Coaching Model: SMART Goal: Where are you?

A Coaching Model Created by Marco Giacobbi
(Executive Coach, ITALY)

Where are you?

I ask the client to tell me where he or she is in his or her life, and identify their goal, challenges and difficulties.

Questions that I will ask:

• “What do you out of this coaching?”
• “What is one thing want to improve or change?”
• “Can you make an example of the situation you want to reach?”
• “if you had to choose one thing to have in your life, what will it be?”

Reframing

After the first investigative part, I will try to change the client perspective on the problem. I will ask if something similar has happened in his past, I will try to bring new resources to his mind.

I will identify if in the description any limiting believe comes up. If there are limiting believes I will address them and see if they are based on objective aspects. I will then try to change the limiting believes before I start to set goals.

Goals

I will work with the client to set SMART goals (SMART is acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timeline). Each goal should be specific, measurable and achievable within a specified time period. I will try to be a devils advocate to see if the client can set all the characteristics that are needed in order to have a real goal. Another aspect of the goal that I usually require is that the goal must be positively expressed. For example, I don’t work with goals like: I don’t want to be shy. But instead of that I would use something like “I want to be outgoing and self confident”

Through this SMART goal setting process, my client will feel accountable and motivated to reach a specific goal.

Action plans

I will ask the client to research on the choices of actions that they will take to fulfill the goals. “Which of those actions will you start doing first?” “When will you begin the action and when will you complete the action?” “What results would you expect from these actions?” I will also ask to draw a two axial chart with the time on the horizontal axle and the goals and subgoals on the upper area of the chart, the goal must have a time beginning and a deadline. In this way the client will have a clear picture of the goals, deadlines and steps to reach the final goal.

Start doing

At this point, the client will be carrying out the actions that he had chosen to do. As his coach, my role will be to ask him powerful questions and to make further requests for further actions. I follow up with them and to give them encouragement as when they need. I will be an active listener and I will be asking the client do report regularly on his accomplishments.

It is very important that the language used by the client is clear and precise. This will help the person having clear thought as well.

Wrap up

At the end of the session and at the end of the coaching itself I’m going to ask some questions to make the success stable and appreciated.

• “What have you understood?”
• “What do you want more than this?”
• “Is there anything that you are concerned about?”
• “How do you see your future now?”

Compliments

For each goal reached, I will ask to celebrate. When the final goal is reached, the final celebration will be even bigger and I will send an official paper, declaring that the goal we set is fulfilled!