Working with emergent goals: A pragmatic

approach

David Clutterbuck & David Megginson

Being the iconoclast is relatively easy. It’s clear from the preceding chapters that
simplistic approaches to goal setting and goal pursuit can be limiting. They are seen
by some authors as hindering a coach’s ability to be truly mindful of the client and to
maintain a largely non-directive orientation, as not recognising coaching as an
emergent process, and as resulting in coaching that focuses on objectives that may
not be best matched to the client’s motivations and needs.

In this chapter, we acknowledge that there is sometimes a place for beginning the
coaching relationship with a specific goal, but we suggest ways in which coaches
and mentors can take a more pragmatic and effective approach to establishing and
working with goals across the range of situations that arise in the complex arenas of
life and work. In our dialogues on this topic with coaches in several countries and
continents, a number of issues have surfaced as they pertain to goals. These
include:
• Managing client and sponsor expectations about goals
• Goal feasibility – is the goal genuinely achievable?
• Negotiating goals with the sponsor / client’s line manager
• How to keep the focus sufficiently broad and flexible, where needed
• How to feel comfortable in the coaching role, without specific goals to lean on

If, as our conversations with coaches around the world indicate, goals in effective
coaching and mentoring relationships are often emergent, rather than preset, this
has significant implications for the coaching or mentoring conversation. For a start, it
affects the assumptions that each party brings to the early conversations. Freed from
the constraints of establishing and committing to a specific goal, both are able to
relax into their roles and allow goals to develop out of a deeper understanding of the
learner and his or her situation.

Instead of trying to pin the learner down immediately to a specific goal, to which he
or she may or may not be committed, the effective coach / mentor in this scenario
facilitates an exploration from a much wider horizon. Key areas of conversation may
include:

Identity
• Who are you? (Not what do you do?)
• Who do you want to become?
• How does what you do now align with who you aspire to be?
• What prevents you from being the person you aspire to be?
• Who / what supports you in being the person you aspire to be?

Values
 • What do you care about?
• Why is this important to you?
• What difference do you want to make and why?

Resources
• How well supported are you (at work and/or at home)?
• Who is in your developmental network? (See Chapter 13, Kram)
• How does this affect your sense of the possible?
• What resources would enable you to be more effective in your work and non-
work roles?

Purpose
• What do you want to contribute? (other-directed)
• What do you want to achieve for yourself? (self-directed)
• What’s the point of these?
• What achievements would give you great satisfaction to look back on in 10 or
20 years?
• What’s wrong with the status quo?

Where the learner does come to the relationship with a pre-determined goal, it may
be necessary to back-track and fill in the deeper level of understanding associated
with the emergent process. In doing so, the learner may find that the goals he or she
has enunciated are more complex than previously thought, and have implications of
which he or she was not consciously aware. The learner may also come to question
the importance that they have attached to the goal.

This re-examination is fundamental to the reflective process and will ideally continue
throughout the relationship. Testing the learner’s current action and issues against
their goals helps to widen their attentiveness to factors, which help and hinder their
goal achievement. At the same time, however, as learners acquire a greater
understanding of themselves, their views on what they want to achieve and who they
want to become, are likely to evolve. This evolution is especially likely if the coaching
or mentoring process leads to a shift in the way they think i.e. if they take a further
cognitive step in terms of personal maturity (Whitmore, J and Einzig, H, 2008).

Useful questions to apply when the learner articulates a pre-determined goal include:
• Why this goal? (What need does it address for you?)
• Why now?
• Is this truly your goal or is it partly or mainly someone else’s?
• Is the goal a sub-set of a larger goal? Or is it really a number of connected
goals?
• What will achieving this goal replace? (i.e. what will you have to stop doing to
achieve it or once you have achieved it?)

A technique that can result in significant insights, is to explore different perspectives

of the same question. For example:
• Why do you care? (neutral tone)
• Why do you care? (confrontative)
• Why do you care? (rational explorative)
• Why do you care? (personalising)
• Why do you care? (emotional explorative)
Different purposes; different approaches to goals
It seems fairly obvious that not all coaching assignments and not all coaching
conversations are the same. For example, coaches trained in one school or model of
coaching might approach a client’s issues in radically dissimilar ways. Equally,
people come to coaching and mentoring for a wide variety of reasons. Some
purposes might require a significant increase in self-awareness or self-insight before
personal change can happen; others may simply require a shift of tactics.

