Angela Duckworth: Why Grit Is the Greatest Predictor of Success

Angela Duckworth is an American psychologist who studies achievement. Angela is widely regarded as one of the world's most widely quoted researcher on "grit". It has got everyone to sit up and take notice since grit is one of the greatest predictors of success. Abhijit: Is Grit the same as Persistence or Perseverance?Angela: I define Grit as having passion for a long-term goal and then working really hard consistently over an extended period of time. Gritty people work towards goals that would take years to achieve. If you are a person who is just working hard and don’t have a consistent goal to guide you, then you don’t have one half of grit. Likewise, you may have the passion for something, but not the resilience. Some people drop out of things they do and it is not because they had a serious setback or something terrible has happened but because of the slow progress. Like in science, you could be working on something that could take years and where you make only a tiny bit of progress every day. You need perseverance for that even though you don’t need resilience. Perseverance or persistence is also a part of grit.Abhijit: You have talked about the importance of self-control in building Grit. Does it always lead to superior academic performance in a child?Angela: We have not really done studies on kids on this subject. What does Grit look like when children are four or five years old? There are some five-year-olds who are more persistent when they do something hard or have more consistent interests. This may only be moderately correlated to their Grit levels later because kids do change a lot. The really impulsive child is likely to struggle with Grit later on. Does it lead to academically superior performance? I don’t think so as these are not the only things that matter. There are other factors such as mental health, IQ and ability to get along socially that also influences outcomes.Abhijit: The world that kids live in today is full of social media, which is so distracting. Is the wide adoption of social media proof of dropping levels of Grit and self-control? Angela: Some people tell me that it is. That would be called a “cohort effect”. Growing up in 2014 era is different from growing up in 1985. I don’t know if Grit and self-control are dropping. Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley are very good at creating things that attract our attention and entertain us. There are industries that are designed to gives us tasty, salty, fatty, sugary foods or fun programs to watch or games to play. We know these things are not good for us in the long run. As a social scientist, I have not crunched data on it. But there are more things than ever to divert our attention. As a parent what can I do to counter those distractions? Maybe limit the availability of these distractions.Abhijit: Another theory of development says that when we provide the kids with a variety of experiences and “bombard” their senses, it helps them to be creative and develop more ideas. Is Grit inversely correlated with curiosity?Angela: When we study Grit, we primarily study adults. The correlation between Grit and “Openness to Experience” (curiosity) tends to be very low. It is not negative but it is the lowest correlation between any of the personality variables. I can’t say if Gritty people are not curious. But I know that curious people can get bored. While I am never going to study this, I can say that if you are gritty and you are curious, you could be a great scientist or a great artist. But if you are not curious, but you are gritty, you won’t be productive in the creative fields. Really successful scientists and artists are both (gritty and curious). That’s a rare combination.Abhijit: Is Grit learnable (ie I could learn on my own) or is it teachable (ie someone could teach me)? Angela: Everything we study in psychology is a function of genes and environment. We follow the social norms of what we see around us. It is not easy to change culture. Maybe some beliefs can be learned or unlearned. For example, we can learn that talent is not the only thing that makes people successful. It is as much about Grit and hard work.Abhijit: Do Gritty people end up being specialists? What motivates Gritty people?Angela: They probably do. We only have 24 hours in a day. It is really hard to be great at more than one thing. I am only good at one thing. My brain is constantly thinking about the psychology of achievement.We studied what makes people happy. There are three things that make people happy. Pleasure, Being deeply engaged in a task and finding meaning in what we do – a sort of higher purpose. Our study showed that being engaged in a task and Grit are the most strongly correlated. That was surprising. I would have thought Grit and finding meaning would be the strongest correlation. Pleasure is inversely correlated with being gritty.When you are using deliberate practice to get better, it is not that enjoyable. Gritty people will use deliberate practice to get better. Whereas when a musician is performing, they are likely to be in flow. They are not that far from their capability that they are making mistakes like the way they do in