Reading B

Goal setting, whether it is called that or not, is part of everyday life. We all do it all the time.

Why do we formulate goals? Well, if we didn't have goals, we wouldn't do anything. No one cooks a meal, reads a book, or writes a letter without having a reason, or several reasons, for doing so. We want to get something we want through our actions or we want to prevent or avoid something we don't want. These desires are beacons for our actions; they tell us which way to go. When formalized into goals, they play an important role in problem solving. (Donner, 1996, p. 49)

Even not setting goals is a form of goal setting. If we don't name our goals, that does not mean that we don't have any. Instead of overt goals, then, we have a set of covert goals. These are our default goals. They may be enhancing or limiting. We don't like the sagging muscles and flab we see in the mirror. But not deciding to get into better shape is a decision to continue to allow the fitness program to drift.

Because life is filled with goals—chosen goals or goals by default—it makes sense to make them work for us rather than against us. Goals at their best mobilize our resources; they get us moving. They are a critical part of the self-regulation system. If they are the right goals for us, they get us headed in the right direction. There is a massive amount of sophisticated theory and research on goals and goal setting (Karoly, 1999; Locke & Latham, 1984, 1990, 2002). In their 2002 American Psychologist article, Locke and Latham summarize 35 years of empirical research on goal setting. According to this research, helping clients set goals empowers them in the following four ways.

Goals Help Clients Focus Their Attention

A counselor at a refugee center in London described Simon, a victim of torture in a Middle Eastern country, to her supervisor as aimless and minimally cooperative in exploring the meaning of his brutal experience. Her supervisor suggested that she help Simon explore possibilities for a better future instead of focusing on the hell he had gone through. The counselor started one session by asking, "Simon, if you could have one thing you don't have, what would it be?" Simon response was immediate. "A friend," he said. During the rest of the session, he was totally focused. What was uppermost in his mind was not the torture but the fact that he was so lonely in a foreign country. When he did talk about the torture, it was to express his fear that torture had "disfigured" him, if not physically, then psychologically, thus making him unattractive to others.

Goals Help Clients Mobilize Their Energy and Direct Their Effort

Clients who seem lethargic during the problem-exploration phase often come to life when asked to discuss possibilities for a better future. A patient in a long-term rehabilitation program who had been listless and uncooperative said to her counselor after a visit from her minister, "I've decided that God and God's creation and not pain will be the center of my life. This is what I want." That was the beginning of a new commitment to the arduous program. She collaborated more fully in doing exercises that helped her manage her pain. Clients with goals are less likely to engage in aimless behavior. Goal setting is not just a "head" exercise. Many clients begin engaging in constructive change after setting even broad or rudimentary goals.

Goals Provide Incentives for Clients to Search for Strategies to Accomplish Them

Setting goals, a Stage II task, leads naturally into a search for means to accomplish them, a Stage III task. Lonnie, a woman in her 70s who had been described by her friends as "going downhill fast," decided, after a heart-problem scare that proved to be a false alarm, that she wanted to, as she put it, "begin living again." She said that the things that scared her most about almost meeting "Mr. Death" was that she had already died. She searched out ingenious ways of redeveloping her social life, including a low-budget remodeling her house and taking in two young women from a local college as boarders.

Clear and Specific Goals Help Clients Increase Persistence

Not only are clients with clear and specific goals energized to do something, but they also tend to work harder and longer. An AIDS patient who said that he wanted to be reintegrated into his extended family managed, against all odds, to recover from five hospitalizations to achieve what he wanted. He did everything he could to buy the time he needed. Clients with clear and realistic goals don't give up as easily as clients with vague goals or with no goals at all.

One study (Payne, Robbins, & Dougherty, 1991) showed that high-goal-directed retirees were more outgoing, involved, resourceful, and persistent in their social set-tings than low-goal-directed retirees. The latter were more self-critical, dissatisfied, sulky, and selfcentered. People with a sense of direction don't waste time in wishful thinking. Rather, they translate wishes into specific outcomes toward which they can work. Picture a continuum. At one end is the aimless person; at the other, a person with a keen sense of direction. Your clients may come from any point on the continuum. Taz knows that he wants to become a better supervisor but needs help in developing a program to do just that. On the other hand, Lola, one of Taz's colleagues, doesn't even know whether this is the right job for her and does little to explore other possibilities. Any given client may be at different points with respect to different issues—for instance, mature in seizing opportunities for education but aimless in developing sexual maturity. Most of us have had directionless periods in one area of life or another at one time or another.