In Table 1 below, we attempt to map out some of the main approaches to coaching
and mentoring, along with their purpose, the kind of conversations that underlie them
and some of the issues that arise. In general, the table shows a gradual shift from
the immediate to the longer term, and from relatively simple, linear purposes to more
complex, adaptive purposes.

Table 1: Goals in different coaching and mentoring contexts

Approach Purpose Goal Conversations Issues

Task learning “Sitting by What do you need to Who sets the
Nellie” to know? standards?
learn skills What does good look like
in this task?
How will you know how
well you are doing?
Skills transfer or Transition What skills do you need What does a
acquisition from to learn? coach provide
incompetenc How will you apply them? that training
e to doesn’t?
unconscious
competence
(develop skills
as “second
nature”)
Performance Achieving What do you need/want Who decides
enhancement specific to do better than you do what good looks
targets now? like?
What does excellent look How contextual is
like? performance in
What coping strategies this role?
will help you manage
your weaknesses?
Career Achieving What is your ambition? Who is in control
development/ career What resources do you of your career?
self- progress have (internally and
management externally) to help you
achieve your career
ambition?
Behavioural Developing What needs to change in How do you
change specific the way you think, to sustain change?
competences produce changes in the How do you
 or way you behave? ensure others
overcoming see how you
defined have changed?
weaknesses
Whole person Wider self How can you grow as a Why are you
development fulfilment person? (here)?
Who do you want to
become and why?
How will you manage the
conflicting demands on
your time, energy and
attention?
Transformational Clarifying life What is the critical How do you align
/ transpersonal purpose; transition you need to your personal
change acquiring make in the way you and professional
greater approach your work? identities?
maturity What insights do you How can you be
need to acquire to bring at peace with
about personal change? yourself?
What do you
need to let go of,
to fulfil your
potential?

Task learning could be considered to be instruction. However, we include it as a

separate construct, because there is a considerable literature that uses both
coaching and mentoring in this way – a relatively directive, largely passive means of
learning by copying a more skilled practitioner. One of the factors that aligns it with
the wider mentoring literature is the additional element of pastoral care that is often
involved. Tom Pedersen’s (2012) excellent review of mentoring programmes for
disadvantaged youth in Denmark fits well into this genus. Based on work with 7,000
mentees over a period of years, he details activities to develop and measure
progress towards social and literacy skills, using customised competency
frameworks. The goals here are generally specific, measurable and typically time-
based.

Much the same can be said of skills transfer. Although there may be a long-term goal
(e.g. becoming a black belt, or making the national sports squad), skills coaching
typically involves many lots of small, short-term goals along a predetermined path.
With skills-related goals, there is usually a standard set by a third party and feedback
in the moment is an essential part of the process.

If there is overlap between task learning and skills transfer, then the same also
appears to be the case between skills transfer and performance enhancement.
The degree of overlap depends on whether the goal and the standard, by which
achievement is judged, are extrinsically or intrinsically generated. The more
intrinsically generated they are, the greater the level of self-determination and goal
ownership on the part of the learner (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000; See Chapter 8 Ryan
and Deci). Performance enhancement through coaching or mentoring also involves
both extrinsic and intrinsic feedback – the role of the coach is both to give feedback
(via observation or collecting data from third parties) and to assist the learner in
developing their own capacity to experiment, self-observe (i.e. give feedback to
themselves), and reflect and act. Goals in performance coaching are often
complicated by distributed ownership (for example, by both an employee and his or
her line manager), by unequal commitment from the goal owners, and the influence
of positive or negative rewards.

