By: Cynthia Kurtz
Posted: 4/23/2014
What makes one business person successful while another in the same business fails? Why do students with the same backgrounds perform so differently on difficult tasks? Is it possible to predict which employees will do well on challenging work?
Traditionally, when we ask these questions, we look to IQ - the Intelligence Quotient - as the way to predict achievement, job performance and even income potential. IQ is measurable. It is mathematical. It is a standard that allows comparisons between people.
There is research underway that suggests that IQ is not the only measure, maybe not even the most important measure that can predict whether someone will do well in school and in life.
Angela Lee Duckworth was teaching seventh grade math when she began to notice that it wasn’t always her high IQ students who did best on tough assignments. She began to watch more closely to see if she could determine what it was that determined success.
She became so interested in understanding this phenomenon that she decided to study psychology and started working with children and adults in difficult situations - rookie teachers in tough schools, West Point Military Academy cadets, and people in high pressure sales positions. She looked for the variables that would allow her to predict who would do well.
Instead of social skills, family income, good looks, or even IQ, she determined it was “grit.” What is grit? Remember the movie True Grit? The John Wayne movie in which a young girl decides to track down her father’s murderer. She didn’t know it wasn’t proper or possible. She simply decided to do it and she did it. That pretty much is “grit.” It is a pervasive stamina, a determination to succeed along with some just plain old follow-through.
Grit raises the same questions we have about IQ - how do you get it? Can you learn it? Do you inherit it? Can it be taught? The exact answer is still unclear but Carol Dweck at the Stanford University has published interesting research that suggests that there is a way to develop grit.
Professor Dweck says it starts with “growth in mindset.” To the non-academic that means believing that you have the ability to learn and that failure isn’t permanent.
When self-worth is measured only by success, then it is unlikely that a person will pursue anything that doesn't guarantee success.
Students who are taught that the brain is a muscle that grows with exercise are fueled by setbacks. Failure becomes an opportunity to learn instead of a reflection of inadequacy. Not getting a problem right the first time means working harder and trying again.
The theory of mindset growth has implications for many aspects of our lives but most certainly for how businesses develop employee skills and encourage innovation. Good performance shouldn’t be just about success but also about how someone approaches risk and responds when things don’t go as planned. The result could well be motivation and productivity gains for employees and businesses.
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