In Chapter 3 of her book, Wosket (2006) recalls something I said during a lecture she attended. Stage I of the helping model is about failed solutions. People do things in their lives that don't work. Stage II is about solutions as problem-managing goals. Stage III is about solutions as strategies. As you know, I now have reservations about the term "solution" because of the ambiguities attached to it. Once possibilities for a better future have been developed, clients need to make some choices—that is, they need to choose one or more of those possibilities and turn them into a program for constructive change. Task II-A is, in many ways, about creativity, getting rid of boundaries, thinking beyond one's limited horizon, moving outside the box. Task II-11 is about innovation—that is, turning possibilities into a practical program for change. Consider the following case.

Bea, an African American woman, was arrested when she went on a rampage in a bank and broke several windows. She had exploded with anger because she felt that she had been denied a loan mainly because she was black and a single mother. In discussing the incident with her minister, she comes to see that she has become very prone to anger. Almost anything can get her going. She also realizes that venting her anger as she had done in the bank led to a range of negative consequences. But she is constantly "steamed up" about "the system." To complicate the picture, she tends to take her anger out on those around her, including her friends and her two children. The minister helps her look at four possible ways of dealing with her anger—venting it, repressing it, channeling it, or simply giving up and ignoring the things she gets angry at, including the injustices around her. Giving up is not in her makeup. Merely venting her anger seems to do little but make her more angry and it has a number of negative consequences. Repressing her anger, she reasons, is just another way of giving up, and that is demeaning. And she's not very good at repressing anyway. The "channeling" option needs to be explored.

In the end, Bea takes a positive approach to dealing with her frustrations. She joins a political action group involved in community organizing. One focus of the community development organization is the inequities built into the financial system. She learns that she can channel her anger without giving up her values or her intensity. She also discovers that she is good at influencing others and getting things done. She begins to feel better about herself. The "system" doesn't seem to be such a fortress any more.

A new pattern of behavior in place changes Bea's life. Figure 12.1 lays out the geography of the goal-setting process once more.

FIGURE 12.1 The Three Tasks of Stage II
Because goals can be highly motivational, helping clients set realistic goals is one of the most important tasks of the helping process. But remember, a goal is a concept. An accomplished goal is an outcome. If the outcome has a positive impact on the problem situation, then it is a problem-managing or opportunity-developing outcome. Bea's overall goal of channeling her anger becomes an outcome when she becomes an active participant in a political action group. In her case it is a problem-managing outcome because she replaces aimless venting of anger and all its negative consequences with involvement with a group of community organizers in the pursuit of community-enhancing goals.

Practical goals do not usually leap out fully formed. They need to be shaped or, as noted in Chapter 11, "designed." Effective counselors add value by engaging clients in the kind of dialogue that will help them design, choose, craft, shape, and develop their goals. Goals are specific statements about what clients want and need. The goals that emerge through this client-helper dialogue are more likely to be workable if they have, for the most part, the following characteristics. They need to be:

• stated as outcomes rather than activities—Mara needs, not just to talk to her father, but to have in place an ongoing working relationship based on mutual respect.
• specific enough to be verifiable and to drive action—Mara needs a clear idea what this relationship would look like, for instance, she sees herself negotiating a different role within the family and the pursuit of a career outside of the family business.
• substantive and challenging—Mara realizes that merely symbolic or incremental changes in her role within the family would not be enough; she needs to be a full partner in the decisions that are being made.
• both venturesome and prudent—Mara needs to remain respectful of her father's heritage, his personal culture, and his role in the family and the business, but still be faithful to her own career and social aspirations.
• realistic in regard to the internal and external resources needed to accomplish them—Mara has the fiber needed to do her part in refocusing the relationship with her father, but take into account the fact that her father remains responsible for doing his part. Given her father's personal culture, she believes that she has to negotiate some compromises.
• sustainable over a reasonable time period—Mara needs to believe that she can handle the impact that a new career and social life will have on her family, especially in view of her father's health problems. Is she ready to deal with the flare ups that are almost inevitable?
• flexible without being wishy-washy—Mara needs to understand what is core to a working relationship with her father such as mutual acceptance and what is peripheral such as mood swings.
• congruent with the client's values—because Mara values a more challenging work life and a fuller social life, any accommodation with her father needs to respect these values.
• set in a reasonable time frame—Mara believes that substantial progress in developing a career and establishing a fuller social life within a year's time.