In career development, the goals are by their nature mainly long-term. As Ibarra and
Lineback ( 2005) have suggested, it’s important here to get the right balance
between goals that are too narrow and those that are too broad. There is a much
greater requirement to link the learning dialogue to issues of raising mentee self-
awareness about personal values, strengths, how they define success and so on.
Indeed, success can more generally be defined as “achieving what you value”. A
difference between career mentoring and the approaches already described in this
section is that, while the objective (e.g. make partner within two years) may be
relatively specific, the paths towards it are much more flexible and ill-defined. Goal
management becomes a process of vigilance in identifying and taking advantage of
opportunities (career mindfulness), refining personal capabilities and developing a
relevant track record.

Goals in behavioural coaching/mentoring tend to divide again into extrinsically and

externally intrinsically motivated. A worrying trend revealed in recent research into
behaviours by executives (Kaiser and Craig, 2011) is that some of the key leadership
behaviours people acquire at middle management levels – including listening, caring
and showing integrity – diminish substantially when they become senior executives.
It appears that the motivation for acquiring these behaviours can be extrinsic and
largely negative (“If I don’t behave in this way, I won’t get my next promotion”). A
challenge for behavioural coaches is how to avoid colluding in this kind of coercion.
Sustainability of behaviour change may be related to how the behaviour anchors in
the client’s values. Shallow, extrinsically absorbed values might in some
circumstances be less likely to lead to sustainable change than deeply rooted
values, derived from internally generated identity – for example, in the case. of goals
related to well-being (Kasser and Ryan, 1996)

Whole person development might be described as “goal-light”. Here, the essence is

not on what the person wants to become, and only partially on who they want to
become. More important is the journey itself and the learning that the mentee
acquires on the way. Goals and self-understanding evolve together and the mentor’s
role is to help the mentee manage their journey.

Transformational / transpersonal change has many of the same characteristics as

whole person development, but it typically has much clearer intended outcomes. The
notion of adult maturity as proposed by Kegan (1982), Rooke & Torbert (2005),
Laske (2009) and others, describes the process, by which a person gradually
acquires more complex ways of thinking and relating to the world around them. At its
simplest, the aim is for the client to acquire greater wisdom. This could also be seen
as the purpose of whole person development, but the difference is that
transformational coaching/ mentoring views this transition in a specific context –
most commonly acquiring the breadth of understanding and mindfulness to become
an effective enterprise leader. Transformational coaching/ mentoring, then, is about
assisting people to mature.

These categorizations inevitably reflect only generalities of approach in coaching and

mentoring – a set of metaphors rather than a dictionary of definitions. Other
observers, from a different perspective, might choose different ways to classify the
breadth of coaching and mentoring approaches. Note that we have not labelled any
of these approaches exclusively coaching or mentoring, as this would impose yet
another layer of qualitative judgement. Nonetheless, it seems, then, that the nature
and focus of goals differs radically amongst these approaches to coaching and
mentoring – in specificity, time horizon, complexity and intent. A logical conclusion
(and one born out by watching hundreds of coaches and mentors as they carry out
their role) is that there can be no one-size fits all methodology for goal setting and/or
goal management.

Hidden goals

Alongside the overt goals in each of these approaches to coaching and mentoring
may be hidden goals. For example, a sponsor for executive coaching may actually
just want to get rid of the employee; or the career mentor may consciously or
unconsciously want the mentee to follow in his or her own path and/or become like
them. These hidden goals can distort the learning relationship in subtle ways.
Identifying them isn’t easy. One of the techniques we use from time to time is to
create the expectation for and to initiate short bursts of “painful goal honesty” (PGH)
with each stakeholder. These are planned or ad hoc conversations in which each
party, including the coach or mentor, is encouraged to reflect on their motivations for
the relationship and to push the boundaries of their openness. The P in PGH is a key
element! Part of the value of this process is that, in order to be honest with each
other, each party also needs to be honest with themselves. The contracting process
may also lead to acceptance and legitimisation of each other’s goals.

Being aware of and surfacing hidden goals is, I suggest, a critical skill of goal
management – but not one that generally figures highly in coach and mentor training.

Managing client and sponsor expectations about goals

Both the client and the sponsor may perceive a need for measurable targets at the
very start of a relationship. For the sponsor, in particular, this is often about wanting
reassurance of being in control, so that they can prove that the time and financial
investment has been worthwhile. Either or both may also be looking for a quick fix to
a current problem.

