Goal-Setting for Women: Understanding your Strengths with Caroline Adams Miller

Caroline wrote the book Big Goals the science of setting them , achieving them and creating your best life . Caroline shares her insight about gender differences related to goal setting and we talk about why and how knowing your character strengths really makes an impact . I hope you enjoy part two .

So what I've done is I've looked at a lot of the research on goal setting and mindset and other kinds of things and I've basically said does it work for everyone the way it has always worked for mostly white men ?

And when I got into the silo around women , what I realized and I've seen this for many years is that women often confide in the wrong people about their big dreams and goals .

And we assume , according to the research , we assume that the people who should be happy for us or who should support us because they're our family , it's a mother , it's a sister , it's a cousin , it's our best friend , we assume they're going to be happy for us , when in fact , shelley Gable's research from the University of California , santa Barbara , has found

that there's only one right way to respond to someone's good news and that's with curiosity and enthusiasm . And women often rain on other women's parades for all kinds of reasons and kill their dreams . We can go into why this is , but they kill their dreams , often by ghosting them , often by saying nothing , often by not hitting , like on .

LinkedIn or whatever it is , and that's because many are raised , according to bio-social theory , to think that women are not agentic , women are not goal-directed . We must be communal , we must be warm , we must be competent .

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You know , it's a chemical need that women have oxytocin , the rest of it . But find women who are active , constructive responders , curious , enthusiastic , have a goal setting virtual mastermind where every month , you share what your goals and dreams are , you get challenged by people who have your back and they cheer for you as you make progress .

This is so , so , so important . And so for men , the same thing is true . Have a dream , but men are a little bit more transactional in the relationships they have . Who's going to support them ? So they have no trouble asking people to do something for them , even if they don't know them .

I am fascinated by that , and they often get support because that's how they're wired , that's what they see succeeding . So you start with that , you articulate it , you get the support , you begin to learn what it is you need to learn . You don't expect excellence on a learning goal or a learning component at first , but you have that open mindset .

I'm learning it , I'm practicing Not yet , but you must turn that learning into a performance goal at a certain point . So make it clear . Make your goal clear . Make the metrics absolutely crystal clear , whether it's performance goal or a learning goal . Or remember recipe checklist is a performance goal , learning goal . Have the metrics in place .

Make them both challenging and specific . Chart your progress . Be accountable . Be specific . That's the best place to start .

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Whenever I'm showing up for somebody else , there's often some bravery , but I find I'm my best self when all five of those are showing up . And Tom Rath of Gallup was in my class at Penn in that very first MAP class and we had a lot of discussions about the Gallup Strengths Finder and the VIA .

And someone even created this massive Excel spreadsheet where we all had our VIA strengths listed and next to them the Gallup . So my number one Gallup , and so they're very complimentary and it makes sense , Right ? So my number one strength in Gallup is competitor .

So you think about my top via strengths zest , bravery yeah , you know , those two , I think combined say it all . So in creativity probably a little bit , but I think they're very complimentary .

And I do think that once people know their character strengths , people tend to flourish more because they realize , wow , that's my fingerprint , that's who I am , that's my unique lineup and I'm going to not treat them as white noise anymore . I'm going to lean into them and have them work for me Do you find that too .

So it really is helpful . Really is helpful .

And to this day , all three of my children say the best conversations I've ever had with them are the conversations where I literally turned into a coach , read their top strengths and we talked about the golden mean use of their strengths , the overuse , the underuse .

And another interesting thing which is a sure sign you have a top strength is when you're offended by its absence in somebody else , and that's always a whoa . Whoa so and you know so . Those conversations took place 15 years ago almost 20 with my kids and their friends . Come to me . I mean , everybody's hungry for this knowledge and it's free .

Or you've got high adaptability put you in any situation , you're going to be fine . And so just to kind of point out that , hey , I know who you are and I know what you've got . Now just own it . And again , allow yourself to just trust that voice in your head and that intuition and you write about some of that too .

And so I think they know the language and they know how it fits within their world .

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So I remember being there in 2005 with my class , and all of the offices in Gallup have people's top five strengths listed outside their offices , and that always struck me because you know it made sense that you should scan the wall , know who you're going to interact with , understand how they see the world , so that you can language things in a way that's , you

know , appropriate for how they see the world . So for competitor for me , if you gamify something or you make it a competition . I'm in you know , if you know that about me , you've got the secret to my heart . Yeah , exactly yeah .

It is important for people to flourish as much as they can within their set point , to the highest part of their set point , and knowing your strengths has been found to help people flourish for as long as they can within their set point , to the highest part of their set point .

And knowing your strengths has been found to help people flourish for as long as six months after they take the test . Yeah , yeah , I'm talking about the VIA now , but it's the same . Yeah , it's a very powerful tool to use .

So , and that's part of accomplishing goals too , because the research has found that when you use your top five strengths in the service of pursuing your goals , you're more likely to achieve them Exactly .

So I really encourage you to take that assessment and remember if you've got a story to share or know someone who does reach out to me at judyoskam . com . Thanks so much for listening .