Step one – Creating a Vision
One of the main responsibilities of a health and wellness coach is helping clients identify what they want to change.
That may sound like a simple task. In reality, it is often one of the more complex areas of coaching.
When someone comes to coaching, they may know that they want something to be different or better, but they may not yet know exactly what that looks like. Is it about having more energy? Greater vitality? More confidence? A greater sense of peace or satisfaction? A clearer sense of purpose?
Often, many things come to mind. The skill of the coach is helping the client explore and refine these thoughts until they can create a picture, in words, of where they would really like to be.
And importantly, it has to be their picture.
For change to feel worth the effort, clients need to be able to see where they are heading and feel that the destination genuinely matters to them. This means exploring not only what they want, but why they want it. What will be different if they get there? What values will they be honouring that perhaps they are not honouring now?
Any new health and wellness coach will recognise that learning how to facilitate these conversations can be challenging. The scope is enormous, the possibilities numerous, and both coach and client can sometimes feel as though they are stepping into the unknown.
But that is exactly why coaching is so much more than simply telling someone what they should do.
Step two -from vision to action
Once a client has begun to create a meaningful picture of what they want, the next question is: How will they get there?
There may be many areas of their lifestyle or behaviour that could change, and this too can become overwhelming.
This is where goalsetting comes in.
There is an art to developing goals that feel achievable while still requiring enough effort to create meaningful change. We want clients to believe they can get there — step by step, or perhaps more accurately, action by action.
The conversation now shifts from the desired outcome towards the behaviours, routines and habits that might help create it.
Goalsetting research has long supported the value of goals. Goals can provide direction, clarity, challenge, accountability and opportunities to experience success.
But there is an interesting question emerging from more recent research:
What kind of goal works best — and for whom?
Are specific goals always better?
For many years we have taught that the clearer and more specific a goal is, the more likely it is to be achieved. The SMART goal has become almost synonymous with good goal setting.
Yet research led by Professor Christian Swann and colleagues has challenged the idea that specific, challenging performance goals are necessarily the best approach in every situation.
In their critical review of goal-setting theory in physical activity, Swann and colleagues argued that the effectiveness of different types of goals depends on the context and the person setting them.
Specific performance goals may work very well for someone who already has the knowledge, skills and experience required for the activity. However, they may be less helpful — and potentially counterproductive — for someone who is at the early stages of learning a new and complex behaviour.
That distinction has obvious relevance to health and wellness coaching.
Many of the people who come to us are doing precisely that: trying to establish behaviours that are unfamiliar, difficult or have repeatedly proved challenging.
Someone beginning to exercise, for example, may have to learn far more than simply how to exercise. They may be working out how to fit activity into their day, how hard to work, what they enjoy, what their body can tolerate, how to overcome interruptions and how to recover when things don’t go according to plan.
Suddenly, “Walk 10,000 steps every day” may not necessarily be the most useful starting point.
Enter the “open goal”
One interesting alternative being investigated is the open goal.
Instead of specifying exactly what must be achieved, an open goal invites exploration:
“See how well you can do.”
“See how many steps you can reach.”
“See how far you can walk in 45 minutes.”
Notice the difference.
There is still direction and intention, but there is less emphasis on passing or failing against a predetermined number.
Research by Swann and colleagues comparing different types of goals in walking tasks has produced some interesting findings. Open goals appear particularly promising for people who are insufficiently active, including potential benefits for perceptions of competence, enjoyment and interest in continuing the activity.
This doesn’t mean that we should throw out SMART goals.
Far from it.
It suggests that, as coaches, we may need to become smarter about when we use them.
Goal setting may need to be dynamic
A specific goal may be exactly what an experienced exerciser needs. Someone who already walks regularly may find “walk 8,000 steps on five days this week” motivating, measurable and useful.
Someone who is just beginning may respond very differently.
For that person, an exploratory goal might allow them to learn what is possible without immediately creating a benchmark against which they can fail.
As their confidence, skills and experience increase, their goals can become more specific.
In other words, goal setting doesn’t necessarily have to remain the same throughout the behaviour-change process.
There is another important consideration. Habits are strengthened by consistency and environmental cues, so there will still be situations where specificity matters enormously. “I’ll walk after breakfast on Monday, Wednesday and Friday” may help establish a routine even if the performance outcome of the walk remains open.
This gives us an interesting distinction to consider: we can be specific about the behaviour or cue without necessarily being rigid about the performance outcome.
What does this mean for health and wellness coaches?
For now, probably not that we need to completely change the way we practise.
The research into open goals is still developing and much of it has focused specifically on physical activity. Health and wellness behaviours are far broader, and we should be cautious about assuming that findings from walking studies automatically apply to nutrition, sleep, stress management or other areas of behaviour change.
But the research does give us something extremely valuable:
A reason to remain curious.
Before automatically turning every intention into a highly specific SMART goal, perhaps we should ask:
How experienced is this person with this behaviour?
Are they performing something they already know how to do, or learning something new?
Would a specific target motivate them — or create pressure and another opportunity to feel that they have failed?
Would exploration, awareness and learning be more useful at this stage?
Perhaps the important question is no longer simply:
“Is this a well-written goal?”
It may also be:
“Is this the right type of goal for this person, at this point in their change journey?”
For health and wellness coaches — and for anyone considering joining our profession — this is another reminder of why effective coaching requires much more than learning a formula for setting goals.
It requires learning how to listen, explore, experiment and work with the person in front of us.
References
Hawkins, R. M., Crust, L., Swann, C., & Jackman, P. C. (2020). The effects of goal types on psychological outcomes in active and insufficiently active adults in a walking task: Further evidence for open goals. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 48, 101661.
Swann, C., Hooper, A., Schweickle, M. J., Peoples, G., Mullan, J., Hutto, D., Allen, M. S., & Vella, S. A. (2020). Comparing the effects of goal types in a walking session with healthy adults: Preliminary evidence for open goals in physical activity. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 47, 101475.
Swann, C., Rosenbaum, S., Lawrence, A., Vella, S. A., McEwan, D., & Ekkekakis, P. (2021). Updating goal-setting theory in physical activity promotion: A critical conceptual review. Health Psychology Review, 15(1), 34–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2019.1706616
Swann, C., Jackman, P. C., Lawrence, A., Hawkins, R. M., Goddard, S. G., Williamson, O., Schweickle, M. J., Vella, S. A., Rosenbaum, S., & Ekkekakis, P. (2022). The potential benefits of nonspecific goals in physical activity promotion: Comparing open, do-your-best, and as-well-as-possible goals in a walking task. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 34(2), 384–408.
