Feminine Gamification Viewpoint: Gender and goals
Goal setting and New Year Resolutions are all on top of the agenda this week at least, so we wanted to zone in on the differences between men and women when it comes to goal setting.
Traditionally and especially in business goals have been an expected part of how things are done and they obviously have stood the test of time, because we are still doing it. Typically goal setting is a very masculine trait and if you go way back to hunting days, they also had very clear focus on I need to kill an animal in order to provide food for the tribe. For women on the other hand their role in traditional tribes was to nurture children and create a safe and caring environment, so goals were vague and ongoing and very much based on feelings.
In today’s world, I still notice these again subtle differences. Both genders will set goals, how many and what for is largely dependent on the person. For my female clients and friends, goals only become a reality when the fear of failure is addressed and there is a strong emotion driving it as well as the pure achievement of the goal. From my coaching work I rarely had to address the driving emotion for my male clients, but the fear of failure at times also reared it’s ugly head, the strategies to address it were often ‘I am facing this one head on!’, whereas the women wanted to work out best and worst case scenario as well as fall back plans.
What I have seen working really well for female style goal setting are mood boards or vision boards, I even have a few friends who go as far as creating a visionary movie of yourself in the future describing the life you are now living and how it feels, others take to writing it out. Personally I like to bullet point these things in a pretty notebook dedicated to goals and then ponder on them for a bit and create a mental visual, which I revisit regularly and then make a very visual tracking system so I can feel achievement regularly when milestones are achieved. I also use some apps as you found out earlier this week in a previous blog post.
Men may think these elaborate approaches are too far fetched and that is perfectly fine. Just know that you pick what suits you. Men may follow a linear and structured approach in their goal setting, whereas women will have probably more like a web like linking of thoughts, feelings and support structure. Both genders however can achieve, we just have to celebrate the subtle differences and build support systems to bring out the best in both.
How do you set your goals and what kind of system would help you?
