SET AND ACHIEVE BIG GOALS

In her latest book, Big Goals: The Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them, and Creating Your Best Life, Caroline Adams Miller shares a methodology for psychology-backed goal setting.

- Sarah Lynch

Inspired by a goal-setting theory pioneered by psychologists Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham in 1990, as well as 20 years of Adams Miller's own executive coaching experience, the Bridge framework can help anyone—and business leaders, in particular—craft objectives and accomplish them through brainstorming, relationships, investments, decisions, grit, and excellence. Here's how it works.

CUT OUT THE NOISE

A very under-addressed topic in goal setting is the “decision-making matrix,” Adams Miller says—how you make the decisions that you do about “hiring or firing or work feedback” and more. To make good decisions, leaders need to cut out bias and noise, she says.

Biases could include “confirmation bias—you do only things that agree with what you already thought,” she says, or “anchoring bias, which is when you believe the first piece of information you hear.”