It’s often stated that people should aim for SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-related). However, most of the research and theory for this comes from the field of profit and productivity maximisation. So while SMART goes might help people to hit performance targets, they’re not necessarily the ones that are going to maximise wellbeing and help clients overcome psychological distress. A person, for instance, might achieve a SMART goal of increasing their earnings by £5,000 within a year but, as the research shows, such ‘extrinsic’ goal achievement is not actually associated with greater happiness.
So what kind of goals might clients be encouraged to consider if goals are going to be used in the counselling and psychotherapy work (and research suggests that most clients do like having goals). This is a question that I asked in my new book, Integrating counselling and psychotherapy: Directionality, synergy, and social justice (Sage, 2019) and will be explored in a one-day CPD workshop on ‘Working with Goals in Counselling and Psychotherapy’ on Sunday 5th July. It’s also a question I would have loved to come up with a brilliant new acronym for. Unfortunately, after many hours on acronym generator programmes, the best I could come up with was ‘HEALS CRISPS’: that clients’ goals should be: Higher-order, Effective, Approach, Longer-term, Synergetic, Challenging, Realistic, Intrinsic, Small steps, Process-focused, and Specific. Sorry!
‘Higher-order’
Generally, clients should be encouraged to identify goals that relate to those things that are most, fundamentally, important to them: for instance, relatedness, self-worth, or safety. As discussed below, goals also need to be relatively specific and realistic, but ensuring that they link up to something of ‘higher-order’ value is essential in making them meaningful to the client.
Effective
A client’s goals need to be credible ways of actualising their highest-order wants and needs, rather than random strategies; so it may be important to reflect with clients on how, and whether, their goals are really going to help them get to where they want to be. If a client, for instance, says that their goal is to lose weight, because they wants to be happier, some discussion might be needed about whether this is actually going to get them there.
Approach
Research suggests that it is better for clients to be oriented towards positive, promotion goals (for instance, ‘Increase my social networks’), rather than negative, prevention goals (for instance, ‘Stop feeling so alone’). The latter may be particularly problematic if all of a client’s goals are avoidant rather than approach: essentially, this means that they are asking the therapist to help them ‘go nowhere’. For Elliot and Church, therapists should be ‘discussing the ineffective and potentially problematic nature of avoidance goals [with clients], and working to reframe these goals in terms of approaching positive possibilities’. Similarly, where clients want to reduce ‘unhealthy negative emotions’, such as anxiety, it may be helpful to refocus them on increasing ‘healthy positive emotions’, such as concern.
Longer-term
Many psychological difficulties may relate to the prioritisation of very short-term goals over medium or longer-term ones. It may be helpful, therefore, to encourage clients to look towards longer-term objectives, as well as short- and medium-term plans, so that there is a focus beyond immediate obstacles or rewards. At the same time, however, clients’ goals need to be realistically attainable (see below). Again, then, it may be important that clients strive for goal balance, where they are pursuing a range of short, medium, and long term goals.
Synergetic
Goals should be supportive of other therapeutic goals or, at least, not in conflict with them (for instance, ‘I want more time on my own,’ when the client has already stated ‘I want to be closer to my partner’). Therapists should be particularly mindful of ‘rogue goals’: where the client’s stated objective seems to run against many other wants in their lives. An example of this might be a client who wants to get fitter; but where time spent at the gym is damaging their family, relational, and work life. Generally, clients should strive for goal balance, where they are pursuing a broad number of goals, through a range of strategies, rather than being too focused in any one area.
Challenging
While clients seem to benefit from realistic, small steps; therapists should also bear in mind the psychological research that difficult goals tend to lead to greater overall progress. A client whose goal, for instance, is to cut down to six units of alcohol a day might be encouraged to consider whether two units might be a better objective. For Ford (1992), this is the ‘optimal challenge principle’: working with clients to set goals that are difficult but still attainable.
Realistic
Clients’ goals need to be achievable within the therapeutic time frame. Goals that are based on unrealistically high expectations should be challenged, especially when these are expectations of feelings or other ‘metagoals’ that may fuel vicious cycles (for instance, ‘I want to feel calm all the time’). Equally, therapists should challenge goals that are unrealistic because they are dependent on others, or the world, doing something (for instance, ‘I want my girlfriend to stop criticising me all the time’). These should be reframed in terms of what the client, themselves, can do (e.g., ‘I want to feel confident to challenge my girlfriend when she criticises me’). Therapists should also be mindful of the number of goals that clients are setting: are there too many to be realistically achieved (or too few to be sufficiently challenging)? If, as the work proceeds, it becomes apparent that clients’ goals are unattainable, it may be important to support them in the process of disengaging.
Intrinsic
Closely related to the above, clients’ goals should be directly related to their own, personal higher-order desires and values—such as connectedness, autonomy, or self-worth—rather than contingent on the attitudes or actions of others (‘extrinsic goals’). Clients who are oriented towards such ‘intrinsic’ goals are likely to be more committed to those goals, take greater ownership of them, and experience them as more appealing.
‘Small steps’
Although, ultimately, clients should be aiming towards higher-order, longer-term goals; in many cases, the importance of being realistic means that it may be most therapeutically beneficial to set smaller subgoals with clients. These are objectives that they can succeed in, one step at a time. This process, also referred to as ‘goal stepping’ or ‘goal laddering’, can help boost clients’ self-efficacy and hence their ability to achieve subsequent goals, in a virtuous cycle. For instance, if a client wants to develop relatedness in their life, an initial goal might be to join a club, followed by a goal of forming a friendship, followed by a goal of sharing more personal narratives. Research suggests that this process of breaking down superordinate goals into more manageable tasks is experienced by clients as helpful: facilitating both a sense of achievement and relieving pressure. Given such perspectives, Ford (1992) suggests that the best approach to goal setting may be to have a, ‘strategic emphasis on attainable short-term goals combined with a periodic review of the long-term goals that gives meaning and organization to one’s short-term pursuits’ (p. 99).
Process-focused
Goals that extend over time (for instance, ‘enjoy my final year at college’) rather than a single endpoint (for instance, ‘get a good final grade’) may support a more ongoing sense of wellbeing and be less pressurised. As Miller et al. (1960), for instance, write:
successful living is not a “well-defined problem,” and attempts to convert it into a well-defined problem by selecting explicit goals and subgoals can be an empty deception.... it is better to plan towards a kind of continual “becoming” than towards a final goal. The problem is to sustain life, to formulate enduring Plans, not to terminate living and planning as if they were task that had to be finished. (p. 114)
Specific
Goals that are specific: clearly-defined, concrete, verifiable/measurable, and simple (e.g., ‘Talk back to my bully at work’); may be preferable to goals which are vague, abstract, and complex (e.g., ‘Be assertive’). In part, this might be because they are easier to monitor. However, the specificity of goals needs to be weighed against their relative order (see above). Also, goals that are too specific may lack flexibility, and make it difficult for the client to revise their goals to a more meaningful, or realistic, objective.
In day-to-day counselling practice, it is not easy to remember all these characteristics. But perhaps the three standout ones are approach, intrinsic, and small steps: helping clients establish goals that are positive strivings, towards things that they really want, and that are manageable within a relatively well-defined time frame. A lot of this is about fostering the hope-generating element of goal-oriented practices: where goals work (and not all clients want, or benefit from, goals), it is often because they can help clients feel more about positive about where they are going—and their possibility of getting there.
[Adapted from Cooper, M. (2019). Integrating counselling and psychotherapy: Directionality, synergy, and social change. London: Sage. Image by Marco Verch (CC BY 2.0)]
A Chinese translation of this blog is available here