Executive Coaching Goals That Start With What You Want

The goals of executive coaching should start with what the leader wants, made specific enough to know when it’s done. Gene Hammett, founder of Core Elevation, turns vague goals like “be a better leader” or “work less” into concrete ones, such as taking Fridays off or leaving the laptop at the office, and ties them to time, empowerment, communication, and identity.

That’s me. I’ve talked with more than 1,200 fast-growth leaders on my podcast, and here’s what I know for sure. The executive coaching goals you walk in with shape most of what you walk out with.

Your Coaching Goals Start With What You Want

In 2009, a coach handed me a questionnaire. One question stopped me cold: “What dream or goal have you given up on?”

At the top of my list were three words. “Be a coach.”

I had spent years chasing goals that looked good on paper, and I had quietly buried the one I actually wanted. Nobody else could have written that goal for me.

What if the goal you’re chasing right now isn’t even yours?

So when founders ask me what they should work on in coaching, I hand the question right back to them. Here’s how I put it: “The goals of executive coaching are really based on your goals. What do you want?”

Sounds simple, right? Most leaders have spent years setting goals for the bank, for investors, and for the team, and very few have ever sat down and asked what they want for themselves.

So what do you want?

Maybe the answer is more time with your kids. Maybe you want a leadership team you trust with the big calls, or the nerve to finally have the conversation you’ve been dodging with a senior leader.

Some of those goals touch the business, and some touch your life outside it. Both belong in coaching, since you’re the one who lives with the result.

The research lines up with what I see. In their review of 35 years of goal-setting research, psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham found goals drive performance best when people are committed to them, and commitment grows when the outcome matters to the person chasing it.

A goal someone hands you rarely earns that kind of commitment. Your own goal does.

What Makes a Coaching Goal Weak or Strong?

Specific is the dividing line. A weak goal sounds good in a meeting, and a strong goal tells you exactly what next Tuesday looks like once you’ve made it.

Here is the good news about the founders I work with. Founders don’t usually walk in with a goal that thin, and I say so often: “Rarely ever does someone come in and say, ‘I just want to be a better leader.’ That would be a weak goal.”

Better leader at what? Leadership covers how you delegate, how you run meetings, how you give feedback, how you handle conflict, and how you set direction.

So break it apart into pieces you can actually work on. Pick the parts of leadership you want to improve, and build a plan for each one.

Let me split two words people treat as the same. A wish is something you hope will happen someday, and a goal is something you can put on a calendar and plan around.

Specific goals do two jobs for you at the same time. “The more specific the goal is, the easier it is to get someone excited about it and get them to know when they actually hit it.”

You’ve heard “set specific goals” since your first job. But are you applying it to yourself, or only to your team?

Locke and Latham saw the same pattern across decades of studies. People given specific, hard goals beat people who were told to “do your best,” since a do-your-best goal sets no clear standard, so almost any result can pass.

Turn Weak Goals Into Strong Ones

Vague goals change shape fast once a founder gets honest about what they want. Here’s what that looks like in the hundreds of conversations I’ve had with CEOs.

Now look closely at the second row of that table. “I want more time back” is a wish, and “I want to take Fridays off” is a goal you can plan around.

When a founder brings me that second version, I know we can do real work. “If they said, ‘I want to be able to take off on Fridays. Right now, I just can’t do it,’ I can actually help them get to the point where they’re taking off on Fridays.”

The third row in the table works the same way. I call it “the 6 a.m. hideout,” the habit of showing up before anyone else just to get an hour of quiet, and the hideout is a symptom of a day with no room left for strategy.

Sound familiar? Be honest here, because nobody else is reading over your shoulder.

In other words, the real goal is to fix what fills the day. Once the day has room for thinking, you don’t need to hide.

Questions That Sharpen a Vague Goal

Take ten minutes right now with a pen and a blank page (not your phone). Write down one goal, then run it through these:

• ●What would be different on a normal Tuesday if I hit this?
• ●What would I stop doing, and what would I start doing?
• ●Who would notice first, my team or my family?
• ●How will I know I’ve hit it without asking anyone?

If you can’t answer the last question, keep sharpening. Expect two or three rounds before it clicks, and that is completely normal.

Goals Versus the Plan to Reach Them

A goal is the finish line. The plan is the route, and a good coach helps you with both.

Taking Fridays off is the goal (and a good one). The plan might mean handing Friday client calls to your sales leader, moving the weekly leadership meeting to Tuesday, and deciding which calls your team can make without you.

Here’s the difference. The goal stays put, and the plan can change as many times as it needs to.

Executive Coaching Goal Examples Tied to the CEO Foundation

In CEO Foundation, my one-on-one work with founders, goals tie back to four pillars. Here’s how they line up, followed by examples you can borrow today.

Time Goals

Time goals give you room to work on everything else, so they are often where I would start. A few strong ones:

• ●Take Fridays off.
• ●Stop getting to the office before 6 a.m. just to find quiet time to think.
• ●Leave the laptop at the office and stop working from 8 to 10 p.m.
• ●Block two hours a week for strategy and protect them.

Pick one of these to start with, and only one for the next ninety days.

Empowerment Goals

Empowerment goals move decisions off your desk and onto the people closest to the work. Examples:

• ●Delegate key decisions to the leaders who own each area.
• ●Build a leadership team that runs the business day to day.
• ●Stop being the final approval on work your team can own.

