Releasing the Genius Releasing the Genius Magazine - Issue 1 | Page 9
RELEASING THE GENIUS
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have found that “grit” is the common denominator of high
achievers in every domain that I've studied—in art and
music, but also industry, law, and politics.
WHAT IS “GRIT”?
When I talk to top performers about their experience and
who they most admired, the same phrases would come out
over and over again in totally different fields. Artists and CEOs
talk about the importance of struggle, overcoming adversity, and
constantly asking yourself, “What can I do better?” There was an
emphasis on always looking to improve and be the opposite of
complacent.
In other words, grit is not just perseverance over the long-term,
it’s also passion. It’s loving what you do, and feeling like it is
meaningful. It keeps you learning every day.
THE DANGER OF “TALENT”
Grit is not the same thing as having ability in a domain. It’s about
having passion and perseverance to stay in that domain. This
makes grit distinct from talent—especially if you define “talent” as
the ability to learn quickly and easily.
For a long time, I have been trying to get people to use the word
“talent” with more specificity. We throw it around all the time. I
was at an award ceremony for my teenage daughter, and “talent”
was used at least 10 times in different contexts to describe this
student or that teacher. Sometimes it was about mastery or
achievement, but it was also used to describe ability, the potential
to achieve, or the facility to learn—like the phrase “gifted and
talented.”
Angela Duckworth is the Founder and CEO of
Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to
advance the science and practice of character
development. She is also the Christopher H.
Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at
the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director
of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change For Good
Initiative, and faculty co-director of Wharton
People Analytics.
A PROPER PLACE FOR BOTH Previously, Angela founded a summer school
for low-income children that was profiled as a
Harvard Kennedy School case study and, in 2018,
celebrated its 25th. She has also been a McKinsey
management consultant and a math and science
teacher.
Actor and musician Will Smith would tell you it's the hours and
hours and hours of effort that takes whatever talent you have and
translates that into skill. “No matter how talented you are,” Smith
once told an interviewer, “your talent is going to fail you if you’re
not skilled—if you don’t study, if you don’t work really hard and
dedicate yourself to being better every single day.” Angela completed her undergraduate degree in
Advanced Studies Neurobiology at Harvard, an
MSc in Neuroscience from Oxford University,
and a PhD in Psychology at the University of
Pennsylvania.
This confusion is destructive because we’re using the term “talent”
in the same way that we use “skill.” It sets up people to think
that they should be automatically gifted and highly skilled at
something, otherwise it’s not meant to be.
This is where grit is relevant to whatever you choose to do. Even
if you’re the most “talented” person in the world, if you give up on
something in the first month or the first year, you're never going to
be great at it. Of course, no matter how much grit you have, if you
have zero talent in a domain, you’re not going to excel. The lesson
for all of us is to take an honest account of our talents, then choose
one to work on over the longterm, with passion and perseverance.
Talent multiplied by sustained effort yields world-class skill and
eventually achievement.
***This article was adapted from an interview with Amazon Marketplace. -
amazon.com/b?node=17395092011
Her first book, Grit: The Power of Passion and
Perseverance, is a
No.1 New York Times best seller.
CharacterLab.org