As a manager, I’m sure you could make a list of traits – in addition to applicable job skills – that any employee must possess in some quantity to be successful: things like intelligence, responsibility, initiative, attention to detail, ability to learn – you get the idea.

But what about “grit?” Is it important to success?

Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Grit. As in True Grit. No, not ground corn, the texture on sandpaper, the old small-town newspaper, small pieces of rock, or even what you do with your teeth when enduring pain (or your mother-in-law). No, I’m talking about perseverance, stick-to-it-iveness, tenacity, John Wayne with a bit in his mouth – that kind of thing.

To what degree does “grit” play a role in determining a person’s success? Well, evidently, it’s really important:

Consider, for instance, a recent study led by Duckworth that measured the grittiness of cadets at West Point, the elite military academy. Although West Point is highly selective, approximately 5 percent of cadets drop out after the first summer of training, which is known as “Beast Barracks.” The Army has long searched for the variables that best predict whether or not cadets will graduate, using everything from SAT scores to physical fitness. But none of those variables were particularly useful. In fact, it wasn’t until Duckworth tested the cadets of the 2008 West Point class using a questionnaire – the test consists of statements such as “Setbacks don’t discourage me” – that the Army found a measurement that actually worked. Duckworth has since repeated the survey with subsequent West Point classes, and the result is always the same : the cadets that remain are those with grit. [Jonah Lehrer. "The Truth About Grit." The Boston Globe (August 2, 2009)]

What is interesting to me is not that grit (or perseverance, or tenacity) plays a key role in success – that seems pretty fundamental to me – but it was the one factor in the study that most clearly predicted success. Knowing that will certainly cause me to look closely at the hiring process and the key traits we identify during interviews.

Praise Smarts or Praise “Grit?”

Another interesting point came out of this article that is relevant to managers. It seems that praising people for their intelligence – when they solve a problem, for example – and ignoring the “grit” they may have used to stick to the problem until it was solved, may have an adverse affect on future efforts:

Interestingly, it also appears that praising children for their intelligence can make them less likely to persist in the face of challenges, a crucial element of grit. For much of the last decade, Dweck and her colleagues have tracked hundreds of fifth-graders in 12 different New York City schools. The children were randomly assigned to two groups, both of which took an age-appropriate version of the IQ test. After taking the test, one group was praised for their intelligence – “You must be smart at this,” the researcher said – while the other group was praised for their effort and told they “must have worked really hard.”

Dweck then gave the same fifth-graders another test. This test was designed to be extremely difficult – it was an intelligence test for eighth-graders – but Dweck wanted to see how they would respond to the challenge. The students who were initially praised for their effort worked hard at figuring out the puzzles. Kids praised for their smarts, on the other hand, quickly became discouraged.

This sheds some light on the importance of how a manager praises and encourages employees and what that praise/encouragement is for. And it is consistent with our 1-on-1 Management™ principles of praising employees: praise the underlying motivation or character trait that caused the performance and you will more readily see the performance duplicated.