How Can Women and Minorities Set Meaningful Goals Backed by Science?

What Is the BRIDGE Methodology and How Does It Improve Goal Setting?

Learn how to set and achieve meaningful goals with the science-backed BRIDGE methodology from Big Goals by Caroline Adams Miller to unleash your true potential. Ready to ditch outdated goal-setting frameworks and start achieving your biggest dreams? Read the full article to discover how the science-backed BRIDGE methodology can help you set meaningful goals and create your best life!

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If you’re aiming high but feel as though you’re running on the spot, you’re probably using the wrong approach to pursue your goals, explains executive coach and motivational speaker Caroline Adams Miller. Her erudite study illustrates why traditional goal-setting techniques are failing women and minorities, and she outlines the right tools, mindset, and habits you need to achieve your goals, according to scientific research. Align your goals with your authentic values, while defining excellence on your own terms.

Take-Aways

• Popular goal-setting approaches were designed by men for men, overlooking the barriers that women face.
• Brainstorm to visualize your best possible future while preparing for the worst.
• Prioritize relationships, and surround yourself with people who support your goals.
• Invest your time, money, energy, and resources wisely to realize your desired future.
• Improve your decision-making by leveraging winning poker strategies.
• Developing “good grit” requires passion, purpose, and perseverance.
• Set your own standards of excellence, and tap into your “authentic pride.”

Summary

Popular goal-setting approaches were designed by men for men, overlooking the barriers that women face.

When pursuing your goals, you might seek inspiration from the works of celebrated scholars. Alas, academic success hinges not on merit but on amassing citations, a game that favors men. Generally speaking, male academics tend to accumulate a larger portfolio of publications than female academics, as women often must juggle work with caregiving. Meanwhile, the subjects of academic studies are often grad students — university-educated 20-somethings — which isn’t a representative swath of the population. Other people turn to podcasts for inspiration, but the most popular podcasts overwhelmingly feature white men interviewing other white men.

Many goal-oriented people heed the SMART goals framework — a popular acronym that outlines the components of effective goal setting. However, the effectiveness of this acronym is not supported by academic research, and people are divided on what each element stands for. For instance, the letter R alone has been interpreted as “realistic,” “reachable,” and “relevant.” If you’re a manager, you might rely on MBOs (management by objectives), KPIs (key performance indicators), or OKRs (objectives and key results) to reach your goals. Alas, workers often lack clarity on what these acronyms stand for or how to apply their principles.

“Women must walk an impossible tightrope of being warm, authoritative, and competent to be seen as leaders or promoted to positions of power, while men routinely are ushered into positions of power because of the ‘confirmation bias’ that keeps men rewarding men because they are ‘like me’.”

All of these goal-setting metrics were designed by men for men and fail to consider the unique challenges that women face. For instance, when women attempt to navigate their goals in ways that garner men kudos — that is, by taking a competitive, transactional approach — they suffer severe social penalties from men and women alike. Moreover, the most popular goal-setting frameworks favor members of “WEIRD — Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic — cultures.” Yet regardless of the field, when cultural diversity blossoms, everyone benefits: Businesses earn larger profits, executives make better decisions, surgeries have more successful outcomes, and so on.

Happily, a more effective and inclusive approach to goal setting exists, which builds on the foundational, but often overlooked, work of management theorists Mary Parker Follett and Lillian Moller Gilbreth. Their work emerged in the 1920s as a response to the dehumanizing Taylorism and Fordism approaches. Follett and Gilbreth believed that achieving successful workplace results required considering the humanity, idiosyncrasies, and overall well-being of workers — not just corporate bottom lines. They rejected goal-setting approaches that treat workers as simply “cogs in a factory machine.” Some 100 years later, it is time their revolutionary ideas became mainstream. The BRIDGE methodology, a universally applicable approach that incorporates Follett and Gilbreth’s ideals, helps you develop the mindset and strategic vision required to achieve your goals. It hones your focus on the six areas you must methodically address when pursuing your goals: “brainstorming, relationships, investments, decision-making, good grit” and “excellence.”

Brainstorm to visualize your best possible future while preparing for the worst.

Identify your goal, and mull over every aspect of it, embracing curiosity. Consult a rich variety of sources, just as you would confer with, say, a travel agent, friends, and websites when arranging a vacation to a new destination. But assess whether the advice you receive is applicable to someone of your gender and background. For instance, a white man’s advice might not be the best course of action for, say, a woman of color. While diverse input matters, also consult with people from a similar background to you.

