Brief note: Thanks to those of you who pointed out to me that I forgot to include the deadline for my Christmas 2-for-1 gift offer on the Bottom-line Bookclub in my previous post. I’ve added it now, and it’s the 18th of December. So if you sign up for the Bottom-line Bookclub using the button over here, before 18 December, then I’ll give you a second subscription for free, which you can gift to a friend (or a burned out Social Worker at a charity you support), or find a friend and split the deal together so you each get it for half price. Either way, you can spread the love. Just remember to sign up before 18 December and use this button (scroll to the bottom of the post) to get your 2-for-1 deal.

What Other Coaches & Bloggers Are Saying About Goal-Setting

In a recent video post I explained a few of my reasons why I think that traditional goal-setting is broken, and why I’m exploring alternative models for creating an “open-focused” way of focusing our thinking and making progress in making the changes we want to make.

As part of my exploring and researching, I’ve been connecting with other coaches and personal development bloggers and asking them to share their views and it’s really been stimulating my thinking, so I wanted to share with you what some of them are saying, over the next few posts. There have been some interesting themes emerging, and this first theme that jumped out at me is that different people are getting benefits from focusing on different parts of the traditional goal-setting process.

Actually, let me take a step back and explain the traditional goal-setting process, since I’m also realizing that there are a lot of different ideas about what exactly the traditional goal-setting process is…

The traditional goal-setting process

The traditional goal-setting process is a very linear process and it’s all about increasingly focusing your attention and becoming more and more specific about what you want and how you’ll create it. You’d start with the big picture (what I like to call eagle vision), where you’d consider your overall life purpose, life vision or life mission as some people call it, and then you’d move through each of the levels below, articulating your values, your dreams and your goals. This part is all about articulating “what” you want. From there, you move into the “how am I going to create what I want?” part, where you decide your strategies, your plans, and your daily task lists.

All of the steps in the process are considered equally important and you’re advised to make your way through each of the levels sequentially, starting at the top and moving down, without skipping any of the levels.

Overall, it’s a very left-brain-directed process, because it starts with the big picture and increasingly analyzes or breaks down the big picture into smaller parts and it focuses on thinking in a linear, procedural, chronological way.

This is what the process looks like:

What I found really interesting about the responses and views that people shared with me was that most people tended to favor a particular portion or level of the goal-setting process.

I’ve got a bunch of questions and thoughts about this, but here’s are some of the most interesting perspectives that were shared with me, so you can see how they differed in terms of where they focused their attention:

Focus on Purpose

“I don’t think personal goal setting has much place in the lives of well-adjusted individuals. Note that I say “well-adjusted”, as I accept that many people might want to use goal-setting to give them some sense of control over their lives, or to speak to their inherent insecurities. When coaching individuals (of which I do and have done much), I downplay the “Goal” aspect of e.g. GROW, most often substituting P (Purpose) for G (Goal).

I’m not sure that family life has goals (in terms of getting things done) but certainly in terms of harmony, respect, quality of life etc. I try to align everyone’s goals – even though it can seem like herding cats at times. Or at least, make people’s need explicit. Generally I approach this by informal means though (dialogue, informal scenario modeling, etc.) rather than goal-setting.

However, when coaching teams, it’s a very different story. In my opinion, teams are all about goal-alignment (although one could choose to call this alignment of purpose, too). Clearly articulating and aligning the explicit goals of a team-based endeavor brings many operational benefits and helps to Get Things Done. With agile software development, goals translate to (or are replaced with) stakeholders’ needs and more formally their “requirements” – both in terms of the commonly-seen functional requirements (user stories, use cases, mmfs, and the like) and the less common, although much more crucial, quantitative (non-functional) requirements.”

Bob Marshall is a Transformational Leadership Specialist for UK technology businesses and you can find him at www.fallingblossoms.com and he’s @flowchainsensei on Twitter.