From the experiences of coaches and mentors in workshops around the world, some
of the practical steps one can take to manage these expectations include:
• Explain that goals come in different levels of simplicity/ complexity, time to
achieve, impact on the client and on the team. Where appropriate, attempt to
shift attention from a single simplistic goal to a range of different, interlinked
goals with varying levels of specificity and time-boundedness.
 • Discuss how each of the stakeholders will recognise change in line with the
goal(s).
• Make it clear that goals may change as the coaching conversation enlarges
clients’ awareness of themselves and their contexts. Foster “buy-in” for this
possibility in the initial contracting.
• Help the client and the sponsor differentiate between goals that are primarily
about internal change (within the client) and goals that are primarily or in
large part about external change (within the systems of which they are a
part).
• Gain agreement for a goals review after, say, three meetings. This is the
opportunity to adjust or even replace the original goals.
• In general, the easier it is to measure performance against a goal, the simpler
the coaching and the less coaching time needed. Experienced coaches often
report that they spend less than a third of each coaching session on the
presented goal and the rest of the time on other, usually more fundamental,
issues. Bearing this ratio in mind may help a less experienced coach
overcome their “goal fixation”. If appropriate, share this expectation with the
client, explaining that the unscripted conversation is what will provide the
deeper understanding and personal change that will make achievement of
the presented goal more sustainable.

Goal feasibility: Is the goal genuinely achievable?

Coaches and mentors, by and large, are expected to work with the goals the client
brings, although these may often be set by someone else. But perspectives on what
constitutes an achievable goal can vary considerably! It can be tough for a coach to
tell a sponsor that a goal isn’t achievable, but ethics demand a level of honesty that
explores goal feasibility at least at the contracting stage and ideally at subsequent
stages of the assignment.

A particular danger signal is the concept of “stretch goals”, which are widely touted
as highly beneficial (Kerr and Landauer, 2004). However, evidence from studies of
stretch goals at the organisational level (Sitkin et al, 2011) indicate that they only
work under special circumstances and that much of the time they result in
demotivation and reduced performance. The preconditions for success with stretch
goals are that a) they capitalise on an existing wave of achievement, where energy
and enthusiasm from previous successes fuels future efforts, and b) they are
adequately resourced. If stretch goals are remedial in origin, they are unlikely to
have a positive effect. And if the client does not have access to the support they
need from colleagues and the work system in general (for example, having time
pressures relieved so they can concentrate on new things), then success is also
unlikely.

Studies by Brian et al. (2011) suggest that frequent, small behavioural changes
building on people’s strengths are much more likely to produce continuous positive
improvements. So coaches and mentors may sometimes need to curb their own
ambitions for their clients with more sober assessments of the amount of change that
can be achieved in a given period and within a given system.

Negotiating goals with the /sponsor

In the work context, a high proportion of coaching is initiated by the client’s
immediate line manager, who (usually quite rightly) perceives himself or herself as a
stakeholder in the investment and its outcomes. Some of more directive, task-
focused forms of mentoring may also have some influence by line managers. In both
cases, the line manager’s influence can be beneficial or a major hindrance. It is likely
to constrain the scope and the depth of the learning conversations, if it focuses too
much at the level of extrinsic motivation and not enough at the intrinsic level. Both
parties in the learning relationship may feel conflict between the agreed goals and
more challenging goals that require deeper self-understanding and reflection. Goals
agreed with the line manager may appear simplistic (often because they are based
on measurements that do not take sufficient account of contextual complexity) and
relatively short-term.

In the three-way conversation between coach, client and client’s boss (HR may also
sometimes be a fourth party at the table), it’s important therefore to explore in depth
what each expects in terms of goals. Some of the topics on which to reach
agreement (or at least an understanding) are:

Ownership and motivation

• Who owns the goal? If it’s a shared goal, who does it matter to most?
• What kind of goal is it? Which elements of Table 1 apply?
• Is there an appropriate balance between short-term “doing” goals and longer-
term “being” goals?
• For whose benefit is this coaching assignment intended? The client’s? Their
team’s? The boss’? Other third parties? What’s the balance between these?
• How does the goal link with the other priorities of the client, their team, their
boss, the organization?
• How likely is this goal to be as important in six months’ time?

