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VOL. 3, ISS. 11 | NOVEMBER 2017
Can you steal a page from the playbook of the nation’s highest achievers to help achieve your loftiest career goals?
Absolutely, says Angela Duckworth, whose groundbreaking book “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” (Scribner, 2016) has helped many people understand the attitudes and behaviors driving some of the most successful people in America.
Through her research, Duckworth has learned that grit isn’t something that’s just inherited or passed down to a select few. While some of us may be naturally “grittier” than others or have more experience or talent in a certain area, we can all learn to cultivate grit to achieve more of our most cherished long-term career goals.
“The potential that most people have to achieve is much greater than they often imagine,” Duckworth says. “So much of how far you get in fitness, scholastics, in business, is about the energy you bring and the consistency of your work.”
Duckworth, who got her Ph.D. in psychology after teaching in the public schools of San Francisco, New York and Philadelphia, became interested in the science of achievement after observing a gap between what the kids in her class were doing and what she knew they were capable of.
“I became a psychologist to figure out, ‘Where does that gap come from?” Duckworth says. “And how do we close it? I knew that if we really wanted to understand how people can fulfill their true potential, we have to understand—and not just assume we understand—motivation and habit and behavior.”
Her research revealed four psychological assets that the “grittiest” people had in common— assets that all of us can develop from the inside out to achieve greater career success.
Of course, Duckworth says, there are some instances when it just doesn’t make sense to keep on pushing, whether it’s because a project isn’t coming together in the way you’d hoped or you can’t get the buy-in or backing.
In cases like these, Duckworth says, it makes sense to check in and ask, “What am I doing this for?” If the answer is because there is no other way, she says, then keep pushing.
But if there is an alternate path that’s “a little smoother, a little better lit,” Duckworth says, then you could say to yourself: “Look, here’s where I can give up on this one tactic, on this one low-level goal, but still achieve the same high-level goal and save everyone a lot of hardship.”
After all, she says, grit is just one facet of your character. It’s how you combine it with curiosity, gratitude, empathy, emotional intelligence and other things that make you a winner at more than work but life.
“Character is not an old-fashioned concept,” Duckworth says. “It will always be in style.”
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