BOOK SUMMARY 181 Grit
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Summary written by: Jill Donahue
"It was this combination of passion and
perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit."
- Grit, page 8
Are
you trying to create greater success; for yourself, your team or perhaps your
children? Have you ever wondered, what is the most important thing you can do
or teach them to spur their achievement? Angela Duckworth, a celebrated
researcher and professor shows us that the secret to outstanding achievement is
not talent but rather grit; a word that summarizes a special blend of passion,
deliberate practice, purpose and hope.
Grit
isn’t a fixed personal quality, you can grow it by cultivating your interests,
creating a daily habit of deliberate practice, connecting your work to your
purpose to serve others and nurturing your hope. You can also help others you
care about do the same.
Let’s
explore this in more depth.
The Golden Egg
Grit is the key ingredient to success
"…as much as talent counts, effort counts
twice."- Grit, page 34
Duckworth
shares stories from her field visits to cadets struggling through their first
days at West Point, teachers working in the toughest schools in America and
even young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She shares what she learned
analyzing the most successful sales people and the most successful people in
general.
For
example, she asked hundreds of people selling time-shares a battery of
personality questionnaires, including the Grit Scale. Six months later, she
revisited the company, by which time 55 percent of the people were gone. Grit
not only predicted who stayed and who left, it was the only personality
trait that was correlated with remaining in the job.
Gem #1
Growing grit in you
"How you see your work is more important than your
job title. And this means you can go from job to career to calling – all
without changing your occupation."- Grit, page 152
Now
that we know how important grit is, we obviously want to figure out how to get
some of it! Duckworth outlines four ways to grow grit from the inside out:
1. Passion –
Duckworth suggests grit begins with passion. However, she warns, passion is
something we foster rather than follow. Most people would
happily follow their passion but they just don’t know what it is. The rampant
myth is that falling in love with a career should be sudden and swift. But what
science says is that “passion in your work is a little bit of discovery,
followed by a lot ofdevelopment and then a lifetime of deepening”.
Perhaps the same is true for falling in love!
2. Practice –
Successful people have a striking desire to excel beyond their already
remarkable level of expertise. They achieve this through deliberate practice.
As any coach will tell you, “consistency of effort over the long run is
everything.”
Achievers
first set a stretch goal in a very narrow aspect of their overall performance
(e.g., in tennis, how you toss the ball prior to achieving your wicked serve).
They then, with great effort, seek to reach that goal. Thus the aphorism, “No
pain, no gain”. Feedback is key in their progress.
3. Purpose –
At its core, purpose is the idea that what we do matters to other people. We
are all looking for “daily meaning as well as daily bread”. The big
miss for most people is that they think this should come magically. They don’t
realize they need to play an active role in identifying how their work
contributes to the greater good.
On
vacation last year I met the most successful and happy bus driver. He had
identified his purpose as making people smile each day – not moving luggage
from the car rental to the terminal! He made twice as much in tips as his
colleagues and was, dare I say, infinitely happier. I help pharma people
identify and communicate their purpose. The ones who do so are simply the most
successful.
4. Hope –
Grit depends on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future.
Instead of having a feeling that tomorrow will be
better, resolve to make tomorrow better. One of my favorite
quotes, from Henry Ford is “Whether you think you can, or you think you
can’t – you’re right.” With practice you can modify your self-talk and
change the way you think, feel and act when the going gets rough.
Gem #2
Growing grit in others
"The real question is whether they are encouraged to
employ their good old-fashioned hard work and their grit… Those are the people
who seem to be the most successful."- Grit, page 236
What
can you do to encourage grit in people you care for or about? Here are a few of
the many great ideas Duckworth shares…
Teachers
who are demanding, whose students would say “My teacher accepts nothing less
than our best effort,” and believe “students in this class
behave the way my teacher wants them to” produce measurable
year–to-year gains in the academic skills of their students. They provide
feedback that elicits twice the effort from students by saying something like
this: “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations
and I know that you can reach them.”
Parents
who let their kids make their own choices about what they like have kids who
are more likely to develop interests that become their passion. Engage them in
extracurricular activities. Research shows that kids who are more involved in
these fare better on just about every conceivable metric – better grades,
higher self-esteem and are less likely to get into trouble.
Leaders
who want a grittier culture in their organization lead by example. Be gritty!
Find and communicate the purpose behind what you do. Have a passion to
accomplish a specific goal and the perseverance to follow through. Inspire your
people to identify the difference they make in the world and give them hope
that they can make a difference.
I’ve
always said I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I’ve been told I have
stick-to-it-ness that others don’t. After reading Duckworth’s book I now know
this quality is grit. I begin each day fueled by my passion, practice, purpose
and hope.
My
career didn’t start off with passion. I took my job in pharma sales because my
friend was a rep and she had a company car! My passion for my work evolved
slowly, over time and effort. I became increasingly interested in figuring out
how we could gain back our ability to influence health care behavior change.
The death of my father due to an avoidable prescribing error deepened my
interest.
I
developed that interest to a point where I left big pharma to teach what I was
learning. I now help others in pharma find their passion for their work and how
their work contributes to the most important outcome – quality and quantity of
lives. I love my mission to lift pharma and build purpose-driven, influential
pharma people.
What
about you? Is there room to deepen your grit; to delve into your passion,
improve your practice, focus more on your purpose and increase your hope? Seems
to me it’s worth it! We can all use more grit!
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