Written by: Marty Wightman, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
No doubt, you have been made aware of creating your goals using the SMART technique. You may have learned this at school, at work, or from online courses. And whilst SMART goals have it’s place in goal setting, in this training guide we will be exploring the neurological way of goal setting using the EXACT method.
What is the SMART Goal Method?
SMART goals were first introduced by Doran (1981) to help gain better results in project management. SMART is an acronym for:
S pecific: Well-defined, clear, and unambiguous
M easurable: With specific criteria that measure your progress toward the accomplishment of the goal
A chievable: Attainable and not impossible to achieve
R ealistic: Within reach, realistic, and relevant to your life purpose
T imely: With a clearly defined timeline, including a starting date and a target date. The purpose is to create urgency.
So if we take an example of a person looking to start up their own Flower Delivery business, they would build out their SMART goal as such:
S: To launch my own Flower Delivery Business
M: In my local area of the West Coast of Scotland
A: To build this business into a six-figure revenue stream
R: Whilst I still continue working for one of the major handmade giftshops in my area
T: And to build to this success over a 24 month period where I gradually reduce my hours in the giftshop as my business organically grows
Moving towards the EXACT Goal Method
The EXACT goal method was first introduced by Wilson (2007) to amplify goal setting by hacking into a coachee’s Reticular Activating System (RAS). The use of the RAS is primarily to help humans cut through the noise of day-to-day life, or as Wilson puts it “to improve the ‘signal-to-noise ratio’ of our sensory input by the processing of relevant sensory signals”.
The benefits of using RAS in goal setting is the increased arousal state that it brings to the coachee. So as a coach, we give permission to remove limiting beliefs and fixed mindsets to explore exactly what the goal should be to trigger increased arousal (which will no doubt place the coachee into a state of Flow).
The benefits of utilising the RAS with EXACT is to create new neural pathways – which gives a higher predictor of action the more the new neural pathways are activated.
What is the EXACT Goal Setting Method?
EXACT is an acronym for:
Explicit: Well defined, clear, and unambiguous.
Xciting: Inspiring or aspirational. Must be framed in a positive way i.e. ‘make my own money’, rather than ‘stop working for my current employer’. What does the coachee want more of, rather than less of.
Assessable: Attainable and measurable – what exactly will the attainment of this goal look like?
Challenging: A key component is to create a container environment for the coachee to discard limiting beliefs and give themselves full permission to state what it is they really want. A great area to spend time on with your coach to activate their RAS.
Timely: We will have 3-time frames, short/medium/long term. This helps with the coaching sessions that will use imagery used to build and then reinforce the new neural pathways.
So if we go back to the example of a person looking to start their own Flower Delivery business, and using the EXACT goal setting method, it would look like the following:
Explicit: To launch my own Flower Delivery Business
Xciting: I want to invest my time and effort into my passion and turn that passion into a commercial success, so much so that I can be the owner of my own time, income earned and have something that is all mine, built with my own two hands (and ten green fingers!)
Assessable: To build this business into a six-figure revenue stream
Challenging: I want to be an award-winning business recognised by the West Coast of Scotland as the ‘best flower delivery company’ – and also brings the glitz and glamour of Bollywood to Balmoral, I want to be seen as an aspiration gift – I want the person who receives my flowers to feel like they’ve just been given a piece of jewellery from Tiffany’s!
Timely: Short-term plan is get my first draft business plan approved by the government-backed Start-up scheme. My medium plan is to transition from working in the giftshop to being able to self-income myself from my business to go fulltime. And my long-term plan is to launch branches throughout the major population pockets of Scotland.
NB: Explicit is the same as Specific, Assessable is the same as Achievable in comparison to SMART
You can see from the SMART to EXACT, the emotion and passion that has been placed into the goal(s) – and just how arousing this will be for the coachee.
Strategies and Improving Outcomes with Applied Neuroscience
When setting goals for themselves, people have a tendency to aim too low often naming as their target something that is really a strategy or stepping stone along the way. Which is fine for micro or daily goal setting to help with the Progress Principle and Loop.
The Progress Principle can be defined as “states that progress contributes to positive inner work life, which contributes to progress, creating an upward spiral of creativity, engagement, and performance” (Kramar and Amabile, 2021) and is one of the best predictors of inner work life (psychological, behaviour and cognition) is developing meaningful work i.e. your EXACT goal. Whilst the Progress Loop in Figure 1, demonstrates how positive work attracts a positive next step in work and so on – the same however can be said about a negative step and how this can start a negative spiral that needs intervention the quicker the better.
Figure 1: Progress Loop, taken from https://neuroscienceschool.com/
The best way to create a positive upwards spiral is micro goals. Set the bar low, and clear it. Then repeat. This releases dopamine for each micro goal completed which then stimulates the ‘good feeling’ of reward in the brain.
Figure 2: Downward and Upward Spiral, adapted from the Upwards Spiral by Korb (2015)
With the EXACT Goal Setting Method we set micro and short, medium and long-term goals. This helps the coach and the coachee in a number of ways. The coach is not there to dictate if a goal is acceptable or not, yet rather the change in energy is the key to knowing when an effective goal has been identified.
As previously mentioned, the power of visualisation is also of great use when working through the EXACT goal method. Coaches should be using guided imagery with their coachee to experience with imagination the pathway to success and also to take in the 5 senses they may be feeling from start to finish. This helps build up the neuropathways and repetition of this technique will only strengthen the pathways. And in addition, when some proof points have been evidenced by the coachee, this only makes the effect stronger (Roche and Commins, 2009).
Another neural aspect that comes into play here is that habitual actions (habits) require less cognitive energy than new ones, so if we want to create new constructive habits, we need to make the action more automatic, requiring less cognitive effort (as neural pathways have already been formed). So, practical steps can be put into place for instance, if there is a health goal then having the gym kit at the side of the bed ready for the morning makes it easier to ‘get up and go’– or even storing your mobile phone in the gym locker overnight so it acts as a motivator for you to get to the gym as soon as you wake up to check your messages (a bit extreme, but it has worked for coachees before!).
So now what?
Well, next time a coachee comes into your office for Performance Coaching, try out the EXACT method with them rather than SMART and see how the use of arousal in the RAS can multiply the measurable effect of goal attainment.
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Marty Wightman, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Marty qualified as a coach in 2007 when he set up his practice in London, UK. He holds a Masters's degree in Psychology, and he graduated from the University of East London. In addition to his academic qualifications, he is a member of the Association for Coaching, a Senior Member of the ACCPH, and trained by Stanford University Professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in Life Design. Marty takes a cognitive-behavioral, rational emotive behavior, and solution-focused approach to psychological coaching and its application to life/personal, health, performance, business, and executive coaching.
