SMART Goals, HARD Goals, PACT, or OKRs: What Works?

Goal setting is vital in business, education, and performance environments such as sports, yet it is also a key component of many coaching and counseling conversations (Clough, Strycharczyk, & Perry, 2021; Woolfolk, 2021).
While counselors typically focus on dealing with past and present issues and difficulties and coaches are more future-oriented, both can benefit their clients by supporting them in setting short and long-term goals that guide them towards successful outcomes (Passmore & Price, 2021; Nelson-Jones, 2014).
In this article, we take SMART goals and other goal methodologies, initially designed for organizational, educational, and sports psychology, and apply them to coaching and counseling.
Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free. These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques to create lasting behavior change.