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

How can women in particular achieve big goals and live a dream life, and how can you find out your top strengths? Welcome to Stories of Change and Creativity. I'm Judy Oskam. In this episode, I'm sharing part two of my short interview 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.

There have been more recent breakdowns of psychological findings to see if men and women have the exact same outcomes for different kinds of protocols. For you know, leaning in on salary negotiations, on humility, on leadership, whatever we're finding, women's hearts, their heads, their bodies, how they absorb alcohol is different. Everything's different. 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.

But how dare we be?

Yes, how dare you think of yourself and how dare you be ambitious? So we must confide in the right people. Everyone should be in a mastermind group. Everybody should have a set of people, male or female, but for women, women need women. This is the tend and befriend. Research it's. 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.

I love that. I love that. That's such good advice. I'm a Gallup Strengths coach and I always ask what are your top strengths? Do you know what your top strengths are? I?

do? I use the VIA. I use the VIA Character Strength Survey and my top strengths are the ability to love others and be loved back, creativity, zest, bravery and wisdom. And those show up every time I'm writing a book, every time I'm going out on a limb and saying something new or different that might get shot down. 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.

Oh, for sure, For sure. And when I do this with students and faculty, you can see it. You can see a difference. The students just really engage in a different way, and to give them then the tools to talk about it is really important and to empower them to be able to own it and the whole name aim and claim that kind of a deal. So it really is helpful. Really is helpful.

Yeah. So the VIA. The reason I really love that is my mentors created it Marty Seligman and Chris Peterson and it's been taken by 50 million people. It's highly validated, translated into multiple languages, but the language is so easy to understand. Kindness is kindness, curiosity is curiosity, bravery, leadership, teamwork, zest I mean they're all understandable. 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.

The VIA is free. I know I'm having my class. Take that in the spring.

I'm having them do that and I'll find the funding for the Gallup strengths as well, and so yeah, I've had my own kids do it and take the Gallup and I'll tell them hey, you've got strategic in your top five, you will figure this out, find the path. 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.

I do, do I do? Um, do you? Do you feel like your children's um walk a little taller, see things a little differently.

I think they do. And my, my youngest, is 23 right now. She just moved out to California and, uh, and she will say well, mom, you know, I've got this or that and I've got, I've got high futuristic, and so she's always the planner. I've got high futuristic, and so she's always the planner. And so I think they know the language and they know how it fits within their world.

Yeah, yeah, but.

I've I've coached boyfriends and friends, and all of that too you know?

so yeah, People are hungry for it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and it's so empowering.

It's empowering, and I tell them this is your superpower. Yes, and but your point about not seeing certain things in other people is the difficult part.

Yes.

And learning how to work with others who don't really see it the same. Yeah, so that's a real challenge.

But one thing I wanted to say about Gallup is I live near the Gallup organization and so the positive psychology conferences were at one time only at the Gallup organization. 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.

Exactly. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Stories of Change and Creativity. What a great resource Caroline Adams Miller provides all of us about goal setting. I'll also include a link to the free VIA strengths assessment in the show notes. I think you'll find the results helpful and empowering. 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.