Just how this package of goal characteristics will look in practice will differ from client to client. There is no one formula. From a practical point of view, these characteristics can be seen as "tools" that counselors can use to help clients design and shape or reshape their goals. In general, goals with these characteristics are more likely to be turned into problem-managing outcomes with the desired impact on clients' lives. If you listen carefully to clients, they will provide hints or clues or cues as to when any given principle might help. These principles are not a step-by-step program. Ineffective helpers will get lost in the details of these characteristics. Some might say, "Clients don't need all this," and they would be right. Helpers need to understand the anatomy of goal setting and decision making in order to be able to respond to any given client need. Effective helpers will keep these principles in the back of their minds and, in a second-nature manner, turn them into helpful "sculpting" probes at the right time. The characteristics of fully shaped goals listed earlier take on life through the following flexible principles.

Help Clients Describe the Future They Want in Outcome or Accomplishment Language

The goal of counseling, as emphasized again and again, is neither discussing nor planning nor engaging in activities. Helping is about problem-managing outcomes. "I want to start doing some exercise" is an activity rather than an outcome. "Within 6 months I will be running three miles in less than 30 minutes at least four times a week" is an outcome. It is a pattern of behavior that will be in place by a certain time. If a client says, "My goal is to get some training in interpersonal communication skills," then she is stating her goal as a set of activities rather than as an accomplishment. But if she says that she wants to become a better listener as a wife and mother, then she is stating her goal as an accomplishment, even though "better listener" needs further clarification. Goals stated as outcomes provide direction for clients.

You can help clients describe what they need and want by using this "past-participle" approach—drinking stopped, number of marital fights decreased, anger habitually controlled. Stating goals as outcomes or accomplishments is not just a question of language. Helping clients state goals as accomplishments rather than activities helps them avoid directionless and imprudent action. If a woman with breast cancer says that she thinks she should join a self-help group, she should be helped to see what she wants to get out of such a group. Joining a group and participating in it are activities. She wants support. She wants to feel supported. Clients who know what they want are more likely to work not just harder but also smarter.

Let's return to Karl, the ex-soldier who has been suffering from a variety of ailments associated with PTSD, and Laura, his therapist. As we have seen, Laura, Karl's counselor, has a good relationship with him. She has helped Karl tell his story and has helped him challenge some of his self-defeating thinking, especially his tendency to blame himself for the deaths of his comrades. She quickly went on to help Karl focus on what he wanted from life. They moved back and forth between Stages I and II, between problems and possibilities for a better future. Eventually, Karl began talking about his real needs and wants—that is, what he needed to "get back to his old self." Here is an excerpt from their dialogue. Their dialogue involves Peter, the ex-soldier who has successfully managed his bout with PTSD and is now Karl's "buddy."

KARL: I've said that I want a more "normal" social life, but now I've got some second thoughts. You know I get on well with Peter. And you also know that I'm still not totally comfortable with you. I'm comfortable with Peter because he's a soldier. But you represent a different kind of social life. The civilian one. I think we're getting along better, but we're not there yet...

LAURA: So even when you say you want a better social life as a civilian, you hesitate to do anything about it because, in a way, it's a different world. Could you describe what you would like that world to look like? Not a total picture and no definite time frame, but some of bits and pieces. Some of the details.

KARL: Well, I'd like to be seeing women again. I'm not talking about marriage. But some special woman friend who sees me as an ordinary guy.

It is helpful when clients draw "pictures," as it were, of what they want. The terms "special woman friend" and "ordinary guy" are evocative because they are concrete.

At one point, Karl says that he wants to become "more disciplined." He has a part-time job and only the minimum of social life. He's also taking a business course at a local junior college. The course deals with an overview of business basics. He spends a lot of time on his own and the discipline that he associates with the army has escaped him. In the army he felt productive even when the "productivity" didn't have a lot of meaning. Almost discipline for the sake of discipline. Laura helps him get more specific.

LAURA: Discipline is a kind of wide area. What do you want to focus on?

KARL: Well, if I'm going to get more out of life, I'm going to have to put more into it. I need to look at the time I spend sleeping. I've been going to bed whenever I feel like it and getting up whenever I feel like it. It was the only way I could get rid of those thoughts and the anxiety. But I'm not nearly as anxious as I used to be. Things are calming down.

LAURA: So more disciplined means a more regular sleep schedule because there's no particular reason now for not having one.

KARL: Yeah, sleeping whenever I want is just a bad habit. It's part of my aimlessness. And I can't get things done if I'm asleep.

Karl goes on to translate "more disciplined" into more specific problem-managing needs and wants related to school, work, and even his appearance. Greater discipline, once translated into specific patterns of behavior, could have a decidedly positive impact on his life.

