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Guest post by: Christine Sutherland Become an Author

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Why is S.M.A.R.T. Dumb?

If we don’t set goals at all, we tend to just get whatever is dished up to us. The trouble is, most people don’t set goals well, and still end up not achieving their personal and professional dreams.

But it gets worse than this, because goal setting has a “dark side” too. When people experience failure of their goal setting activities, it doesn’t just mean a waste of time, it also means experiencing a sense of failure and disappointment that can end up making you feel cynical about even having dreams.

Up till fairly recently, the best goal setting tool we had was the S.M.A.R.T. routine, which essentially meant considering our goal in the contexts of:

Specificity
Measurability
Attainability
Reward Potential
Timeframe

This was better than anything else we had at the time, but didn’t go nearly far enough because it left pitfalls and loopholes galore. S.M.A.R.T. failed to:

• Fully examine the consequences of getting or not getting your goal. It left key motivating factors, both for and against getting your goal, hidden and unexamined.
• Examine specificity rigorously enough, or measure rigorously enough. S.M.A.R.T. lacked understanding of the way each of our sensory systems tracks and recognizes goals.
• Understand the difference between a goal you have control over and a goal which you do not.
• Examine the resources required to reach your goal, which you might not have or be able to obtain.
• Examine the costs of achieving the goal, which might be too high to pay.
• Examine beliefs around the goal that could trip you up.
• Examine how the goal was or was not congruent with other goals, or with your guiding principles or values.
• Test the goal for “comfortable fit”.
• Skillfully install the goal as an unconscious target

By attending to each of these points, we arrive at a much a smarter alternative to SMART! We go beyond “goal setting” to “goal getting”! This is the process we work through with every single one of our sales training advanced students. It owes much to the NLP concept of “Well-formedness”, but NLP graduates will notice that we take even this, much further, and find the holes and traps with a goal and quite literally “failproof” it!!

Correct Focus

You must get very clear on what it is you actually do want. Take the time to write, in positive language the selling goal you want, and write this in present tense, positive language (so you are not using “absence of the negative” type language.)

This step can be quite a challenge to the majority of people who are in fact negatively motivated (motivated more by a desire to avoid pain, rather than a wish for reward).

A helpful analogy I often use to demonstrate just how the mind has a tendency to automatically create behaviour which matches our particular mental focus, is the one of the person learning to steer a bike or a car. Most people have had at least one of these experiences and should identify with this scenario:

When you were first learning to drive or ride, if you “tried” to keep off the edge of road, your car or bike seems to be magnetically attracted to it. It you “tried” to avoid the pot hole, again, your vehicle seemed magnetically attracted to it.

Your mind was on the thing to be avoided. Incredibly, your brain then directed literally thousands of muscle fibres, without your conscious awareness, to take you to the thing you were wishing to avoid.

The trick to being able to stay on the right part of the road was to line up some part of your vehicle with the centre line, or with the edge, and keep your focus on the visual gap, or match, that you were creating. Not on the edge, or on the centre, but on the gap or on the match. Then it became easy to control, and soon it became totally unconscious. No effort whatsoever to just “sit on the right spot”.

This is how the brain works. If you want to go in a certain direction, you must focus on that, NOT on what you don’t want. Once you’ve “practised” conscious awareness of a certain thing, just like the “driving” phenomenon, you start to “forget” about it but your unconscious mind takes over and automatically keeps you “sitting on the ‘right’ spot”.

Can you see that this incredible process is actually a two-edged sword? What about all the unwanted things you’ve focussed on in the past, that your brain now might be automatically taking you toward, and you don’t even realise that’s what’s happening? This is a great explanation for the seeming self sabotage that so many people play out.

Literally, our brains are teleological in nature. The very design of your brain, automatically directing you to whatever you’ve been focussing on, is what gives you the success or otherwise that you experience.

Motivation styles also come into play, but this basic fact of brain function remains the same.

Know the Real Reason You Want this Goal

This is the “why” of the goal and needs to be stated in a way that really “gets” you at an emotional level. If you can’t access this, then your goal is going to be tough work because you simply don’t have the emotional energy to sustain you as you drive toward it.

For example, as I mentioned above, a lot of people are motivated in “away from” fashion. This means they are galvanised to focus on a goal, to take action to move toward that goal, because they want to avoid pain. They’re not doing it because they want the reward; they’re doing it mainly because they fear the alternative!

Unlike people who go for goals purely for reward, these people have twin foci. Instead of dealing with the fear (which is possible) some NLP trainers try to build up their fear, with the aim of building up the motivating pressures to take action. (I’ve done this myself when I didn’t know better.) What happens is that the person is highly likely to get their goal, but with a whole lot of pain thrown in. After all, they’ve been focussing on that too!

A far better course of action would be to get expert help from a competent behavioural therapist in order to firstly deal with the “no pain no gain” and self-esteem rubbish that may be running, and then to deal with the fear that has been underpinning this person’s entire life.

There is a better, cleaner, more efficient way to get goals!

Describe the Achievement of Your Goal in Sensory-specific Terms

What will constitute the proof that you have your goal? What will be the evidence of your own eyes, ears, touch, smell and even taste that undeniably prove that you have your goal?

