One of the core skills most coaches deal with is goal setting. It seems relatively straight forward, yet most of us and our clients find it hard to achieve the goals we’ve set, so let’s take a good look at why that is and what we can do about it.

The most common model for goal-setting is represented by the acronym SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time based.

The other element that is usually stressed is that the goal should be positive; for instance, instead of saying “I will lose 20 pounds,” one might say, “I will have a stable, healthy weight of 12 stone.

The Challenge of Measurement

“Specific” and “measurable” basically go together, and in certain arenas measuring is easy: money, weight, blood pressure, etc. Measuring other goals is more difficult because they are subjective – creativity, relaxation, or assertiveness, for instance.

In some instances, a subjective scale works fine. For example, on a scale of 0 -10 how relaxed you feel? It’s very easy to put a number to a feeling. If the client finds it hard to come up with a subjective measurement, another alternative is to ask what behaviours would reflect the attainment of their desired state.

We can ask, “What would you see and what would you hear if you were at your desired level of creativity?” Depending on their chosen fields, clients may use indicators such as number of words written, number of paintings generated or number of new ideas generated, etc.
It turns out that our teachers were on to something when they gave out gold stars or created charts using little rockets on a bulletin board to show our typing speed increasing.

For a lot of people, charting or otherwise recording their progress is highly motivational. It’s also a good way to monitor whether or not the measures they are taking are working.

What is Achievable and Realistic?

Usually “achievable” is defined as something that somebody else has been able to do – which raises the question of whether pre – Roger Bannister running the four-minute mile would have been considered an unachievable goal.

“Realistic” relates to whether it’s something that you can reasonably expect to be able to do. That sounds fine until you remember George Bernard Shaw’s quote:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

This is not to say that it’s a mistake to consider whether a goal is do-able, just that setting the bar too low will de-motivate anybody who has a grand vision. Of course a grand vision is sometimes a delusion but in general it seems a good idea to encourage these visions as long as they can be broken down into manageable chunks.

Making The Client A Hero

One effective strategy is to formulate the goal as a hero’s journey using the model developed by the late Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. he discovered that many myths have elements in common and he reduced it to what he called the monomyth.

The fact is that there is something heroic about deciding what you want from life and then going for it, whether that’s in the area of health, career, family, community, education, or spiritual. If we can frame the goal in that way, especially from the beginning, it can be highly motivational.

Why Deadlines Sometimes Are The Death Of Goals

A familiar quote in the self-development field is, “A goal without a deadline is only a wish.” I think that’s a very destructive notion. Deadlines can work fine when what needs to be done is totally under the control of the person setting the goal.

For example, if I want to reach a certain healthy weight I may decide to achieve this by eating certain things and exercising for a particular period of time every day, and my deadline for reaching the target weight may be a month from now.

As long as I have been accurate in gauging the effects of my new diet and exercise, and as long as I stick to the programme, the odds that I will attain the goal are very good. I may have a problem about following it through, but they won’t be caused by the deadline.

The solution to deadline problems is to set the only deadline that matters : when the goal is reached. We can set deadlines for our own efforts, but the ultimate deadline is “whenever we’ve done whatever it takes to get done.”

Eliminating Failure As An Option

Naturally this doesn’t mean that we just keep on doing what we’ve been doing, because if it’s not working then continuing to do it is not progress. We need to be smart and make our only deadline the achievement of the goal, we may end up changing strategies a number of times before we reach it.

When one method doesn’t work it’s not a failure, it’s a learning experience. The only way we can fail is to stop trying.

MD of The Coaching Academy Bev James interviews Mark Rhodes, Coach, Author, Speaker and Entrepreneur. In this 30 minute interview they discuss ways for developing a winning mind-set and achieve amazing results.

Mark’s book, “Think Your Way To Success”, shows you how to build the mind-set you need to achieve your goals and dreams and start to notice more opportunities. It encourages the reader to stop being their own biggest obstacle to success & start taking action to achieving success.

Bev and Mark explore the idea behind thinking about things differently, changing your mind-set over a period of time to transform your end result.

To listen to the entire interview click on the button at the bottom of the short transcription.

What we are here to talk about today is your book ‘think your way to success’. Fantastic title! A lot of promises behind the title. If I could just ask you first of all why did you write the book?