The dialogue goes on in the same vein. Karl talks about possibilities—not just goals, but the possibilities for a better future discussed in Chapter 11 can run from the vague to the very specific—but he also gets specific as in the previous example. Their conversation moves between II-A, possibilities for a better social future, and II-B, goals, that is, priorities for that future. With Laura's help he begins to design his future in terms of desired outcomes.

Help Clients Move from Broad Aims to Clear And Specific Goals

Counselors often add value by helping clients move from good intentions and vague desires to broad aims and then on to quite specific goals.

Good intentions

"I need to do something about this" is a statement of intent. However, even though good intentions are a good start, they need to be translated into aims and goals. In the following example, the client, Jon, has been discussing his relationship with his wife and children. The counselor has been helping him see that his "commitment to work" is perceived negatively by his family. Jon is open to challenge and is a fast learner.

JON: Boy, this session has been an eye-opener for me. I've really been blind. My wife and kids don't see my investment—rather, my overinvestment—in work as some-thing I'm doing for them. I've been fooling myself, telling myself that I'm working hard to get them the good things in life. In fact, I'm spending most of my time at work because I like it. My work is mainly for me. It's time for me to realign some of my priorities.

The last statement is a good intention, an indication on Jon's part that he wants to do something about a problem now that he sees it more clearly. It may be that Jon will now go out and put a different pattern of behavior in place without further help from the counselor. Or he may benefit from some help in realigning his priorities.

Broad aims

A broad aim is more than a good intention. It has content—that is, it identifies the area in which the client wants to work and makes some general statement about that area. Let's return to the example of Jon and his overinvestment in work.

JON: I don't think I'm spending so much time at work in order to run away from family life. But family life is deteriorating because I'm just not around enough. I must spend more time with my wife and kids. Actually, it's not just a case of must. I want to.

Jon moves from a declaration of intent to an aim or a broad goal, spending more time at home. But be still has not created a picture of what that would look like.

Specific goals

To help Jon move toward greater specificity, the counselor uses such probes as "Tell me what 'spending more time at home' will look like."

JON: I'm going to consistently spend three out of four weekends a month at home. During the week I will make every effort to work no more than two evenings.

COUNSELOR: So you'll be at home a lot more. Tell me what you'll be doing with all this time.

Notice how much more specific Jon's statement is than "I'm going to spend more time with my family." He sets a goal as a specific pattern of behavior he wants to put in place. But his goal as stated deals with quantity, not quality. The counselor's probe is really an invitation to self-challenge. It's not just the amount of time Jon is going to spend with his family but also the kinds of things he will be doing. Quality time, if you want. Though a client trying to come to grips with work-life balance once said to me, "My family, especially my kids, don't make the distinction between quantity and quality. For them quantity is quality. Or there's no quality without a chunk of quantity." This warrants further discussion because maybe the family wants a relaxed rather than an intense Jon at home.

Instrumental versus ultimate goals

This example brings up the difference between instrumental goals and higher-order or ultimate goals. Jon's ultimate goal is "a good family life." Such a goal, once spelled out, will differ from family to family and from culture to culture. Think of your own definition of good family life. Therefore, when Jon says that one of his goals is spending more time at home, he is talking about an instrumental goal. Unless he's there, he can't do things with his wife and kids. But although just "being there" is a goal because it is a pattern of behavior in place, it is certainly not Jon's ultimate goal. But Jon is not worried about the ultimate goal. When he is there, they have a rich family life together. That's not the problem. However, because instrumental goals are strategies for achieving higher-order goals, it's important to make sure that the client has clarity about the higher-order goal. When you are helping clients design and shape instrumental goals, make sure they can answer the "instrumental-for-what?" question.

Helping clients move from good intentions to more and more specific goals is a shaping process. Consider the example of a couple whose marriage has degenerated into constant bickering, especially about finances.

• Good intention. "We want to straighten out our marriage."
• Broad aim. "We want to handle our decisions about finances in a much more constructive way."
• Specific goal. "We try to solve our problems about family finances by fighting and arguing. We'd like to reduce the number of fights we have and begin making mutual decisions about money. We yell instead of talking things out. We need to set up a month-by-month budget. Otherwise, we'll be arguing about money we don't even have. We'll have a trial budget ready the next time we meet with you."

