Aligning Career Ambitions with Personal Dreams: The Power of Goal-Based Coaching

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
When coaching career development, one of the greatest
things that you can do is tounderstand where you want to go
and, certainly as a leader,where your people want to go.
At Progress Coaching we call itthe motivator.
Now we teach a coachingframework called QALMS,
q-a-l-m-s the M is motivator,motivator.

(00:27):
When you have a motivatorunderstanding, such as someone
wants to become a branch manageror they want to go into
marketing, it's not always apromotion.
The key to this is to alwaysunderstand specifically where
you want to go.
Sometimes, actually most of thetime, when asked people don't
know.
They kind of go where thingstake them.
People lose touch of their ownmotivation.

(00:48):
Here is a great technique thatyou can use, called goal-based
coaching.
Goal stands for greatopportunity, actions and love.
So at the top of the page putdown the word goal.
Ask somebody what's a goal thatyou have for your career?
Even if it's not possible,what's that goal?

(01:10):
And then you ask what do youwant to achieve?
Answer, maybe a couple times asit relates to their goal.
You ask them the acronym as ifthey were coaching questions
like what do you need to begreat at?
What opportunities will becomeyour reality if you become great

(01:34):
?
What actions do you need totake to reach your goal?
The L what will you love aboutachieving your goal?
That's the emotional attachment.
So what you do is you find out,you ask somebody what's a goal
you have, what are some goalsthat you have?
And what this does is it startsthe exploration process, and
goal again is an acronym thatyou can use as coaching

(01:56):
questions Great opportunity,action and love.
What do you need to be great at?
What opportunities will beafforded to you if you become
great?
What actions do you need totake?
The L what will you love aboutachieving this goal?
Now I want to share this.
Everybody's at a different pointin their career and this is

(02:17):
from a person years and yearsago at a financial services firm
in the call center, and Iremember when we sat down with
him.
His manager sat down with himand he said look, I can't do
more than 75 calls a day.
I can't do more than 75 calls aday, so don't try to make me do
more than 75 calls a day.
That was the opening fewminutes of his goal-based

(02:37):
coaching interaction with us.
And what we did is we sat downand we said what's a goal that
you have?
And he just couldn't think ofanything.
So we said you know, give us apersonal goal.
And he said it is my lifelongdream to take my family to
Ireland.
Now I've told this story many,many times.
I love this story because itgoes to the emotion of who

(03:00):
people are.
He did not have a career goal,he had a short-term goal and his
short-term goal was, if hecould reach his bonus level, he
would get a bonus and he wouldbe able to go to Ireland and
take his family.
Now remember his words lifelongdream.
So we asked him what he neededto be great at and what

(03:21):
opportunities will be affordedto him and what actions did he
need to take?
And to be really candid andtransparent, his answers were
kind of fluff.
He was kind of going throughthe motions.
And then he got to love when hesaid it is my lifelong dream to
take my family to Ireland.
So the manager and I sat down,charles great guy, and he said

(03:41):
what can we do with this?
It's like he really doesn'tknow.
Some people don't know.
See, sometimes it's not alwaysa destination.
It might be in the presentmoment.
So in this case, goal-basedcoaching served us really well.
So what we did is we changedhis screensaver to the hills of
Ireland.
We started anonymously puttingbed and breakfast books for

(04:02):
Ireland on his desk.
We started to drop off AerLingus, the Irish Airlines,
pamphlets on his desk, and itwas driving him nuts.
He's like who is this?
Here's the best part.
Every Sunday night, for about Ithink it was about eight to 10
weeks, I left him a voicemail,knowing the first voice message
he would get in the morningwould be my voice, and I said

(04:25):
Bob, this is the old countrycalling.
We can't wait till you get here.
The Irish people love to haveyou in the pubs.
Oh, I hear you're a golfer too.
I've got to get the sticks outand go hit the course together.
Till this day, we never told himit was us, specifically me and
he would ask people who is this?

(04:47):
You know, why is everyone doingthis?
Here was the amazing thing.
Not only did he hit his goalremember the comment about 75
calls, he went to an average of103 calls a day.
We never asked him to raise hisnumbers.
See, motivation is a verybrittle thing, and so when we
dive in to career coaching,sometimes it could be a
short-term destination.

(05:08):
And then I remember the managersaid now, what do I do?
And I said now you got to askhim what have you learned about
yourself you're positivelycommitted to?
And he said you know what I cango beyond what I restrict
myself.
I can go beyond my ownself-induced barriers.
Goal-based coaching, greatopportunity, action and love.