of client ownership. Both the coaching process, which usually generates data about the client, and the dynamics of creating a coach-client working alliance are needed to effect a clear articulation and buy-in of goals. When it comes to establishing an appropriate time frame for goal setting, you can compromise by articulating very general goals initially with the expectation of more specific ones later.
In addition, you can educate sponsors about the evolution of goals within the coaching process. They will gain an appreciation of the value of goal evolution if it is presented as a key contributor to successful coaching outcomes. One way to explain it is by describing the three typical phases, as shown in Figure 8-1.
Felt needs are the goals that the organizational sponsors and/or client articulate when you are first contacted. These needs are often described with general labels such as executive presence, influence on others, or better delegation. Alternatively, behaviors that sponsors would like the client to eliminate can be felt needs, such as control outbursts, be less pushy, or stop micromanaging. These descriptions may provide some guidance in the early stages of coaching, but they rarely offer enough clarity to focus developmental efforts. If clients found such descriptions useful, coaching would not be needed, since these articulations have been available long before you arrived. An important reason coaching is initiated is that these descriptions have not generated productive action.
In point of fact, felt needs are only useful as points of departure and as very general standards for what the coaching might accomplish. After you and the client discuss them and explore the client’s history, you can look at whatever prior feedback is available and examine the client’s self-perceptions. Then you and the client will be in a better position to articulate more clearly what the client would like to accomplish through coaching. These statements are called negotiated goals.
The term negotiated doesn’t refer to the way adversaries arrive at agreement, but to the way a ship enters a channel or a race car driver handles a curve on the track. Although still not as clear as they might be, negotiated goals are more specific and more meaningful for the client than felt needs. They move the process, and the relationship, in a productive direction. As a result of participating in their articulation, clients have an increased commitment to working on them. Useful insights, action ideas, and even behavioral progress can occur based on negotiated goals. Empower my staff more and let go of some control, or Recognize challenging situations before I get into them and have strategies to control my reactions, are two examples of negotiated goals that suggest areas to explore and where to focus assessment choices while still allowing more specificity or even other themes to emerge.
Negotiated goals provide a productive focus for you and the client while other necessary processes are being completed. One of the most valuable processes is the application of structured assessments of the client. Coaching often includes informational interviewing of stakeholders, sometimes called 360-degree interviewing. Other assessment methods can also be used to foster insight about the client (covered in Chapter 9). The next goal evolution milestone, designed objectives, is usually reached only after assessment results and other data are analyzed, summarized, and discussed with the client.
Designed objectives are key to creating a development plan that includes on-the-job action ideas. Most of the time, they are refinements of negotiated goals, but they may diverge from goals that were previously identified. Extrapolating from the two aforementioned examples of negotiated goals, the designed objectives based on them might be, Become a more empowering leader and stretch the skills of my team, and Expand my influencing style to be more positive and inspiring. These statements are aspirational and optimistic, expressing a vision for the client’s future leadership style. Unlike objectives that may have been suggested by others, these designed development objectives are jointly created by you and the client, built on earlier insights by a thorough data-gathering process. Because they have been co-created using multiple perspectives, designed objectives have greater potential to motivate the client and generate willingness to devote precious discretionary time to their achievement.
A final task in this evolution is for you to consider the connection between the original felt needs, especially those expressed by the sponsors, and the final designed objectives. Most of the time, there is a clear conceptual link, and it is obvious that general or negatively expressed felt needs have evolved into clear, actionable, and positive statements. Clients will readily see the similarities, but those connections are not as apparent to sponsors, who were not privy to the process that supported the evolution. When you get to the point of discussing designed objectives with sponsors, you may need to make those connections more obvious so that sponsors will understand that their felt needs have been incorporated into the development plan, although the language has changed in ways to better support the client’s development.
Designed objectives represent an important and tangible work product of coaching. Adding action ideas to move the client toward those objectives yields a development action plan that can serve as an excellent basis for a development discussion between client and sponsors. Producing a development action plan (covered in Chapter 11) demonstrates progress in coaching and invites support for the client’s growth.
Although the evolution of goals from felt needs to negotiated goals to designed objectives may take four to eight weeks or even more elapsed time from the start of coaching, it is time well invested. Coaches can use the three stages of goal evolution to pace themselves, trusting that a well-founded process, not unduly truncated by organization pressures or administrative requirements, will yield progress and an action plan that the client truly owns.
Ankit knew that goal evolution is integral to building a productive coaching relationship and to creating a development plan that channels the client’s motivation. By conceptualizing a felt need, moving to a negotiated goal, and then evolving into designed objectives and a development action plan, Ankit was able to work productively with Howard. At the same time, he understood that sponsors may not immediately see the connection between their felt needs and the designed objectives emerging from coaching. Ankit was willing to have his work exposed to that scrutiny and, at the appropriate time, support Howard in explaining those connections to sponsors in order to achieve their support of the development plan.
Moving from an early focus that initiated the coaching to evolving specific, actionable objectives is rarely a linear process. It can be a challenge for a coach to assist the client in getting greater clarity on what is important, while also identifying what might evolve into a motivating development plan. Ankit, while sensing a larger issue, engaged Howard in multiple conversations about his management style and need for change. This process allowed a clear focus, anchored by felt needs at the same time that it encouraged a wider discussion about what change would actually look like. Howard was able to reflect and gain awareness of what he needed to do differently. By embracing this process, Ankit was able to give Howard the time and support he needed to create a development action plan for his most pressing needs.
Ankit was also making a very important decision about what to focus on in coaching. Goal evolution and data gathering clearly highlighted where to start. At the same time, Ankit knew that even designed objectives can evolve further and, in Howard’s case, that such additional change is likely.
Howard’s interpersonal style extends beyond his relationships with his direct reports. Data gathering revealed unproductive distance with peers and other colleagues as well. Ankit, however, decided to keep the focus on empowerment issues at this point, staying as close as possible to felt needs and Howard’s motivation for his promotion. As they make progress on the development plan, Ankit can choose the right time to suggest a wider focus for change. Even well-articulated goals can evolve as they are addressed. As clients experience success with new behaviors, they gain the confidence to tackle other areas of development.
Takeaways
Clients and sponsors may be unsure how best to articulate goals and select the most useful ones; it is your role as coach to help resolve those questions as a natural part of the coaching process.
Case-specific coaching goals that are targeted and customized to the individual evolve as a result of data generated by the coaching process and the dynamics of the coach-client partnership.
Felt needs are the initial wishes articulated by organizational sponsors and sometimes by clients.
Useful negotiated goals evolve from an exploration of the client’s history, feedback, and self-perceptions and increase the client’s focus and energy, even though they may still be somewhat tentative.
Designed objectives are shaped from negotiated goals that are informed by data gathered during coaching. They almost always relate conceptually to the original felt needs and are specific and actionable, providing the foundation for a development plan that mobilizes progress.
As coach, you are simultaneously focused on those client goals reflecting current needs and on being open to incorporate new directions as they emerge, even after the development plan is implemented.