Well there have been a couple of things going on for a few years. I was going around like most speakers do, with the dream of writing a book, getting it published and seeing in the shops and all that sort of thing.

But really the real big driver for me was when I finished speaking on stage, audience members used to come up to me and say they “just can’t get this down we need a book”. In fact I remember one lady saying to me I’ve wrote 14 sides of A4.

So really a couple of driving things there – my own goal and desire to write a book and the fact people asking for it, and actually wondering where it was.

So Mark who is the book for?

You know in business we try to get everyone to niche down. You can’t possibly target everyone, but I’m so tempted to say everyone simply because I do believe it can be applied to anyone who wants to get to somewhere different that where they currently are.
The profile of my Facebook page is reasonably split between the age range of between 25 – 55. The book isn’t based around any specific career path or goal path or anything like that. It’s really based around how we work as human beings, what makes us tick and why we can’t do things we want to do, but continually do things we don’t want to.

We need to know how we can stop being our own biggest obstacle, to our own success. We need to start taking our own actions to achieve our own success, whatever that means. It doesn’t have to be becoming a multi-millionaire it could just be that we want to be doing something a little bit different to what we are currently doing, and get to the next stage.

So I think I’m going to be really naughty and say it’s for everyone, and break every rule that I teach all of my clients on a daily basis.

But I think with something like this, to be able to achieve your own personal best, to evolve and be the person you are born to be, or can be is really for anyone. You don’t really want to exclude anyone from success.

So was this people realising that perhaps they might be in their own way? Is there a number one thing that you come across more than others that really is the brick wall in front of people?

I think probably the biggest point initially that is for people to realise that it is themselves in their own way. Once they’ve realised that, they can then get to the next level of discovering it is that’s in the way.

More and more it seems like they are all fitting in to two categories it is the fear of failure and the ‘what will other people think’ syndrome.  That is strongly linked rejection and criticism but failure is the most common.

People say to me, “I don’t like making cold calls” and “I don’t like talking to people that I don’t know”.  I simply ask them what are they worried about, and the answer is always “I don’t know”. But of course they know. They’re worried it’s not going to work out.

They’re certainly not worried that it’s going to go well. If they knew it was going to go well they would be taking immediate action. More and more often I find people don’t want to do things if they feel they may not work out.

People seem to forget that we are all on this learning curve. We are supposed to play around with things. do more of what works and less of what doesn’t work until we get the results we are looking for.

It’s like getting back to the 4 year old child mentality. When we were 4 years old we weren’t hung up on what other people thought – we kept going until we got the result we wanted.

We didn’t have one or two attempts at something and say “I’m not doing that, I’m obviously not good at it”. So I would have to say fear of failure is the primary reason.

It does make sense, because if the result was guaranteed why wouldn’t you have a go. But again knowing it isn’t guaranteed can make it more of a challenge.

To listen to the entire interview click the play button below:

Bev James interviews Mark Rhodes

To buy Mark’s book ‘Think Your Way to Success’ from Amazon, click here.

Connect with Bev on Google+

Establishing and developing effective communication is vital. In order to be heard and change your environment according to your own thoughts you not only need to be heard, but more importantly, understood.

No one will guess what you want or what you think if you don’t tell them, and nothing is going to change if you do not propose a change.

So here are my Top 10 Tips to help you Communicate Effectively

‘Let thy speak be short, comprehending much in few words’
Ecclesiasticus

1. Develop a clear and concise style of communications — on paper, on the telephone, and in person.

2. Take the time to plan what you want to communicate, and know your objectives.

3. Identify the key issues, order your points logically, and discard irrelevances.

4. Time your telephone calls—try to complete each call within three minutes.

5. Set aside a period of the day for making telephone calls — another for writing emails.

6. In a meeting, give the other person your full attention, but avoid small talk and get to the point quickly.

7. Try to meet in the other person’s office — then you can decide when to leave.

8. Develop techniques to manage interruptions — set a time limit, remain standing, have a clock in your office. Use them appropriately.

9. Use your secretary or assistant to screen potential interruptions.

10. Beware of welcoming interruptions as an excuse to put off unpleasant chores.

Have you been on the members area recently?

If the answer is yes, I am sure you can’t fail to notice the facility has received a significant face lift!

