What is Grit, and Do You Have Enough of It?

Grit, as defined by neurobiologist Angela Lee Duckworth, is “the effort towards very long-term goals.” A recent Washington Post article featuring her research expanded further: “At the heart of [grit] is the ability to respond to failure or adversity, rather than give up.” That sounds like a good trait to have, but how does it stack up when compared with other traits commonly associated with success, such as charisma or intelligence?

Sally Jenkins, a writer for the Washington Post, explained that Duckworth “has developed a measurement for [grit] by studying a range of achievers from West Point cadets, to National Spelling Bee winners, to the Seattle Seahawks…Her work shows that [grit is] a more important factor in success than talent, IQ or privilege…Duckworth’s fellow researcher Carol Dweck of Stanford University has shown that people with a ‘growth mind-set,’ who explore their brain plasticity, succeed more.”

Sally wrote about grit from the perspective of sports and, in particular, the teams playing in the NCAA basketball tournament. Grit is key if you want to succeed in any sport. “Grit enables you to be in an uncomfortable place for a good part of your day and get up the next day and do it all over again,” Duckworth says in the article. That sure sounds like most of my experience with college football. Especially as an underclassman on the “Meat Squad” my days were spent facing off against bigger, stronger upperclassmen and letting them stomp all over me, then getting up the next morning and doing it again. But I persevered, learning a lot about grit in the process, and eventually worked my way onto the first team as a starter.

There are a lot of talented people in this area. The D.C. Metro area has the largest concentration of college graduates of any major metro area in the nation, as well as several of the wealthiest counties in the nation. Obviously we aren’t lacking in talent, intelligence or privilege – so why isn’t everyone in this area among the top in their respective fields? I believe it’s because not everyone has the necessary grit to achieve – and maintain – truly top-tier success. In a high-achieving area like this one, we have a lot of people who aren’t used to anything but success. When failure hits, they crumple because they have so little practice dealing with it. Alternately, they do anything and everything they can to avoid experiencing failure, which usually means they stifle creativity and refuse to take chances. They might still make some money and achieve some success, but generally it’s nowhere near where they could be if they were willing to take that chance.

The neurobiologist featured in Sally’s article first developed an interest in the concept of grit when she taught math in a New York public school system. “There are a lot of fragile gifted and talented kids who don’t know how to fail,” she says in the article. “They don’t know how to struggle, and they don’t have a lot of practice with it.” It’s hard to give advice encouraging people to fail – and even harder to take said advice. Even among people with a lot of grit, I don’t know anyone who actually enjoys the failure. But it is a necessary and important part of our development and it is vital for success. If we want to maintain success we have to remember that it is not about being great once; it’s about grinding it out through the good times and bad and managing to function at a consistently high level.

Bud Foster, the famous defensive coordinator for the Virginia Tech Hokies football team, has an old lunch pail that is given each week after the game to the player who showed the most grit in their preparation and performance. I’m told that every player on his team fights hard to win that coveted award. It’s a battered symbol of a highly-valued characteristic, one which can be developed only through hard work and struggles.

Grit is not an easy thing to achieve, but like most other skills the benefits it provides are well worth the effort required to develop it.

Have a great weekend,
Ro

[1] Jenkins, Sally. “College Basketball Tournaments Offer Lessons from the School of Hardwood.” The Washington Post, March 31, 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/college-basketball-tournaments-offer-lessons-from-the-school-of-hardwood/2015/03/30/bad00fca-d714-11e4-ba28-f2a685dc7f89_story.html