By Kevin L. Baker, MBA
Grit is that ‘extra something’ that separates the most successful people from the rest. It’s the passion, perseverance, and stamina that we must channel in order to stick with our dreams until they become a reality. –Travis Bradberry
What do you do when you face adversity in your personal life or work? How do you respond emotionally to social pressure? Do you know the difference between what you influence you have on what happens next and what is out of your control? Being a leader or an “A-Team” player requires GRIT. Just like with sandpaper, there is a range of GRIT from big course GRIT to small fine GRIT. How gritty are you?
Why We Need GRIT Training
We live in an era where a hypersensitive, politically correct environment conditions people to be afraid of discomfort. In leadership and management, executives, managers, and employees often find it difficult to solve serious problems in the workplace because they require uncomfortable conversations and decisions. It takes GRIT to lead.
Courage.
Resolve.
Strength of Character.
That is what true grit looks like. Paul Stoltz writes that GRIT is composed of four basic building blocks:
GROWTH: Your propensity to seek and consider new ideas, additional alternatives, different approaches, and fresh perspectives.
RESILIENCE: How well you respond to adversity and your capacity to be strengthened and improved by the tough stuff is resilience.
INSTINCT: Your propensity to pursue the right goals in the best-possible ways.
TENACITY: The degree and duration of relentless effort and energy you put into whatever you do is tenacity.
How Gritty Are You?
The GRIT needed to lead in business is the same everywhere. Today I ask you, how gritty are you?
· When you face adversity and unplanned challenges, how well do you handle shocks and change? Are you fragile and break? Do you recover and know where to go next?
· Beyond the resiliency of surviving, coping with, managing, and overcome adversity, can you consume adversity before it consumes you? Can you transform adversity and change it into fueling new ideas and innovation that energize you? This is what Nassim Taleb calls being “antifragile.”
· Are you able to relentlessly pursue the right goals in the right way, and in the midst of adversity tenaciously rise above the immediate situation and lead your people into fresh alternatives, new perspectives, and draw out of them insights that will deepen your expertise and success?
This is the stuff of GRIT.
A Game Plan For GRIT in Your Life and Business
We live in an era where we need an operating system for thriving in high stress environments. We need a practical set of beliefs, frameworks, and exercises that allow you to inoculate yourself against fear of the unknown and worst case scenarios, and be less emotionally reactive.
What I learned from a decade working side by side with monks who were emotional, stubborn, perfectionists, and rebels against the conventions of business is how to practice “planned suffering.” The monk austerity is a life of practicing suffering. The more you practice suffering, the less unplanned suffering (when it occurs) will disrupt your life and work.
In America where I am from, Silicon Valley, professional sports teams, and high performing businesses and leaders are focusing on how to become less emotionally reactive and more focused–GRIT.
Winners win because they are becoming better than the competition. Great players have great coaches. I am a coach who has done the stuff. I am not a theorist only. I am a practitioner. I have been where you are. Let’s put together a game plan of GRIT for you and your company.
Keep climbing to the Peak of Potential!™
Kevin is CEO of Kevin Baker Inc. He is an executive coach, mentor, and friend to CEOs and business owners in Sydney, Australia. He also consults specialising in innovation, strategic execution and growth, exit and succession planning, acquisition consulting, and business sales. If you liked this article, you can receive more by subscribing to my weekly newsletter