The site has been developed to have easier navigation and a direct search facility to help you to find exactly what you are looking for really quickly.

It still has the same great tools within the resource centre and information regarding how to qualify such as:

• How to book an accelerator day

• How to book practical assessments and time with your mentor

• Presenting your paperwork to name a few.

You will notice additional information such as the recommended reading section which will be added to over the coming weeks. If you fancy providing us with a book review to place on this page then please do send this in to qualifications@the-coaching-academy.com

The site has been enhanced based on the feedback that you have provided us, so we really do listen. Further developments for the resource centre are in progress so keep visiting on a regular basis to ensure you aren’t missing out or check out the dedicated announcements section to discover new pages as they arrive.

If you haven’t taken a look what are you waiting for?

Go to the main Coaching Academy website and follow the link in the top right hand corner called “student login”. The log in details are the same as before and outlined in your welcome booklet so you don’t need to do anything different, except explore.

We have already received some great feedback from those coaches that have made the discovery so why do let us know your thoughts.

My academic background is in Psychology and prior to becoming a coach I had always worked in support roles within caring organizations. I decided to do my personal performance coaching diploma in October 2010; at that time I was working two jobs and was also running my own dance fitness business in the evenings and weekends.

Doing both was tiring- I knew something was going to have to give but I felt a constant conflict between two arenas which I loved: dance fitness and psychology & support work.

I was working too many hours, feeling tired all the time and finding it hard to fit in social activities along with my professional commitments. I didn’t want to give up on my career but I loved running my business.

After numerous conversations with friends & family and a lot of pondering I decided that I wanted to find some way to fuse my two interests. I came across a link to the coaching academy’s website and it was almost as if the universe had sent me a sign. Coaching was the missing link!

I booked onto the initial two day seminar in London and after attending I had a gut feeling that I was onto a good thing. By the end of the second day I was convinced that coaching was for me and I signed up for the diploma in personal performance coaching, small business coaching and also 10 CPD days.

I thoroughly enjoyed the training and found so many tools and tips to use within my sessions. After each accelerator day I was excited to go off and consolidate what I’d learnt and try it out with my clients.

Being able to attend accelerator days as and when I could make it was really helpful. It meant that I could study at my own pace and choose which order I took the days.

About a month before qualifying I took the plunge and handed in my notice at my main job to focus on integrating coaching into my existing business. Now I work within organisations and also within my own private practice.

I’ve always been passionate about health and wellbeing and my coaching niche of wellbeing coaching came about very organically. Now I coach people in areas such as weight management, confidence coaching, relationships and stress management.

The best thing about being a coach is seeing clients make positive and lasting changes. I value client feedback highly and I love hearing how the coaching process has had a lasting impact on people’s lives.

I have had a business mentor for years and after a session with him I am buzzing with inspiration and am excited to get on with my action plan. The thought that I can help someone have that feeling gives me a real sense of self-satisfaction.

I LOVE coaching and after a great session with a client I am on a high for the rest of the day. My favorite coaching question is “and what if you didn’t?”. I use it to examine a clients “shoulds” i.e. “I should be working out every day” or “I should be pushing for a promotion”.

It’s amazing how often our “shoulds” are imposed on us by others or by what we think we should do rather then what our heart desires. I ask myself “and what if you didn’t?” at least once a week!

For people who are looking at coaching I would say…do it! The fantastic thing about coaching is how versatile it is. You don’t have to go off and set up your own coaching business, you could coach within an organization or use your newly acquired skills within your current role.

For coaches in training I would recommend getting your coaching sessions started as soon as possible. I found my last few accelerator days particularly relevant and I think that was because I was coaching regularly so could combine theoretical work with experiential coaching sessions.

For coaches who are about to qualify I would recommend having an action plan in place for when that certificate arrives. During your training start thinking about that you want to do with your diploma, how you want to use it and what your niche will be.

For people who are in a similar situation to myself I would recommend practising what we preach and self-coaching. Becoming a coach has been amazing for my professional life but also for my personal life and self development. L

ife is a journey with so many ups and downs that I find self- coaching extremely useful in helping me to plan the direction of my life and business and also to identify limiting beliefs that are getting in the way of my progression.

Once I identify them I find it much easier to eradicate them and move forward.