Develop a clear understanding of your life’s purpose, or ikigai, a Japanese word for “that which I wake up for.” Your sense of purpose should resonate on both a personal and collective level, aligning your unique skills and strengths with activities that both inspire you and contribute to the greater good. A simple positive psychology brainstorming exercise can help bridge the gap between your current self and ideal self: For three consecutive days, spend 20 minutes visualizing your best possible self one, five, and ten years from now. Write down what you see in your visions in vivid detail. Research shows that writing about yourself and your feelings improves your overall well-being and sense of hope, while supporting healthy emotional processing.

“The Stoic spirit of examining all variables to be ready for curveballs and surprises infuses the BRIDGE methodology, which is designed to give everyone their best possible shot at getting where they want to go by being scrupulously prepared.”

When you spend time envisioning your desired future, you develop “future self-continuity”; that is, it becomes easier to take actions in the present that support your growth journey. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham’s goal-setting theory identifies two main types of goals: “Performance goals” are those that you’ve achieved before but that you would like to improve upon, while “learning goals” are those you haven’t tackled before and which require you to attain new knowledge or skills. Both goals must be challenging and have a specific outcome if they are to motivate you to excel.

Determine which type of goal you’re facing, and imagine the actions you can take to achieve your desired outcome. Decide on your deadline and the metrics you will use to measure success. If you identify conflicting possible future goals that can’t simultaneously exist — say, to start a family and to enter full-time education — you’ll need to ascertain which matters most to you. Also, take time to imagine how “black swan events” — adverse, aberrant, unexpected crises like, say, the COVID-19 pandemic — could impact your journey toward achieving your goals. Envision empowering ways you might tap into your strengths when facing unexpected challenges.

Prioritize relationships, and surround yourself with people who support your goals.

Reflect on your social network and the individuals you want to accompany you on your goal-setting journey. If you don’t have a supportive team of people around you, identify networking opportunities and the type of contacts you’ll need to make. Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, a positive psychology researcher at the University of North Carolina, noted that some people have a “heliotropic effect”; that is, their presence helps you feel warm, energized, and supported — similar to how the sun’s light supports plants’ growth. If some people in your life resemble “black holes” more than rays of sunlight, ask yourself whether you want to devote so much time and energy to them. Researchers Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer identified two types of people who offer the most support to goal-chasers: “Catalysts” offer direct forms of support and resources, while “nourishers” provide encouragement and words of affirmation. Meanwhile, “inhibitors” and “toxins” are unsupportive individuals who impair progress.

“Once one person’s negativity enters an environment, it can become a contagious hurricane that infects everything in its path.”

Women tend to be socialized always to show kindness, which can result in remaining “frenemies” with people they don’t like. But maintaining inauthentic friendships can have a negative impact on your mood and behavior, just as healthy, authentic relationships can positively influence you: Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler’s research into social contagion demonstrates that when one member of a group adopts a healthier behavior (for instance, quitting smoking), others are more likely to follow suit. When launching a big project, consider mapping out all catalysts and nourishers — those you already know and those you’d like to connect with more deeply — to envision a supportive “future web” you hope to actualize. But do your homework before reaching out for help. You don’t want to waste a mentor’s time by asking for advice that you could have easily found elsewhere. Cultivating more positive relationships starts with recognizing your own worth, and developing the capacity to receive love.

Invest your time, money, energy, and resources wisely to realize your desired future.

List the investments you’ll need to make to transform your vision into a reality. For instance, do you need to pay for an upskilling course or for child care while you pursue your goal? Time will be your most significant investment when realizing your goals. Women have less daily leisure time — 4.8 hours versus 5.6 hours for men — so they must carefully consider how best to apportion their time. Alas, many people while away several hours per day watching screen-based entertainment, leaving many feeling unmotivated, emotionally drained, and lacking in energy. When you binge-watch content, your brainwaves resemble those of people with depression.

“We can fantasize about our big goals all day, create brilliant strategies to pursue those dreams, and then recruit an amazing team of cheerleaders and mentors…but none of these actions will matter unless you are willing…to make the investments in yourself that will spell the difference between crossing a finish line and being an almost-ran.”

One of the biggest mistakes goal-setters make is failing to anticipate the time and costs of certain tasks. Budget your time and money wisely. Create a goal timeline to help clarify the investments you’ll need to make, reflecting on factors such as how much time you’ll need to close skills or knowledge gaps, how much time others spent accomplishing similar projects, and whether you need to invest in the optimization of your individual learning process in any way. Ultimately, your investments will determine whether you achieve your goals or remain just a dreamer.

