Creating Your Best Life – Featured Interview with Caroline Miller, MAPP

Author, Speaker, and Owner of Caroline Miller Coaching

Caroline Adams Miller and Bill Ringle discuss goal setting and achievement in depth for the benefit of small business leaders.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth.

Interview Insights

Top Takeaways from this Interview

What it means to be a goal setter.

The importance of environment when it comes to unlocking abilities.

The formula for developing grit, and why some people never do.

How to train Millennial employees in the workplace to learn course correction.

Understanding the Losada line and why teams benefit from psychological safety.

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

3:10 Readers of Caroline’s newest book are entitled to new worksheets for the rest of their lives.

3:41 “I believe I am born competitive, my top Gallup strength is a competitor.”

5:40 “Half of your happiness is hard-wired, and the other half is completely up to you.”

6:13 “The environment unlocks and refines certain qualities that you can turn into the best possible strengths you have.”

7:22 How Angela Duckworth first stumbled across the idea of grit.

7:49 “You can have too soft a life where you don’t discover what you’re made of because you’re constantly being rescued from your own misdeeds.”

8:23 “We all need to have 3-7 major setbacks that cause us to challenge our belief system and ask ourselves ‘Is this really the direction I want to go in?”

9:49 “Instead of seeking excellence we have a lot of mediocrity.”

10:28 The relationship between student-athletes and grit

10:54 “If you don’t show up the boat doesn’t go out on the water.”

11:16 “In order to get to the fruit at the end of the vine at the end of the growing season to find out what your made of and what your best possible outcome is, you’ll have to eat bitter first.”

13:02 The psychology of the near miss - “For many people, it wasn’t their appetite to go back and do more.”

13:33 “If you don’t grow up with that kind of experience in your life, woe to you.”

13:57 “How do we hire people who’ve never held themselves to high standards?”

16:08 On Millennials - “A lot of them are chasing likes and not seeking respect.”

18:12 “I bring research and evidence-based tools to people so that they can understand that smart goals are just the tip of the iceberg.”

19:20 The two aspects of goal-setting theory

20:00 “If I know people’s top 5-7 strengths, I can help people use those strengths in the proper context so they can maximize their chances of achieving their goals.”

21:55 “I’ve made it my mission to always turn around and pull people with me.”

24:33 Why smart goals just don’t take it far enough - “The best performance doesn’t come from only setting realistic goals.”

26:00 Case study of how Caroline helped a team use their measurable goals to determine new learning and performance goals.

30:03 “Optimal relationships where there’s flourishing, where work teams are doing better and better, they have a ration of about 5 positive interactions or facial expressions or pats on the back or 5 positive to 1 negative tend to predict work teams and organizations and marriages where you have optimal amounts of flourishing.”

33:45 Why it’s important for a leader to have a sense of humor.

35:10 “People who have humor, or have the ability to lighten the mood or make other people laugh are basically saying ‘it’s not all about me.’”

38:43 The problem with stupid grit.

39:04  “People who don’t give up on old goals that live past their usefulness have what I call stupid grit.”

42:19 The research surrounding lost possible selves

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