Focus on Vision

“When it comes to setting goals, I prefer to focus on a vision for my life, rather than individual, definitive milestones. The main problem with goals I feel is once you achieve them there’s a case of “What now?” And the goal-achieving process continues. There’s never a moment that pops out at you, letting you know that it’s okay to just sit back and enjoy what you have. A vision on the other hand takes into account all you want out of life and how the different components relate to each other.

For example, a goal might be something like “Earn $3000 per month by December 31st 2012.” But a vision would explain where that money would be spent, saved, or invested, the daily work required to attain it, and all the other interconnected aspects of your life. Then, because you’ve consciously worked towards an entire lifestyle it’s far easier to just take a little time to soak in what you have rather than focusing on what’s next.

I still do use goals, but only maintain a few at a time and I understand their limitations: they can go from A to B, but it’s what’s after B where they fall short and because they’re not clearly connected to the rest of the life you dream of there can be a lack of motivation pushing you towards them.”

David Turnbull is a “Buddhist blogger, computer geek, book worm, musician, designer and simplicity freak who runs an online business.” He blogs at www.davidturnbull.com and he’s @dturnbull on Twitter.

Focus on Values

“I’ve changed my mind on goals a lot. My life, interests, priorities, circumstances, whatever changes too much to keep focused on very detailed goals. So I’ve reoriented my goals towards the most important things first. Things like personal freedom, time, well-being, peace, happiness, relationships, etc. If the rest of it (the stuff) is available as a bonus then great. However, I’m no longer sure the view is worth the climb for that stuff.

I really like the approach Sonja Lyubomirsky takes, even if they are still “traditional” goals: “The pursuit of goals that are intrinsic, authentic, approach-oriented, harmonious, activity-based, and flexible will deliver more happiness than the pursuit of goals that are extrinsic, inauthentic, avoidance-oriented, conflicting, circumstance-based, or rigid. This mouthful of words is based on decades of research.” I love her point about “circumstance based” goals. What I want now is to learn how to be self-accepting, creative, relaxed, adaptable (your word might be agile), nicer to other people and so on. I realized that “hedonic adaptation” is simply going to make the big house on the beach a disappointment.”

Stephen has written more about his values-based approach to goal-setting, in response to questions I raised about goal-setting. He says, “Identifying your values is far more important than setting goals.” Read more about that over here.

Stephen Mills blogs at www.ratracetrap.com and he’s @ratracetrap on Twitter.

Focus on Dreams

“I have to say that traditional goal setting probably takes up less than 10% of my time with clients. I think it has value, but it misses things out and can actually demoralize people on occasions. I too adapted SMART goals and came up with SMARTER which was like a combination of the SMART method, but also incorporating elements of well formed outcomes from NLP. The  E stands for the ecology of the goal which often gets over-looked and causes people to stumble. The R is Reward, in other words what is the real driving force for somebody? This usually involves such words as legacy, significance etc and I describe it as the thing that will have you scrapping ice of your windshield at 5.00am without whining about it.

My issue with goal setting is the structured format sometimes leads people to reign themselves in. Therefore, I like clients to have goals (even if I don’t get involved directly with setting them), but I much prefer them to have Dreams. I don’t want somebody to drop a goal of theirs because it isn’t specific enough or they can’t measure it, I’d prefer them to have a dream list too for the really earth-shattering stuff.”

Tim Brownson is a Life Coach and runs The Discomfort Zone blog, a left field look at the world of self development, and he’s @timbrownson on Twitter.

Focus on Goals, Not Plans

“I have goals but I have no plan for the journey I will take to reach them…”I think goal setting is really important for achieving our business & career objectives. We need the sense of a tangible goal to actually put our ideas into action. But I’m very cynical about long-term business planning because who knows what’s around the corner: who can predict market, economic and technological trends?

What’s my take? Sure, I have goals but I have no plan for the journey I will take to reach them. That may sound flippant but I am a realist. I recognize the importance that luck/ random connections/ serendipity play in business and career success. The story of my life is that I have made it up as I’ve gone along. Sure I had goals: to write a book, to be a father, to run my own business, to build revenues, to meet a bunch of cool people but I had no science for how I’d reach them. I just went with my instinct.