Improve your decision-making by leveraging winning poker strategies.

Reflect on the “common denominators” of your best and worst decisions. Do you have biases that cloud your judgment? When do you tend to be most clear-headed, and when do you tend to make the most mistakes? Strengthen your decision-making with the following tactics, which give poker players a competitive edge:

• Frame decisions as “bets” — View each decision you make as “a bet on your future,” which will prompt you to fully consider all the possibilities of a situation.
• Focus on your process — It can be tempting to fixate on results, but it’s better to judge your performance based on the integrity of the process you used to make choices.
• Keep wishful thinking in check — Make choices based on concrete evidence, as opposed to letting hopeful, delusional thinking influence your actions.
• Exercise discernment — Learn to recognize when choices require deep analysis, and when a simple, straightforward approach will suffice.
• Get feedback — Seeking out advice from diverse voices on how best to achieve your goal is like having a “cheat sheet” that helps you improve your game.
• Control your emotions — Endeavor to stay calm under pressure, taking a time-out if you feel too emotional to respond to stress in a measured, rational way. Consider ways that “bluffing” or hiding your true feelings (for instance, your desperation to make a sale) might help you land a win.

Developing “good grit” requires passion, purpose, and perseverance.

Grit, according to psychologist Angela Duckworth, is “passion and perseverance in pursuit of long-term goals.” Those with good grit boast resilience — “the ability to overcome short-term setbacks and adversity.” Gritty people have cultivated the mindset required to stick with long-term goals, and they take purpose-driven actions toward their goals. As Duckworth explains, passionate people display grit in situations where others might give up: If you’re ardent about the work you must do to achieve your goals, then you’re unlikely to quit in the face of temporary setbacks, such as a lack of recognition. If your confidence is low because you’ve experienced an overwhelming setback, research indicates that you can boost your resilience by setting a smaller goal first, as a quick win can help you regain your sense of mastery.

“Gritty people pursue meaningful, hard goals that reflect their inner longings and dreams, and they do them to satisfy themselves and no one else.”

“Authentic grit” is the dogged pursuit of challenging goals that inspire others to live their lives without regret. Authentic grit has several distinctions:

• “Ordinary grit” — People who tackle everyday challenges with grace by rising above daily stresses and staying on track toward achieving their goals boast this form of grit.
• “Mt. Olympus grit” — Athletes who stretch the limits of what is physically humanly possible while accomplishing difficult feats, even when encountering tremendous setbacks, possess this form of grit.
• “Celebrity grit” — Famous people, such as Oprah Winfrey, who succeed against the odds and use their status to realize change encapsulate this form of grit.
• “Mt. Rushmore grit” — People, such as Martin Luther King and Gandhi, who “impacted history by working to stand up against ingrained social wrongs with dignity and self-respect,” epitomize this form of grit.

Set your own standards of excellence, and tap into your “authentic pride.”

When reflecting on what excellence means to you, examine the intersection of your values and unique strengths. For example, if you value creativity and see it as one of your biggest strengths, then assess the excellence of your work based on the degree to which you’ve been truly creative. When you finish a project, learn to differentiate between what psychology professor Jessica Tracy refers to as “authentic pride” — which you experience when you achieve goals that improve your relationships, bolster genuine inner confidence, and help you connect to a deeper sense of meaning — and “hubristic pride,” which is rooted in the desire to position yourself higher than others in a social hierarchy.

When embodying excellence, trigger authentic pride by doing the following: Engage in self-reflection on the bigger purpose behind your behavior; acknowledge others’ contributions toward your wins and stay humble; solicit constructive feedback from those you trust; practice empathy; view wins in terms of personal growth milestones, not one-upmanship; recognize that you’re innately worthy, and your self-worth doesn’t hinge on others’ validation; celebrate others’ victories; and finally, practice gratitude.

“Start anywhere, but please start somewhere. We’ve waited too long to challenge the ingrained, old-fashioned goal systems that don’t reflect the cultural and gender nuances of the 21st-century world.”

Once you’ve “walked across the BRIDGE” and see goal-setting in a new light, you’ll feel more energized, your goals will be clear, and you’ll be excited to unleash your potential and achieve amazing feats.

About the Author

Executive coach Caroline Adams Miller is the author of several books, including Getting Grit and Creating Your Best Life.