Can you describe the achievement of the goal in all sensory representational systems (sights, sounds, feelings, smells, tastes)? What sensory representational systems of others would inform them that you had achieved this goal? In other words, what sights, sounds, feelings, smells and tastes would provide you, and everyone around you, with undeniable evidence that you had got your goal?

Make Sure You Can Prove that the Goal Can Be Self-Fulfilled

Your goal must be self-fulfilled - not rely on others’ contributions, and not subject to events outside your control. What are the resources, personal and otherwise, that must be brought to the process? Is it feasible that you can gather those resources in the time planned?

Make Sure You Are Willing to Pay the Costs and Bear the Consequences of Getting the Goal

Honestly evaluate the costs and effects of achieving the goal. What will having the goal get for me? What will having the goal lose for me? What will not having the goal get for me? What will not having the goal lose for me?

Make Sure Your Goal is in Alignment With Other Goals, and with Your Values and Guiding Principles

If your goal clashes with other goals, or if it is counter to your values and the principles that you live by, you will find yourself effortlessly sabotaging it!

Check Fantastical Thinking

I know you might not like this term and some people complain I should just say “fantastic” thinking, or “illogical” thinking. I like the word “fantastical” because I think it conveys the “fantasy” aspect just the way I wish.

Fantastical thinking in relation to goal setting refers to fairy-tale-like beliefs about current or future events. This is the imaginary cause/effect link that we make between our goal and other events.

Point out to your team that goal consequences should not contain fantastical thinking. For example, someone who wants to increase their commissions may be thinking “When I earn more I will take that trip I’ve been wanting”, “When I earn more I’ll go for that promotion”, “When earn more I’ll find a man/woman who will love me and want to marry me”. Maybe, maybe not. One doesn’t necessarily mean the other, and those outcomes can be achieved without earning more. People who earn less do these things, have these experiences, also, and if this person hasn’t already done these things, it’s possible that there are a lot of other things stopping them than merely their earning level.

It’s the same with confidence and charisma. If we say “When I’m confident I’ll be a brilliant public speaker and everyone will love me” these things don’t necessarily go together. They can be quite independent of one another. As you know, there have been plenty of brilliant and popular public speakers who were nevertheless painfully shy and lacking confidence. Conversely, there are plenty of very confident people who are as boring as hell to listen to.

Get your team members to respectfully challenge each other on “consequences”. This is important because fantastical thinking can very much get in the way of goal clarity, and therefore get in the way of successful acquisition. Fantastical thinking may also indicate self sabotage and if that’s the case they want to know about it, and deal with it, so that nothing stands in their way.

Check Fears of Consequences

Certainly the changes we make are not always easy for loved ones, friends or even colleagues. Even we ourselves may feel overwhelmed by positive change that occurs quickly.

I think the much-revered family therapist Virginia Satir (on whose work much of NLP is based) put it best when she described groups of human beings as systems “much like a mobile you might hang above a baby’s crib”. Satir said that when an individual changes it is like jiggling one piece of the mobile out of its customary position. When that happens the rest of the pieces jiggle about madly, trying to find equilibrium. But the system only has so much energy, and eventually it wears out and the whole thing comes to rest. It comes to rest around the piece which changed. According to the laws of physics, nothing else is possible.

Human systems aren’t like that 100% of the time. We’re a little more unpredictable, so for us it’s more like 99.9999999%. So sometimes a piece of the mobile (like an employee, a partner or a friend) actually cannot or will not make the change and there is a parting. However probably something like 99.9999999% of the time they make a positive change with us (even if that takes a while) and they stay, and the “system” is a lot better for it.

Do take time to think about and identify any fears you may have about the consequences of getting your goal.

Beliefs/Doubts

Do you totally believe you can achieve this goal safely and comfortably? Or is there some doubt or fear around reaching for this goal or actually achieving it?

Usually we find that the goal is not totally congruent with who we are or what we believe, otherwise we’d probably have just gone out and done it! The problem is that the things that could be holding us back are mostly unconscious - so how do we discover them and deal with them?

The key is to be found in your own body and the best way to use that key is to first get into the most comfortable state you can (note, not necessarily relaxed, but quite alert in a highly comfortable way). Use an actual memory of an occasion where you actually felt quite comfortably alert and relive it now, carefully noting how you feel physically, in your face, chest, back, stomach, legs, hands.

As a contrast, imagine going through the steps to achieve your goal, as well as what it would truly be like to be achieving that goal. What differences do you note in your body as you experience that? If you feel tightness or tension where previously you felt quite “smooth” or comfortable, this could indicate fear or doubt. Or maybe it merely indicates excitement. Is it a nervous feeling, or an excited feeling?

There are now the most highly-effective techniques which you may use to deal with these subconscious blocks so that they cease being triggered as you move toward your goal. It is possible you might need help to refine your use of these techniques so that you more easily get the outcome you want. There is an excellent book called “Rapid Techniques for Self Help” which encapsulate 6 of the best available techniques for self use on www.bmsa-int.com, and the free professional forums on www.speedbusinessnetworking.com allow sales people and business people to perfect their use for maximum results!

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