Having sound household finances is a fine goal. In fact, it's a goal in itself. Reducing unproductive conflict is also a fine goal. In this case, however, installing a sound, fair, and flexible household budget system is also instrumental to establishing peace at home. Declarations of intent, broad goals, and specific goals can all drive constructive behavior, but specific goals have the best chance. Is it possible to get clients to be too specific about their goals? Yes, if they get lost in the planning details, because crafting the goal becomes more important than the goal itself. Remember. We're looking at the anatomy of goal setting. It's up to your clients, with your help, to determine which parts of the goal-setting process make sense for them.

Goal Setting and evaluating progress

If the goal is clear and specific enough, the client will be able to determine progress toward the goal. If there is a two-way feedback system in place, client and helper can collaborate routinely on goal clarification. Being able to measure progress is an important incentive. If goals are stated too broadly, it is difficult to determine both progress and accomplishment. "I want to have a better relationship with my wife" is a very broad goal, difficult to verify. "I want to socialize more, you know, with couples we both enjoy" comes closer, but "socialize more" needs more clarity. It is not always necessary to count things to determine whether a progress is being made toward a goal has been reached, though sometimes counting is helpful. Helping is about living more fully, not about accounting activities. At a minimum, however, desired outcomes need to be capable of being verified in some way. For instance, a couple might say something like "Our relationship is better, not because we've stop squabbling. In fact, we've discovered that we like to squabble. But life is better, because the meanness has gone out of our squabbling. We accept each other more. We listen more carefully, we talk about more personal concerns, we are more relaxed, and we make more mutual decisions about issues that affect us both." This couple does not need a scientific experiment to verify that they have improved their relationship.

Help Clients Establish Goals That Make A Difference

Clients need goals with substance. What do we mean by substance? In counseling goals have substance to the degree that they make some significant contribution toward managing the original problem situation or developing some opportunity. Goals are not substantive unless they are on target. Consider this case.

Vittorio ran the family business. His son, Anthony, worked in sales. After spending a few years learning the business and getting an MBA part time at a local university, Anthony wanted more responsibility and authority. His father never thought that he was "ready." They began arguing quite a bit, and their relationship suffered from it. Finally, a friend of the family persuaded them to spend time with a consultant-counselor who worked with small family businesses. He spent relatively little time listening to their problems. After all, he had seen this same problem over and over again—the reluctance and conservatism of the father, the pushiness of the son.

Vittorio wanted the business to stay on a tried-and-true course. Anthony wanted to be the company's marketer, to move it into new territory. After a number of discussions with the consultant-counselor, they settled on this scenario: A "marketing department" headed by Anthony would be created. He could divide his time between sales and marketing as he saw fit, provided that he maintained the current level of sales. Vittorio agreed not to interfere. They would meet once a month with the consultant-counselor to discuss problems and progress. Vittorio insisted that the consultant's fee come from increased sales. After some initial turmoil, the bickering decreased dramatically. Anthony easily found new customers, although they demanded modifications in the product line, which Vittorio reluctantly approved. Both sales and margins increased to the point that they needed another person in sales.

Not all issues in family businesses are handled as easily. In fact, a few years later, Anthony left the business and founded his own. But the goal package they worked out—the deal they cut—made quite a difference both in the father-son relationship and in the business.

Second, goals have substance to the degree that they help clients "stretch" themselves. As Locke and Latham (1984, pp. 21, 26) noted, "Extensive research ... has established that, within reasonable limits, the ... more challenging the goal, the better the resulting performance. ... People try harder to attain the hard goal. They exert more effort. ... In short, people become motivated in proportion to the level of challenge with which they are faced...." Even goals that cannot be fully reached will lead to high effort levels, provided that partial success can be achieved and is rewarded. Consider the following case.

A young woman became a quadriplegic because of an auto accident. In the beginning, she was full of self-loathing—"The accident was all my fault; I was just stupid." She was close to despair. Over time, however, with the help of a counselor, she came to see herself, not as a victim of her own "stupidity," but as someone who could bring hope to young people with life-changing afflictions. In her spare time, she visited young patients in hospitals and rehabilitation centers, got some to join self-help groups, and generally helped people like herself to manage an impossible situation in a more humane way. One day she said to her counselor, "The best thing I ever did was to stop being a victim and become a fellow traveler with people like myself. The last 2 years, though bitter at times, have been the best years of my life." She had set her goals quite high—becoming an outgoing helper instead of remaining a self-centered victim, but they proved to be quite realistic.

Of course, when it comes to goals, "challenging" should not mean "impossible." There seems to be a curvilinear relationship between goal difficulty and goal performance. If the goal is too easy, people see it as trivial and ignore it. If the goal is too difficult, it is not accepted. However, this difficulty-performance ratio differs from person to person. What is small for some is big for others.

