The following sections we explain these points in more detail.
Is the goal stated in the positive?
What do you want? Or, to put it another way, what would you rather have?
These questions help clarify your desired outcome, because you must know very clearly what you want in order to maintain focus and direction.
Vague goals like ‘I want to be thinner’ or ‘I want more money’ are insufficient because you’re then satisfied by being a pound lighter or finding a £5 note on the pavement.
Better goals are ‘I want to weigh 12 stone’ or ‘I want £1,000 in my bank account’ or ‘I want a gross salary of £50,000 per annum’. Also, having nega- tive goals like ‘I don’t want to stay in this job’ can adversely affect your desires (see the later sidebar ‘Dwelling on the negative can damage your health’). Therefore, when you find yourself saying ‘I don’t want. . .’, ask your- self instead ‘What do I want?’
Is the goal self-initiated, maintained, and within my control?
So often we hear of a person wanting to give up smoking who, when ques- tioned, replies: ‘My wife wants me to stop.’ A person has a far better chance of succeeding if the drive to attain a particular outcome comes from within, for example: ‘I want to enjoy a long and healthy life – for me.’ In contrast, if your goal is ‘I want my partner to take me away for two weeks in the sun during March,’ you need to recognise that your partner may have a different agenda and this goal is therefore not under your control.
Ask yourself these questions:
✓ Am I doing this for myself or someone else?
✓ Does the outcome rely solely on me?
When Kate ran a marketing consultancy, she realised that several projects involved working closely with corporate business clients who were extremely stressed, very busy, and disorganised. She was spending long meetings sitting with clients at their chaotic desks while they made phone calls or gathered together the project information while she waited.
Therefore, her well-formed outcome for future client assignments was ‘to work in a calm, efficient, and commercial way’. Looking at her goal, it may not initially be apparent that she had control of the outcome because she was dependent on the clients playing their part. However, in applying the prin- ciples of the NLP well-formed outcome, she set clearer expectations with dis- organised clients. Her strategies included arranging meetings in quiet offices with no distractions, or holding a videoconference rather than visiting the client site. Her goal involved setting specific boundaries such as defining the start and end times of meetings and distributing the objectives, agenda, and actions and information required in writing. Also, by fully itemising the time spent and billing for every hour wasted – like the legal profession – she also had a direct impact on making others more efficient.
Initially, Kate’s goal didn’t appear to depend solely on her and therefore, on the face of it, she may not have been able to satisfy it. By showing flexibility of behaviour, however, she took responsibility for achieving her goal and influencing her clients with complete integrity.
Does the goal describe the evidence procedure?
Evidence procedure is another way of asking ‘When do I know that I’ve achieved my goal?’ Here are some extremely important questions that can help to iden- tify goals that are too vague, or when you’re unclear on the outcome:
✓ How do I know that I’m getting the desired outcome?
✓ What will I be doing when I get it?
✓ What will I see, hear, and feel when I have it?
On one of Romilla’s workshops, David, an accountant, wanted to become self-employed. His only stated desire was to earn enough income within three months. By answering the above questions he discovered that he hadn’t really worked out what he truly wanted from working for himself. His initial goal, although stated in the positive, was too vague to help him get anywhere: it was as bad as saying, ‘I know I don’t want to work for someone else’ (a nega- tive). Instead, he followed the well-formed outcome process and worked out
Dwelling on the negative can damage your health
Romilla knows at least two people who man- aged to get themselves sacked from jobs by unconsciously adopting damaging behaviours that were out of character. When examining the situation later, the people realised that they would have behaved differently if they had
focused their energy on defining the jobs they wanted and finding better employment. Instead, they sapped their energy by just not wanting to be there and fell into destructive, aberrant behaviours.
that what he really wanted to do was to teach other self-employed accoun- tants how to win business by training them in NLP-based sales techniques.
Is the context of the goal clearly defined?
Ask yourself, ‘Where, when, how, and with whom do I want to achieve my goal?’ This question is very good in helping you fine-tune what you want by eliminating what you don’t want. For instance, if you know you really didn’t enjoy that holiday on the moon, your goal of ‘I want my own holiday home’
immediately excludes the lunar colony, or if Martians aren’t your favourite people, you know that you don’t want to settle on Mars.
By defining when you want something, you may in the process identify steps that need to be taken before you can have it. For instance, ‘I want my holiday home when I can afford to have someone else maintain it,’ may make you realise that you need an income of £50,000 per annum before you can buy your holiday retreat.
When Kate coached Simon, a small-company owner who wanted to expand his technology enterprise, his first desired outcome was to build a separate outbuilding for the business in the grounds of his house. As a result of ques- tioning him about the context, his outcome changed to finding office premises away from the home. He realised just how much the business was intruding on family life. The happy result was that his six-person team moved into luxury, purpose-built offices close to a university campus, at a low rent, which pro- vided the space to grow the business. He and his wife regained the use of the two main rooms in their house with the bonus of quality leisure time without the hassle of ‘living above the shop’.
Does the goal identify the necessary resources?
The questions below help to identify what you need, by way of people, knowledge, and so on, to satisfy your outcome. They enable you to draw on possible past experiences when you previously made use of resources that may prove useful in the current exercise. To give you an idea of the sort of answers that can be helpful, we also list those that Peter (who wants to take up hang-gliding but is afraid of heights) would give to these questions.
✓ What resources do I have now?
Peter: ‘I have the desire to learn and friends who are hang-gliders to guide me. I’m athletic and easily pick up new sports. It can’t be that dif- ferent to water skiing!’
✓ What resources do I need to acquire?
Peter: ‘I need to get over my fear of heights, and so I’m going to find a therapist or hypnotherapist who can help me get over my fear. I also
need to find a club where I can hire an instructor and a hang-glider. I need to adjust my availability to make time for my new hobby.’
✓ Have I evidence of achieving this type of goal before?
Peter: ‘Well, I learnt to drive, and boy was that scary, the first time that police car seemed to drive at me sirens blaring and lights flashing, but I persevered and am a good driver now.’
✓ What happens if I act as if I have the resources?
Peter: ‘Oh, I can feel myself soaring and I don’t have those butterflies in my stomach when I look down. I never thought I could leave terra firma without metal below me. Can’t wait to get soaring!’
Acting as if you have the resources now helps you to recognise and shift any beliefs that may be holding you back. It also enables you to try the outcome on for size – you may change your mind at this point. This approach is a great help because it can save you spending money on equipment that ends up taking up space in the garage, if you later find that the new hobby isn’t right for you.