What is the strongest predictor of success & how can we develop it?
A differentiator between extraordinary successes and failures
Oh noooo, yet another gyaan article?
Isn’t this world and primarily digital media already over-flooded with 10 “hacks” to get to Mount Everest with no effort and the Qualities of top 1% successful people who can work without blinking their eyes?
Well, indeed. And hence, this article is not giving any hacks to be successful, it is to understand the psychology of getting extraordinary results that can be developed in each one of us.
Have you ever wondered what makes someone a great athlete? Or an inspiring leader? Or a good parent? Why do some people accomplish their goals while others fail?
What makes the difference?
The answers to these (& similar) questions are very subjective and case-to-case specific but across hundreds of articles, research, and talks, there is one common thing as a key trait and sometimes a differentiator between extraordinary successes and mediocre ones.
So what's the strongest predictor of success?
Great Question, let’s figure it out…
Angela Lee Duckworth, a psychologist and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania has spent more than 25 years with diverse groups of people asking the same question in every single study - “Who is successful here and why?” She concluded her results as follows,
“Over the years, in all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks or physical health, and it wasn't Intelligence Quotient (IQ). It was grit.”
Duckworth’s research on grit has shown that…
West Point cadets who scored highest on the Grit Test were 60% more likely to succeed than their peers.
Ivy League undergraduate students who had more grit also had higher GPAs than their peers — even though they had lower SAT scores and weren’t as “smart.”
When comparing two people who are the same age but have different levels of education, grit (and not intelligence) more accurately predicts which one will be better educated.
Competitors in the National Spelling Bee outperform their peers not because of IQ, but because of their grit and commitment to more consistent practice.
What is Grit?
As Duckworth defines it, grit is passion and sustained persistence applied toward long-term achievement, with no particular concern for rewards or recognition along the way. It combines resilience, ambition, and self-control in the pursuit of goals that take months, years, or even decades.
In simple words, Grit is the combination of passion (a deep, enduring knowledge of what you want) and perseverance (hard work and resilience). It’s about moving in a direction with consistency and endurance, like having a clear inner compass that guides all your decisions and actions.
Most importantly, Grit is sticking with your future vision, day in and day out, not just for weeks or months but for as long as it takes to make the envisioned future a reality.
James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits and an inspiration to my last article, How to Build Good Habits and Break the Bad Ones, states,
“Grit”, also known as “mental toughness”, plays a more important role than anything else in achieving your goals in health, business, and life. That’s good news because you can’t do much about the genes you were born with, but you can do a lot to develop grit
So now I wonder, if grit has been so important, how can we leverage it?
Yet another great question.
How to Develop Grit?
When asked how can we develop grit in children from early school days, Duckworth’s honest response was, “I don’t know!”
Researchers around the world are still figuring out discrete ways to develop grit among individuals but as Angela stated, “So far, the best idea I have heard about building grit is something called Growth Mindset”.
Growth Mindset
The idea of Growth Mindset was developed by Carol Dweck from Stanford University. She calls it “The Power of Yet” where she ran a research where students were graded “Not Yet” when they failed a certain assessment instead of marking them fail. This minute change gave students a chance to be back on the learning curve and this activity with couple of other activities combined gave exceptional results for the same(previously failed) students to educational institutions.
As summarized by Harvard Business Review, Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and put more energy into learning.
In Carol’s words, “Learning the Growth Mindset is transforming the ways of efforts and difficulty. Difficulty just meant, Not Yet.”
In her book, Mindset, Carol has excellently draws the attention towards these pointers of building grit via developing a growth mindset,
“We often see books with titles like The Ten Secrets of the World’s Most Successful People crowding the shelves of bookstores, and these books may give many useful tips. But they’re usually a list of unconnected pointers, like “Take more risks !” or “Believe in yourself!” While you’re left admiring people who can do that, it’s never clear how these things fit together or how you could ever become that way. So you’re inspired for a few days, but basically, the world’s most successful people still have their secrets.
Instead, as you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets, you will see exactly how one thing leads to another— how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions, and how a belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions, taking you down an entirely different road.
[…]
Sure, people with the fixed mindset have read the books that say: Success is about being your best self, not about being better than others; failure is an opportunity, not a condemnation; effort is the key to success. But they can’t put this into practice because their basic mindset— their belief in fixed traits— is telling them something entirely different: that success is about being more gifted than others, that failure does measure you, and that effort is for those who can’t make it on talent.”
Now what?
By now we have seen that the strongest predictor of success is Grit and the best way to develop Grit is through building a Growth Mindset. The best way to build a growth mindset is to believe that any life skills can be learned with efforts, hard work, proper planning and consistency.
So if we can achieve anything, why to think only about passing in a particular exam or getting a promotion or a raise or something similar? Why not think BIG? Why not think about contributing to the society and changing the world for better?
Because as Steve Jobs said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who actually do it”.
So dream BIG and stay in the game for as long as it takes to change the outcomes in your favor :)
I hope this article was helpful. I would love to hear your feedback. You can directly reply to this email or connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Until next time, stay curious and keep asking great questions!