Help Clients Formulate Realistic Goals

Setting stretch goals can help clients energize themselves. They rise to the challenge. On the other hand, goals set too high can do more harm than good. Locke and Latham (1984, p. 39) put it succinctly:

Nothing breeds success like success. Conversely, nothing causes feelings of despair like perpetual failure. A primary purpose of goal setting is to increase the motivation level of the individual. But goal setting can have precisely the opposite effect if it produces a yardstick that constantly makes the individual feel inadequate.

A goal is realistic if the client has access to the resources needed to accomplish it, the goal is under the client's control, and external circumstances do not prevent its accomplishment.

Resources: Help clients choose goals for which the resources are available

It does little good to help clients develop specific, substantive, and verifiable goals if the resources needed for their accomplishment are not available. Consider the case of Rory, who has had to take a demotion because of merger and extensive restructuring. He now wants to leave the company and become a consultant.

Insufficient Resources:

Rory does not have the assertiveness, marketing savvy, industry expertise, or interpersonal style needed to become an effective consultant. Even if he did, he does not have the financial resources needed to tide him over while he develops a business.

Sufficient Resources:

Challenged by the outplacement counselor, Rory changes his focus. Graphic design is an avocation of his. He is not good enough to take a technical position in the company's design department, but he does apply for a supervisory role in that department. He is good with people, is very good at scheduling and planning, and knows enough about graphic design to discuss issues meaningfully with the members of the department.

Rory combines his managerial skills with his interest in graphic design to move in a more realistic direction. The move is challenging, but it can have a substantial impact on his work life. For instance, the opportunity to hone his graphic design skills will open up further career possibilities.

Control: Help Clients Choose Goals That Are Under Their Control

Sometimes clients defeat their own purposes by setting goals that are not under their control. For instance, it is common for people to believe that their problems would be solved if only other people would not act the way they do. In most cases, however, we do not have any direct control over the ways others act. Consider the following example.

Tony, a 16-year-old boy, felt that he was the victim of his parents' inability to relate to each other. Each tried to use him in the struggle, and at times he felt like a Ping-Pong ball. A counselor helped him see that he could probably do little to control his parents' behavior but that he might be able to do quite a bit to control his reactions to his parents' attempts to use him. For instance, when his parents started to fight, he could simply leave instead of trying to "help." If either tried to enlist him as an ally, he could say that he had no way of knowing who was right. Tony also worked at creating a good social life outside the home. That helped him weather the tensions he experienced when at home.

Tony needed a new way of managing his interactions with his parents to minimize their attempts to use him as a pawn in their own interpersonal game. Goals are not under clients' control if they are blocked by external forces that they cannot influence. "To live in a free country" may be an unrealistic goal for a person living in a totalitarian state because he cannot change internal politics, nor can he change emigration laws in his own country or immigration laws in other countries. "To live as freely as possible in a totalitarian state" might well be an aim that could be translated into realistic goals.

Mara may be able to influence her father's attitudes and behavior, but she cannot change his attitudes and behavior. Only he can do that. Carlos helps her see that she might have to set a pre-goal. She can hardly negotiate with him unless he commits himself to some kind of reasonably open dialogue----"Father, I know how you feel and maybe even have some idea why you feel the way you do, but I'd still like to talk more openly." Her pre-goal goal, then, is to get him to commit to that kind of conversation. How to negotiate that kind of commitment is another matter.

Help Clients Set Goals That Are Prudent

Realistic and prudent are not the same things. A goal may be realistic, that is, it can be accomplished, but it may not be prudent. Although the helping model described in this book encourages a bias toward client action, action needs to be both directional and wise. Discussing and setting goals should contribute to both direction and wisdom. The following case begins poorly but ends well.

Harry was a sophomore in college who was admitted to a state mental hospital because of some bizarre behavior at the university. He was one of the disc jockeys for the university radio station. College officials noticed him one day when he put on an attention-getting performance that included rather lengthy dramatizations of grandiose religious themes. In the hospital, the counselors soon discovered that this quite pleasant, likable young man was actually a loner. Everyone who knew him at the university thought that he had many friends, but in fact he did not. The campus was large, and his lack of friends went unnoticed.

Harry was soon released from the hospital but returned weekly for therapy. At one point he talked about his relationships with women. Once it became clear to him that his meetings with women were perfunctory and almost always took place in groups—he had imagined that he had a rather full social life with women—Harry launched a full program of getting involved with the opposite sex. His efforts ended in disaster, however, because Harry had some basic sexual and communication problems. He also had serious doubts about his own worth and therefore found it difficult to make a gift of himself to others. He ended up in the hospital again.

