PeneTrance Format

This format is designed to clarify your goal-setting process.
The model brings clarity to existing goals, evaluates and checks them, and helps formulate new, SMART goals.

Standard Steps:

1. Build a SMART Goal
2. Identify (and Recognize) Resources for the Desired State
3. Appreciate the Problematic Behavior
4. Evaluate the Goal
5. Define Three Contexts for the Desired Behavior
6. Future Pace

Detailed Description:

1. Build a SMART Goal

Work with the coachee to carve out a SMART behavioral or concrete goal they want to achieve:

• What exactly do you want to achieve?
• How will you know that you have achieved it?
• Once you have reached your goal, how exactly do you want to behave, toward whom, in which situations?
• What will be different once you have achieved it?
• How will you know that you’re on the right track?
• Who or what do you need to achieve it?
• By when do you want to have accomplished it?

Have the coachee represent the goal in VAKOG.
If the coachee’s goal appears to depend on someone else, keep reworking the goal until it’s achievable independently.

2. Identify (and Recognize) Resources for the Desired State

Draw the coachee’s attention to their general problem-solving resources.

Induce a “blank resource”:

You, as a mature adult, have already learned a great deal in life and achieved many small and large goals. You know you have within you all it takes to meet your goal—and that if you lack knowledge or skill, you can learn it if it matters enough.

From that, ask more specifically:

Which general methods can you use to get yourself into a good state that allows you to tackle challenging goals?
How would you, using these resources, proceed to reach your goal? Possibly identify role models for the skills you want:

Maybe you know someone who already does what you want to do and can serve as your model—just like you learned from imitation as a child.

What would your role model do to achieve the desired state?
And how would your model approach the goal?

A “blank resource” is an unspecified resource—like a blank check, where you can fill in the amount yourself. Watch how the client reacts to your words. If they show a problematic physiology instead of the desired resource, you may have used negatively anchored words. Rephrase them, but keep the idea of the blank resource.

3. Appreciate the Problematic Behavior

and acknowledge the function of the current state/behavior:

Even if you no longer like today’s behavior or state, it has fulfilled an important function for you—one you might still need in certain contexts.

What purpose did the old behavior/state serve?
What does it protect you from?

Define three contexts in which this current behavior/state remains valid for the coachee:

When and where do you wish to keep your present behavior just as it is?

Find at least three such situations.

4. Evaluate the Goal

Test potential consequences and your willingness to change:

The change you want may not be wholly positive for you or others—you may have to pay a price for it.

Identify or imagine three negative consequences that could arise for you or your environment if you reach your goal.

How could you prevent those negative consequences? Or, if they happen, how would you handle them?
Are you willing to pay the price your goal requires?
Is the effort for this goal worthwhile?

Re-check required resources:

Now that you’re sure you want your goal, do you have what you need to set out on this path and fully explore both your goal and your resources?

5. Define Three Contexts for the Desired Behavior

In this step, you anticipate three new situations in which the goal or goal-oriented behavior matters.

Ask the coachee to identify them:

Pick three situations where your new target behavior—the behavior that leads to your goal—will be important and appropriate.

Have the coachee figure out when and how it’s right to apply the goal behavior, using VAKOG to clarify:

How will you recognize it’s the right time and place to use your goal behavior—what will you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste to know this is the proper moment and context for it?

6. Future Pace

Have the coachee try out the behavior, either associated or dissociated:

Now use all of your experience, knowledge, and talents to demonstrate your new behavior in that situation. Notice any new possibilities that arise in your interactions, and observe the responses you expected from people around you, letting you know you’re on track.

How do you like it?
How do you feel when you show this behavior?
Is there anything that could be even better? If so, adjust your behavior until you like yourself in that scenario and your environment’s reactions align with the intention behind your behavior.

Check for congruence with your mission, vision, roles, how you’d like others to see you, and how to remain fully yourself, living your values and abilities. Keep adjusting until it all feels coherent.