Intended outcomes
• What does success look like, for each of the stakeholders? (This might
include the client, their boss, the client’s team and key internal or external
customers.)
• How does the client evaluate the effort/reward ratio? That is, is the client’s
motivation sufficient to give this goal the priority it deserves?
• What will coaching lead to? When the assignment is finished, is that it? Or
should there be an expectation that the client will also have acquired a greater
capacity to self-coach?
• What resources will be needed to achieve it, from the client, from the boss
and from other stakeholders? Are they all willing and able to provide those
resources when they are needed?
• Over what period are the outcomes of coaching expected to become
apparent?
• How clear are the consequences? Is the intent to ease promotion or to avoid
being fired?
• What are the hidden agendas?
Support
• What support is the boss prepared to give to help the client achieve the goal?
Is this enough?
• How will the boss and other stakeholders recognise positive changes, when
they occur?
• How much does achievement of this goal rely on contextual factors? Is
success wholly in the hands of the client?

Review
• Under what circumstances and when should the goal be reviewed?

Having some kind of goal to start with can be comforting for all parties. The sponsor
has to justify the expenditure, and the client and the coach may find it a useful
starting point to give the relationship some initial impetus.

How to keep the focus sufficiently broad and flexible

While a very narrow focus may be helpful at the task mentoring or skills coaching
levels, it can be highly dysfunctional when working with more complex change.
Approaches coaches and mentors can use here include:
• Visioning, in which goals are positioned in a much wider context or purpose,
often with a longer time horizon
• Viewing each session as having at least four streams, of equal importance:
o Goal progress. What is happening to bring about desired outcomes?
o Personal awareness. What is the client learning about him or herself,
which will support current and future change?
o Contextual awareness. What is the client learning about his or her
world that will either help with working within in or in changing the
system?
o Issues awareness. Is the client able to reflect on current concerns and
opportunities in the context of the other three streams?
• Helping the client to reassess goals against changes in their environment and
in themselves. Particularly helpful here is to ask clients to assess their
emotional attachment to the goal, for example by using simple scaling. If the
level of emotional attachment diminishes, this should initiate a conversation
exploring what has changed, either within the client or in their circumstances.

Feeling comfortable as a coach, without specific goals to lean on

From our observation of hundreds of coaches in coach assessment centres, it

appears hat the less experienced coaches are, the more they need a model to follow
and a client goal to facilitate the coaching engagement. Having a goal provides a
sense of security and direction for the conversation. However, it is important to
remember that coaching and mentoring are learning conversations, not goal
conversations. (Harri-Augstein and Thomas, 1991). Having a goal is only part of the
process of dialogue.
One proposed way of contextualising goals is shown below (Figure 1). Based again
on observing effective coaches, it appears that a first stage in planned change is to
have some sense of purpose. This purpose may be quite broad and fuzzy to begin
with. To create volition, a sense of purpose may need to solidify into a number of
more specific intentions that lead generally towards fulfilment of the purpose. Out of
these may emerge goals, which make intent more specific still. Implementing goals
requires the development of pathways and scenarios, which in turn require strategies
and finally tactics. So, in this metaphor, goals are in the middle of the process, not
the beginning!

Practitioners in coaching and mentoring can expand their comfort zones, therefore,
by accepting presented goals initially, but gently steering clients towards purpose
and intent, in the knowledge that this may well lead to a radical recasting of those
goals. It is misguided to work down the chain towards strategy and tactics until you
are quite sure that you are dealing with the “right” goal.

The more experienced a coach or mentor becomes with emergent, mutable goals,
the easier it becomes to focus the learning conversation on the purpose and context
– if you like, on understanding the client’s internal and external systems. The client
may then need help in working downward along the goal chain; but equally, they
may not. They may value the coach’s company along the journey; or they may not.
The effective coach knows instinctively when they are likely to become a wallflower
and constrains their need to help accordingly.

Figure 1. The goal chain: The position of goals in the process of change

Purpose > intent> goal > path(s)/ scenarios > strategy > tactics

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