The counselor helped Harry get over his sense of failure by emphasizing what Harry could learn from the "disaster." With the therapist's help, Harry returned to the problem-clarification and new-perspectives part of the helping process and then established more realistic short-term goals regarding getting back "into community." The direction was the same—establishing a realistic social life—but the goals were now more prudent because they were "bite-size." Harry attended socials at a local church where a church volunteer provided support and guidance.

Harry's leaping from problem clarification to action without taking time to discuss possibilities and set reasonable goals was part of the problem rather than part of the solution. His lack of success in establishing solid relationships with women actually helped him see his problem with women more clearly. There are two kinds of prudence—playing it safe is one; doing the wise or even heroic thing is the other. Problem management and opportunity development should be venturesome. They are about making wise and even heroic choices rather than playing it safe.

Help Clients Set Goals That Can Be Sustained

Clients need to commit themselves to goals that have staying power. One separated couple said that they wanted to get back together again. They did so only to get divorced again within 6 months. Their goal of getting back together again was achievable but not sustainable. Perhaps they should have asked themselves, "What do we need to do not only to get back together but also to stay together? What would our marriage have to look like to become and remain workable?" In discretionary-change situations, the issue of sustainabiliry needs to be visited early on.

Many Alcoholics Anonymous—like programs work because of their one-day-at-a-time approach. The goal of being, say, drug-free has to be sustained only over a single day. The next day is a new era. In a previous example, Vittorio and Anthony's arrangement had enough staying power to produce good results in the short term. It also allowed them to reset their relationship and to improve the business. The goal was not designed to produce a lasting business arrangement because, in the end, Anthony's aspirations were bigger than the family business.

Help Clients Choose Goals That Have Some Flexibility

In many cases, goals have to be adapted to changing realities. Therefore, there might be some trade-offs between goal specificity and goal flexibility in uncertain situations. Napoleon noted this when he said, "He will not go far who knows from the first where he is going." Sometimes making goals too specific or too rigid does not allow clients to take advantage of emerging opportunities.

Even though he liked the work and even the company he worked for, Jessie felt like a second-class citizen. He thought that his supervisor gave him most of the dirty work and that there was an undercurrent of prejudice against Hispanics in his department. Jessie wanted to quit and get another job, one that would pay the same relatively good wages he was now earning. A counselor helped Jessie challenge his choice. Even though the economy was booming, the industry in which Jessie was working was in recession. There were few jobs available for workers with Jessie's set of skills.

The counselor helped Jessie choose an interim goal that was more flexible and more directly related to coping with his present situation. The interim goal was to use his time preparing himself for a better job outside this industry. In 6 months to a year he could be better prepared for a career in a still healthy economy. Jessie began volunteering forspecial assignments that helped him learn some new skills and took some crash courses dealing with computers and the Internet. He felt good about what he was learning and more easily ignored the prejudice.

Counseling is a living, organic process. Just as organisms adapt to their changing environments, clients' choices need to be adapted to their changing circumstances.

Gollwitzer, Parks-Stamm, Jaudas, and Sheeran (2007) explore goal-directedness in terms of flexibility, tenacity, and rigidity. These three characteristics relate both to the goal itself and the means taken to accomplish the goal. Flexibility, as we have seen, refers to the client's ability to modify goals while keeping intact the original purpose of the goal. It also refers to the client's ability to change tactics, again within reason, when one course of activity is blocked or proves to be ineffective or inefficient. Tenacity refers to the ability to stick with a goal or the means to achieve the goal even when the going gets rough. Rigidity means sticking with the original formulation of a goal or a set of actions to achieve a reasonable goal even when the goal itself is proving to be ineffective in managing a problem situation or the action program is not doing its job. And so Gollwitzer and his associates recommend "flexible tenacity" in goal pursuit.

Carlos realizes that these concepts relate in very practical ways to Mara's plans for a better future. Her plans will change depending on whether her father relents completely, a little, a lot, or not at all. If he doesn't relent at all, she will have to face some very difficult choices. If he relents just a little, she might have to be quite flexible in terms of the size or substance of her goals. One extreme possibility is living and working separately from her parents. Carlos helps her see that being flexible is not just compatible with but essential to the new identity that she is trying to establish for herself.

Help Clients Choose Goals Consistent With Their Values

Although helping is a process of social influence, it remains ethical only if it respects, within reason, the values of the client. Values are criteria we use to make decisions. Helpers may invite clients to reexamine their values, but they should not encourage clients to perform actions that are not in keeping with their values.

