This morning, I had the pleasure to be in a Clubhouse Room with one of my favorite authors, Angela Duckworth, and be on the stage and ask her a question about the all elusive word “GRIT!”. It’s been almost 4 years since I picked up Angela’s book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Until that point, I like, so many, thought that getting good grades, doing well, and having a high IQ would mean I was set up to succeed. And boy was I wrong!
Angela had been studying for several years the role grit and IQ played in success in a myriad of contexts: business leadership, sports, academics, and so forth. In every single case, she found that grit, not intelligence or academic achievement, was the most reliable predictor of a positive outcome. The kids who won the spelling bee weren’t necessarily smarter than their peers; they just worked a whole lot harder at studying the words. The kids who got all As didn’t necessarily adjust well in university. The highly competent functional team member was not necessarily well placed to lead a team of stakeholders.
Angela introduced me to a new essential ingredient of success, persistence, and this very clear comparison between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. Unlike IQ, which is relatively fixed, grit is something everyone can develop. Grit is this unwavering persistence, this “bounce-backability”, this ability to keep going no matter how many times circumstances, people, persons, things, life knocks you down.
A good example was the time I started playing basketball in high school. I went from modeling regularly and strutting the runway and having an agency contract at 13 years old to trying out for the basketball team at 14 years old. Trust me, you wouldn’t have wanted to see the sight of me, a 5″11 awkwardly, clumsy, modelesque basketball player, but if you can imagine a very clumsy super-sensitive model getting on a basketball court, you can imagine how I was at 14. In short, I was a hot mess, a disaster, definitely something to make you laugh. You didn’t have to say it! I said it! I remember being afraid of the basketball and being afraid of defending, but I was supposed to be the center. Yet, despite starting off at what probably the worst place any basketball player can start off, never having been comfortable with the ball before, for some reason I was determined to keep going. I absolutely LOVED basketball no matter how much it hurt! I fell down and tripped over myself and fell down and tripped over myself, over and over again. I was ridiculed and mocked over and over again. I sure made for some good laughs! My first set of push ups were more of a barely there knee-ups and I couldn’t imagine how I could ever achieve the 100 push ups my basketball coach started our basketball practice. But for some reason, despite my fear, despite my shame and embarrassment, despite my awkwardness, my discomfort, despite being in a group of girls who were very different than I was – I just KEPT GOING. And GOING. I tripped and fell down again. But I KEPT GOING. And tripped up again. But KEPT GOING. I just KEPT COMING BACK! I think everyone was surprised when they saw me walk into the gym that I just kept coming back! It was frustrating, but fast-forward to 2 years after my first day on the court, I was playing in a BAISS championship game and scoring shots in the last few minutes of the final quarter and holding the championship trophy crying with my teammates as the Starting Center taught me the power of grit – you just must keep going. At this point, I could do 100 pushups without a sweat! Being on the BAISS championship senior girls basketball team has probably been one of the most rewarding achievements of my life, it gave me firsthand experience that rewards and success often don’t come easily.
Bouncing back from failures turns out to be, according to Angela, the best lesson children and leaders can learn. Bounce-backability, along with grit matters more to our ability to reach our full potential than anything else, skill, competency, intelligence, and grades. We have achieved true achievement when we are able to MOVE PAST BARRIERS and MOVE THROUGH BOUNDARIES. Angela’s worth has inspired me to continuously put challenges in front of my daughter, have her pursue opportunities that are difficult so that she can achieve what it is to triumph over something that does not come natural to her.
It’s ensuring that no matter how many times we continue to be faced with challenges that we persevere. I want team members and leaders to PROMOTE PERSEVERANCE as if our life depended on it, to reward the willingness to make mistakes. We all have bad days, but the key to fulfilling our greatest potential or living in our “Zone of Genius” as Gay Hendricks describes it is not giving up the second things become overwhelming or frustrating for us, but pushing through the discomfort associated with growing, yielding, stretching is the natural part of any learning process. When we push through the discomfort of events and things that we do not enjoy or can not fully appreciate in that moment, we achieve growth in ways that we could never have achieved when things were going well. I once read in a book that Muhammad Ali said he learned more from the matches he lost than the matches he won. We all know that Michael Jordan attributes his successes to his many failures. I want to be around people that have failed and failed and failed again, because the lessons they attained from such failures can only contribute exponentially to the growth and the development of a team that I want to be a part of.
So I say as you fall and fall, fail and fail, keep getting back up, keep going, keep trying – because in doing so, you are modeling resilience, you are modeling resilience for your team, for your children, for your peers. Remember the many smart and accomplished that have lost and failed hundreds of times, and remind yourself that they are standing before you today because they failed and bounced back! HERE’S TO GRIT!