Here’s the hard part. The first time someone makes a call you wouldn’t have made, you will want to jump right back in, so sit on your hands if you have to.

If handing things off is where you get stuck, these books on delegation are a good place to start.

Communication Goals

Communication goals usually hide the conversation you’ve been avoiding. Examples:

• ●Have the tough conversation you’ve been putting off.
• ●Explain the company’s direction clearly and confidently, so every leader can repeat it.
• ●Give feedback in the moment instead of saving it for the annual review.

You know exactly which conversation I am talking about.

If that first one makes your stomach drop, here’s how to handle tough conversations without making them worse.

Identity Shift Goals

Identity goals are about who you are as a leader. Examples:

• ●Become the leader your team deserves.
• ●Move from the person with every answer to the person who grows leaders with answers of their own.
• ●Lead through your team instead of around it.

Which of these four pillars is calling your name right now?

What Do Founders Usually Work on First?

Many founders start with time, and the examples in this article show why. Fridays, early mornings, and late nights are where the strain shows up first, at the office and at the dinner table.

So let me ask you. When did you last take a full Friday off without checking your phone?

Time goals rarely stay about time for long, though, and that’s the good part. To take Fridays off, you have to empower people to make decisions on Friday, and you have to tell them clearly what they can decide without you.

One specific goal pulls the other pillars along with it. The best example I have is a co-founder who worked late every night.

A Specific Goal Changed How One Co-Founder Led

Her story shows how one small, specific goal can reach every part of how you lead. I am keeping her anonymous.

Before

She was working late every night, from 8 to 10 p.m. after dinner. The late nights were hurting her sleep and her time with her family.

The Shift

Her goal was clear. Stop taking the laptop home. To get there, we reorganized how she did her work during the day and how she led her team.

After

When she got home around 6, dinner, family time, decompressing, and resetting for the next day became more valuable to her than working.

Why Her Story Matters

A goal about her evenings changed how she led during the day. Leaving the laptop at the office forced real changes in how she worked with her team, and the evenings followed.

She did the hard work. I just helped her see where the evenings were going.

Link Your Goals to Where the Company Is Going

Your coaching goals and your company goals should point the same way. If the company aims to scale or grow 10x, your goal is to become the leader who builds a team that can carry that growth.

Your own leadership shapes every single person below you on the org chart. Gallup’s research pins most of the difference between an engaged team and a checked-out one on whoever manages that team, at least 70 percent of it.

Your managers are feeling the squeeze, too. Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found manager engagement dropped five points in a single year, landing at 22 percent in 2025.

That’s why I start with the founder’s goals. When you change how you lead, your leaders have a model to follow, and they’re the ones shaping how engaged everyone else is.

Think about that for a second. Your goals quietly set the ceiling for everyone who reports to you.

If that last row is your gap, start with developing leaders below your executive team.

Keep the person in the picture, too. A revenue target is a fine goal for the business, and your coaching goal is the leader you become on the way there.

Underneath Every Goal Is an Identity Shift

Most of the goal-setting advice out there skips right past this part. The outside goal, whether Fridays off or a company that runs without you, sits on top of something deeper.

Founders who get there have changed who they are as leaders. “They need to transform from who they’re being to who they’re becoming.”

I know who I was being back in my ticket business. I ran on color-coded lists and a spreadsheet for everything, and I jumped into every fire myself, convinced no one else would get it right.

I’m not proud of that version of me. But he taught me what to look for.

Who you’re being today got you here. You built the company by having the answers, jumping into every fire, and holding every detail in your head.

The leader your next stage needs empowers people, asks better questions, and lets the team carry more of the load.

Which version of you is setting your goals right now?

How Do You Know You’ve Hit a Coaching Goal?

Specific goals answer this question for you. You don’t need a survey to know whether you took last Friday off. You either did or you did not.

Locke and Latham also found that goals work better when people get regular feedback on their progress. You can’t adjust what you can’t see.

Simple to measure, and a lot harder to live.

Check progress with your coach every few weeks. If nothing has moved, sharpen the goal or look hard at what’s in the way.

Hitting a goal is a milestone. When you get there, set the next one, and let the leader you’re becoming pick it.

Here’s a confession. Every time I’ve hit nearly everything I set out to do, I’ve had to admit I played it too safe, so my next goal gets bigger.

Pick a Coach Who Knows the Path

Your goal should also shape the coach you decide to hire. “If you want to create a company that runs without you, then you want to hire a coach that understands that path.”

Ask any coach you’re considering how many founders they’ve taken down that path, and what changed for those founders along the way. You want someone who can see the traps before you step in them.

Would you hire a hiking guide who has never climbed the mountain? Same idea.

I built a company, lost it, and rebuilt, and since 2014 I’ve interviewed leaders of fast-growth companies about how they made the shift. You can see how I work with executives if you want the details.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are quick answers to what founders ask me about coaching goals.

Start With One Goal You Can Picture

I opened with a question somebody asked me back in 2009. My answer changed the direction of my life, and yours could change the direction of your company.

So pick one goal. Make it specific enough that you’d know the day you hit it, and specific enough that it gets you a little fired up.

Fridays off. The laptop left at the office. One tough conversation you finally have this month.

What do you want? What would a normal Tuesday look like if you had it?

What’s the one goal you’ll write down before you close this page?

Lead with courage.