I’ll be talking about some of this at SXSW 2010 in a session entitled ‘How To Unplan Your Business’.”

Ian Sanders is a business coach and the author of ‘Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life,’ and ‘Leap! Ditch Your Job, Start Your Own Business & Set Yourself Free.’ You can find him at www.iansanders.com and he’s @iansanders on Twitter.

Focus on Small Daily Action

“My own attempts at goal setting have never been all that successful. Maybe I was doing it wrong. I don’t know. The only thing I really know is that deciding who I want to be and what kinds of things I enjoy doing and then doing some small thing each day to move in that direction has brought me more results than anything else I’ve tried. That approach, I have found, allows me to be more flexible and open to new opportunities. I spend a lot less time worrying about whether I’m doing the right things or doing things right. Instead, I simply enjoy what I’m doing and trust that it will all bode well in the end. So far, so good.”

Ken has written more about his mild way of approaching goal-setting, in response to the questions I’m raising, over here, where he says he’s more of a “goal-shedder” than a “goal-setter.”

Ken Robert blogs at www.mildlycreative.com and he’s @mildlycreative on Twitter.

Use All of the Levels

“When it comes to goals, I’ve learned that focusing on a few goals means I’m much more likely to succeed. I can only have one “above all else” goal – and, when necessary, I’ll drop everything else to keep that one goal on track.

I’ve experimented with different methods of setting goals, including very “left-brain” ones like listing SMART steps and “right-brain” ones like creating an overall narrative. In the end, I’ve found that a rather haphazard blend of both works best: I need to see the big picture to get fired up and enthused at the start of a new goal – then I delve down into the detailed view to actually get things done! Along the way, motivation comes both from being excited about the journey as a whole, and from tracking how I’m doing in a step-by-step way.”

Ali Hale is a writer, freelancer and post-graduate student, living in London the UK. She blogs about “getting more from life” at www.aliventures.com and she’s @alihale on Twitter.

What do you make of this?

These are all respected coaches, authors or personal development bloggers and they’ve each shared about the part of the goal-setting process that works best for them, and there’s a lot of diversity in their answers. So what do you make of it?

Some of the questions I’m curious about are:

• Do you personally use the whole goal-setting process, or do you focus more (or even exclusively) on one or two levels that you prefer in the goal-setting process?
• Are all the goal-setting levels necessary? Do you think any of the levels are redundant?
• Is it simply a matter of “personal preference” with the advice, “Do what works best for you…”? Should we be sticking to the areas of the goal-setting process that suit our preferred thinking/ personality style and not bother about the other areas? Or should we be seeking to develop our thinking in the areas of goal-setting that don’t come as naturally to us? Should we leverage our unique strengths by delegating the levels we don’t like doing to someone else if we can, or is it important to develop balance and flexibility by becoming equally comfortable at all the goal-setting levels?
• Is context important to consider? For example, does it seem to you that you might select a different level of the goal-setting process to focus on if you were to consider the context of your personal life, as opposed to your business, or family and community collaboration?
• Does the nature of the problem you’re trying to solve matter at all? For example, Dan Pink argues that the nature of the problems we’re solving in the workplace in the developed world is requiring more and more right-brain-directed thinking. If that’s the case, then does that alter the levels you’ll focus on in the goal-setting process at all, since goals are essentially problem-solving tools?

I’d love to hear your thoughts, so do join us by sharing them in the comments below and let me know if you blog about it, so I can highlight your posts and bring the conversation together over here.

In the next few posts I’m going to share more about what other coaches and personal development bloggers views are – there’s some rich insight in there!

Free Teleseminar, 9 December: How to Create a Framework to Get the Results You Want

Join me as I interview Master Life Coach, Speaker and Author, Michele Woodward, about “How to create a framework to get the results you want.”

Click here for more details on how to join the call.

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