The son of Vincente and Consuela is in a coma in the hospital after an automobile accident. He needs a life-support system to remain alive. His parents are experiencing a great deal of uncertainty, pain, and anxiety. They have been told that there is practically no chance that their son will ever come out of the coma. One possibility is to terminate the life-support system. The counselor should not urge them to terminate the life-support system if that is counter to their values. She can help them explore and clarify their values. In this case, the counselor suggests that they discuss their decision with their clergyman. In doing so, they find out that the termination of the life-support system would not be against the tenets of their religion. Now they are free to explore other values that relate to their decision.

Some problems involve a client's trying to pursue contradictory goals or values. Karl, the ex-Marine, came to realize that he wanted to get a degree in business, but he also wanted to make a decent living as soon as possible. The former goal would put him in debt, but failing to get a college education would lessen his chances of securing the kind of job he wanted. The counselor helps him identify and use his values to consider some trade-offs.

Karl chooses to work part time and go to school part time. He chooses an office job instead of one in construction. Even though the latter pays better, it would be much more exhausting and would leave him with little energy for school.

Help Clients Establish Realistic Time Frames for Accomplishing Goals

Goals that are to be accomplished "sometime or other" probably won't be accomplished at all. Therefore, helping clients put some time frames in their goals can add value. Greenberg (1986) talked about immediate, intermediate, and final outcomes. Here's what they look like when applied to Janette's problem situation. She has begun to hate her passive lifestyle. She easily lets others take advantage of her. She needs to become more assertive and to stand up for her own rights.

• Immediate outcomes are changes in attitudes and behaviors evident in the helping sessions themselves. For Janette, the helping sessions constitute a safe forum for her to become more assertive. In her dialogues with her counselor, she learns and practices the skills of being more assertive.
• Intermediate outcomes are changes in attitudes and behaviors that lead to further change. It takes Janette a while to transfer her assertiveness skills both to the workplace and to her social life. She chooses relatively safe situations to practice being more assertive. For instance, she stands up to her mother more.
• Final outcomes refer to the completion of the overall program for constructive change through which problems are managed and opportunities developed. It takes more than 2 years for Janette to become assertive in a consistent, day-to-day way.

The next example deals with a young man who has been caught shoplifting. Here, too, there are immediate, intermediate, and final outcomes. Jensen, a 22-year-old on probation for shoplifting, was seeing a counselor as part of a court-mandated program. An immediate need in his case was overcoming his resistance to his court-appointed counselor and developing a working alliance with her. Because of the counselor's skills and her unapologetic caring attitude that had some toughness in it, he soon came to see her as "on his side." Their relationship became a platform for establishing further goals. An intermediate outcome was a change in attitude. Brainwashed by what he saw on television, Jensen thought that America owed him some of its affluence and that personal effort had little to do with it. The counselor helped him explore this entitlement attitude. At one point he said, "Maybe what they say is true. Nobody said that life had to be fair." True or not he began to see that work played a key role in most payoffs. There were two significant final outcomes in Jensen's case. First, he made it through the probation period free of any further shoplifting attempts. Second, he acquired and kept a job that helped him pay his debt to the retailer.

Taussig (1987) talked about the usefulness of setting and executing mini goals early in the helping process. The achievement of sequenced mini goals can go a long way toward making a dent in many different kinds of problems.

There is no such thing as a set time frame for every client. Some goals need to be accomplished now, some soon; others are short-term goals; still others are long-term goals.

Consider the case of a priest who had been unjustly accused of child molestation.

• A "now" goal: some immediate relief from debilitating anxiety attacks and keeping his equilibrium during the investigation and court procedures
• A "soon" goal: obtaining the right kind of legal aid
• A short-term goal: winning the court case
• A long-term goal: reestablishing his credibility in the community and learning how to live with those who would continue to suspect him

There is no particular formula for helping all clients choose the right mix of goals at the right time and in the right sequence. Although helping is based on problem-management principles, it remains an art.

Once more, it is not always necessary to make sure that each goal in a client's program for constructive change has all the characteristics outlined in this chapter. For some clients, identifying broad goals is enough to kick-start the entire problem-management and opportunity-development process. They shape the goals themselves. For others, some help in formulating more specific goals is called for. The principle is clear: Help clients develop goals that have some sort of agency—if not urgency—built in. In one case, this may mean helping a client deal with clarity; in another, with substance; in still another, with realism, values, or time frame. Box 12.1 outlines some questions that you can help clients ask themselves to choose and shape the most useful goals.