Harnessing Motivation: GOAL-Based Coaching Can Transform Your Career

Understanding your true motivators can change the trajectory of your career. How?

We explore this concept through the coaching framework known as QALMS, focusing on the "M" for motivator. We're diving deep into goal-based coaching with the GOAL acronym (Great, Opportunity, Actions, and Love), revealing how to harness both emotional and practical elements to set and achieve your career aspirations.

Learn how asking the right questions can unlock a clearer path to where you need to excel, the opportunities that await, the actions required, and the joy of reaching your goals. We illustrate the point with a story of an employee at a financial services firm who transformed his outlook and performance through inspired goal-setting and creative motivation techniques. This individual moved from feeling stuck with a seemingly unreachable goal to realizing a life-long dream.

Whether you're a leader aiming to inspire your team or seeking clarity in your own career path, read this practical advice and inspiring anecdotes to help you harness the power of motivation and goal-setting.

When coaching someone on career development, one of the greatest things that you can do is to understand both where you want to go and, as a leader, where your people want to go. At Progress Coaching, we call it the motivator.

We teach a coaching framework called QALMS, and the M is motivator. When you understand the motivator, such as someone who wants to become a branch manager or wants to go into marketing (it's not always a promotion), the key is to always understand specifically where they want to go. Most of the time, when asked, people don't know. They tend to go where things take them. Over time, people lose touch of their own motivation.

Here is a great technique you can use called GOAL-based coaching. GOAL stands for:

Great Opportunity Actions Love

1) Get a sheet of paper, notebook, or whiteboard. At the top of the page write the word GOAL.

2) Ask the person you're coaching, "What's a goal you have for your career? Even if it's not possible, what's that goal?" Then ask them what they want to achieve.

3) Once they answer, ask them questions from the acronym as if they were coaching questions. For example:

"What do you need to be Great at?"

"What Opportunities will become your reality if you become great?"

"What Actions do you need to take to reach your goal?"

"What will you Love about achieving your goal?" That's the emotional attachment.

These questions start the exploration process. Use the acronym as coaching questions Great, Opportunity, Action, and Love.

Everybody's at a different point in their career. So the GOALS people share will be different. Allow me to share this story with you. (Continue the article below the video).

This is from a person years ago in a call center at a financial services firm, and I remember when we sat down with him and his manager. He said, "Look, I can't do more than 75 calls a day. It's not possible for me, so don't try to make me do more than that." That was the opening few minutes of his GOAL-based coaching interaction with us. We then asked him what goal he had in his career. And he just couldn't think of anything. So we said then give us a personal goal. He replied, "It is my lifelong dream to take my family to Ireland."

I've told this story many times. I love this story because it goes to the emotion of who people are. He did not have a career goal; he had a short-term goal to reach his bonus level, which would then make him able to take his family to Ireland. Remember his words: "lifelong dream."

So, we asked him the GOAL acronym. What did he need to be great at, what opportunities would be afforded to him, and what actions did he need to take? To be candid and transparent, his answers to those were fluff. He was just going through the motions. Then he got to Love when he said it was his lifelong dream to take his family to Ireland.

So the manager sat down with me and asked what we could do with this because the guy really didn't know his career goal. Honestly, some people don't know. Sometimes it's not always a destination. It might be in the present moment. In this case, GOAL-based coaching served us really well. We went with his lifelong dream to jumpstart his motivation.

Here's what we did. We changed his screensaver to the hills of Ireland. We started anonymously putting bed and breakfast books for Ireland on his desk. We started to drop off pamphlets on his desk from Aer Lingus and Irish Airlines, and it was driving him nuts. He's like, "Who is this?"

Here's the best part.

Every Sunday night for 8 to 10 weeks, I left him a voicemail, knowing the first voice message he would get in the morning would be my voice, and I said, "Bob, this is the old country calling. We can't wait till you get here. The Irish people would love to have you in the pubs. Oh, and I hear you're a golfer, too. I've got to get the sticks out and go hit the course together." To this day, we never told him it was us, specifically me. He would ask people, "Who is this? Why are people doing this?"

Here was the amazing thing. Not only did he hit his goal (remember the comment about 75 calls,) he went to an average of 103 calls a day. We never asked him to raise his numbers.

Motivation is a very brittle thing. When we dive into career coaching, sometimes it could be a short-term destination. Then I remember the manager asked me, "Now what do I do?" I told him he had to ask the guy what he learned about himself that he's positively committed to. Bob said he realized he could go beyond his restrictions. He could go beyond his own self-induced barriers.

Use GOAL-based coaching to harness motivation: Great, Opportunity, Action, and Love.

QUESTIONS TO COMPEL AND INSPIRE MOTIVATION:

--Walk them through the GOAL acronym with these questions: "What do you need to be Great at?" "What Opportunities will become your reality if you become great?" "What Actions do you need to take to reach your goal?" "What will you Love about achieving your goal?" Have them write their answers down.

--Ask them what they currently love about their job. What would they love to be doing more of that they're currently not doing enough of now? How can they go about doing that?

--Ask them what is the one thing they want to achieve in the next 12-15 months (they can list both a career and personal goal).

--Ask them what is the one thing that typically energizes them when they're working, and how you can both accelerate that together.

Being approachable and coachable--?this is the real secret sauce to what's missing in workplace cultures and is needed most.

Watch the FREE Webinar with Tim Hagen today: Become Approachable & Coachable: The Secret Sauce to Workplace Success

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