How to Set Clear Goals With Clients

Goal-setting sounds straightforward. You ask a client what they want to achieve, they tell you, and you write it down. Done. But anyone who has coached for any length of time knows that goal-setting is actually one of the most complex and nuanced skills in coaching. The goals clients bring to sessions are often vague, contradictory, or not actually what they want. Learning to work with goals skillfully — to surface them, interrogate them, and turn them into something genuinely motivating and achievable — is what separates good coaching from great coaching.

The Problem With the Goals Clients Bring

When a client first articulates a goal, it is almost never the real goal. It is usually a surface-level description of what she thinks she should want, or what she thinks is realistic, or what she has been told by others she should be working toward. A client will say she wants to get promoted, and what she actually wants is to feel respected and valued in her work. A client will say she wants to lose weight, and what she actually wants is to feel comfortable and at peace in her body. A client will say she wants to start a business, and what she actually wants is the freedom and creative expression she associates with entrepreneurship.

If you take the stated goal at face value, you will optimise for the wrong thing. You will help your client get promoted and discover that she still feels undervalued. You will help her lose weight and find that she still does not like her body. The root want — the underlying need that the stated goal is meant to serve — remains unmet.

Starting With the "Why"

The most important question in goal-setting is always why. Why do you want this— What will it give you that you do not have right now— What would be different in your life if you achieved this— What would it mean about you as a person— These questions are not philosophical — they are practical. They are the keys to finding out whether the goal is worth pursuing, whether it is truly your client's goal or someone else's version of success, and what obstacles might be lurking beneath the surface.

The answers to the why question also define success far more clearly than the goal itself. If your client knows that what she really wants is to feel respected — and that promotion is just one possible route to that — then she has more options. She can pursue the promotion, yes. But she can also address the respect issue directly, in her current role, through conversations or changes that might achieve the same underlying outcome more quickly and with less cost.

Making Goals Specific and Embodied

Vague goals produce vague results. "I want to be happier" is not a coaching goal. "I want to feel genuinely excited about my work again" is. The specificity matters because the brain responds to concrete, embodied targets differently than it does to abstract ideals. When a goal is specific and embodied — when your client can imagine what it would feel like, what her days would look like, what would be different — she has something to move toward that her nervous system can actually recognize and track.

Work with your client to make her goals as specific as possible. What does success actually look like, in concrete terms— What will she be doing differently— How will she know when she has achieved it— What will she notice about herself and her life— These questions transform vague aspirations into actionable targets.

Checking for Alignment With Values

A goal can be achievable and still be wrong for your client. This happens when the goal is not aligned with her deeper values — when pursuing it will require her to act inconsistently with who she really is or who she wants to become. A woman might want to close a major business deal, but if the process of closing it requires her to operate in ways that violate her integrity, the achievement will not bring satisfaction, no matter how objectively impressive it is.

Always check whether the goal is values-aligned. What values are at stake in pursuing this— Does achieving this goal require me to compromise any of my core values— If it does, we need to either find a different route to the underlying outcome, or examine the belief that is driving the goal more carefully. Goals that require value compromises rarely produce lasting satisfaction, even when they are achieved.

From Goals to Commitments

Finally, help your client translate goals into specific, time-bound commitments. Goals without commitments are wishes. A commitment is something your client will actually do — a specific action, by a specific deadline, that moves her toward her goal. The key word is specific. Not "I will work on this project sometime this week." But "I will spend two hours on Saturday morning completing the first draft of the proposal." The specificity of the commitment is what makes it real — and what makes accountability possible.

At Coachivas, our coaches are trained in this nuanced, values-driven approach to goal-setting — because we know that the goals women bring are often more complex than they first appear, and because we know that the deepest satisfaction comes not from achieving any goal, but from achieving the right goals — the ones that truly matter to who you are and who you are becoming.