GRIT: SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE
Grit: The
Secret Of Highly
Successful People
BY: JIM JUBELIRER, JUBELIRER RESULTS GROUP
S
uccessful people have grit.
Angela Duckworth outlines
what “grit” is in her book Grit:
The Power of Passion and
Perseverance. She has spent
over a decade studying what makes
the top people in various industries
successful. She describes their grit as
a “ferocious determination” based on
a strong sense of resilience and deep
meaning in what they were doing. In
other words, these individuals knew
what they wanted to achieve and were
not afraid to do the hard work that it
would take to accomplish their goals.
The genesis of her research into
grit occurred during a trip to West
Point when she learned about “Beast
Barracks,” a seven-week training
program students take before they
enter their freshman year at the school.
She wanted to know why some of the
students made it through the program
and some of them didn’t. After years of
study and research into the subject, she
created the Grit Scale, which turned
out to be a more accurate predictor
than GPA, SAT scores, and instructors’
assessments of who would and who
wouldn’t succeed.
Grit: The Power of Passion and
Perseverance is the culmination of her
research into the subject. One of the
key takeaways she outlines is the idea
that, contrary to popular belief, grit
is something which can be learned.
Believing that talent is innate (meaning
it can’t be taught) is detrimental to
developing grit. In fact, talent, intellect,
physical prowess, and beauty are not
at all correlated with grit!
Talent x Effort = Skill
Skill x Effort = Achievement
Effort counts twice. Talent will only get
you so far, and after that, it becomes
a matter of harnessing your willpower,
putting your nose to the grindstone,
VISIT: ANGELADUCKWORTH.COM/GRIT-SCALE
and getting to work. Only then will you
reac h your full potential. To this end,
she outlines four steps in the cultivation
of grit:
1. Find an intense interest.
2. Practice the interest as much as
possible.
3. Develop a higher purpose.
4. Develop a “growth mindset.”
A growth mindset is simply the idea that
there are enough resources and room
for everyone to grow. That mentality
is opposed to the more common
“scarcity mindset” that holds firm the
idea that you should take what you can
get because if one thing gets larger,
another must shrink. The scarcity
mindset sees business and life as a
zero-sum game.
You can take the Grit Scale Assessment
at angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale to
find out how you score. It is a free, ten-
question survey, and you can compare
yourself to everyone else who has taken
the assessment. u
SPRING 2018
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