Grit is the quality that you want in your employees. Grit is the quality you want in your kids. And Grit is the quality that you want in you. Why? Because talent and passion on their own cannot sustain the steam that you need to achieve long-term goals in life.
Angela Duckworth defines grit as the quality that keeps people going for years together toward one goal. Not all problems in life can be solved with a quick swish of a wand, no matter how talented and smart you are. And when you face that wall, the one quality that can help you scale and go to the other side is grit.
Angela Duckworth, PhD, is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. An expert in non-I.Q. competencies, she has advised the White House, the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs.
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Author: Angela Duckworth
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (May 3, 2016)
ISBN: 1501111108, 978-1501111105
Most of us are classified as Intelligent, Average, or written off. But the author believes that long-term achievement is not indicative of just talent, but grit. According to her, all things being equal, a gritty person is more likely to achieve her goals than an intelligent person. She summarizes this message by saying,
“Grit may not be sufficient for success, but it sure is necessary.”
Before plunging into the discussion of Talent Vs Grit, the author introduces and explains what the terms like Skill, Talent and IQ mean. Talent is used widely to indicate the general ability of person to do something. The author here explains that when she says that someone is talented, it usually refers to the person’s ability to learn new things and improve faster compared to others.
While innate ability to think quickly may be limited by the physiological brain, our external environment can influence the other qualities that are necessary for success. The author brings this debate of nature vs nurture in Chapter 5. She also discusses the role of parents in teaching grit to kids, after explaining the attributes or traits that contribute toward making a person gritty.
Opportunities and luck matter. But effort and perseverance contribute much more to success than these two. In a world where kids are written off by parents an teachers and labeled with ‘limited abilities’, Grit sends the message that all is not lost if your kid can’t come up with an answer to an average mathematical problem in less than average time.