deliberate practice. When you are practicing and working on my weaknesses, it does not feel like flow. Gritty people do deliberate practice so that they can experience flow while performing.Abhijit: How do we hire gritty people? What should we be looking for?Angela: If people are gritty, they should have demonstrated it in something. It could be in their hobbies, in their relationships, their work etc. But just asking people about a failure or something hard they worked on may not be the way. It is too easy to mistake someone’s glib articulation for the real thing or put someone who finds it easy and is humbled by the advantage over others who may be gritty but more humble at sharing it.We developed a measure called “follow through” that was developed by ETS in 1985 for high school seniors. They looked at extra-curricular activities and advancement. They looked for someone’s ability to continue an activity on a multi-year basis while making impressive advances during that time.When we used the same information for novice teachers, it predicts their staying in teaching, their being an effective teacher – all the patterns of people with grit. So maybe someone can test their grit by being an amazingly dedicated parent while someone else may express it in their work or by improving themselves in triathlon over the years. You would get more value in a behavioral or a biographical measure rather than through a questionnaire.Find out how much grit you have - take the test here <click this>Abhijit: How does one continue to work at a task that one does not enjoy but it has to be done anyway?Angela: You are asking all the right questions, I wish I had better answers. Some people I respect say that I only do what I love. Most people will have some component of the work they don’t like. Part of it is just doing it. Part of it is just acknowledging what you don’t like but doing it. Use your strength to work around your weakness.Abhijit: We make career choices when we are in school. We may choose something that we don’t enjoy. Would we get better if we persist or should we just cut our losses and try something else? How do we know which option to choose?Angela: There are good reasons to quit and there are bad reasons to quit. A good reason to quit is opportunity cost. Is there something better you could do? Bad reasons to quit are temporary disappointment, intolerance for hard work, having too fragile an ego etc. When you are having a bad day, it is the worst time to make the decision to quit because that’s when your emotions are dictating your actions. It is OK to quit things on a good day when you are in a clear state of mind.The second approach to use is to ask someone whose judgment is better than yours. They may give you an unbiased view. Some people are looking for everything to be perfect in the same job. That is rare. In a lot of cases, success is also about finding things that are good enough and then making the best of it. It is not about moving on every time you find there is something that is wrong.http://youtu.be/H14bBuluwB8Abhijit: Leadership development approaches often favor giving people exposure in multiple areas of business, sometimes in multiple geographies so that leaders are good in leading many different markets. Is that approach better or should leaders look to have deep specialization in some specific markets?Angela: When I speak to venture capitalists or entrepreneurs, who are doing several different things, I discovered that there are patterns. Such people often say they are good at quickly getting to know something they are not good at. But they also have skills that cut across businesses. For example, they may be good at managing a large team. This is a skill that is valuable across domains. That’s my guess but I have not done a study of Grit in leadership.Abhijit: Based on what you know about Grit, how have you changed your work habits?Angela: I went to Graduate School when I was 32. I was always a hard worker but I lacked the consistency of interest. I was in medical school, then I taught, then I ran a not-for-profit company, but there was a theme. I was interested in kids and in education. I knew intuitively even before I started researching on Grit that something was wrong. I did not want to be a promising novice but a respected expert. So I told my husband at the very beginning of graduate school that he should not let me quit for at least 10 years. I knew that I should not change my mind too easily.The second thing is about my understanding of “deliberate practice” ie doing effortful practice; work on your weaknesses, getting feedback, doing it again and eventually getting better. That’s what Gritty people do. So I decided to work on my weaknesses. I asked people for feedback, especially negative feedback. You don’t improve with praise even though you may like such people more. When you are at the edge of your skill, it feels like you are floundering and that does not feel good. It helps to know that people at the top of the field feel that way too.---------------------First written for People Matters April 2014 issueJoin me on Twitter @AbhijitBhaduriIf you want to know what will make your kids succeed, then don't miss this talk:http://youtu.be/BrkwrHSfsMY