Successful leaders have a common trait
When we look to our predecessors for wisdom, we grasp at straws trying to figure out what it is that made them successful so we can emulate that and blaze our own successful path, but we often miss the most obvious answers. We obsess over what tech gadgets the top brass is utilizing, what to do methods they’re using, what financial methods they’re implementing, or what commonalities successful leaders have in their childhood.
Famed researcher, Angela Lee Duckworth asserts that there is only one trait that is a predictor for success, and that is grit. Successful leaders are all determined personalities, willing to forge ahead despite the deck being stacked against them, and called to tread in uncharted territories, as they pick themselves up by the bootstraps after every inevitable fall.
Watch the six minute video below wherein Duckworth explains her theory:
Now, let’s talk about you
Do you have grit when a sale falls through? How do you react when a potential client rejects you and hires your competition? What do you do when you’re attacked online for a mistake, or you are ignored by potential contacts after a networking event?
At the end of a long day, do you complain and go hide in your room, or do you take a break to enjoy your family and then organize yourself for the next day so you can do better? When you don’t get a promotion, do you quit and go somewhere that you think you’ll be appreciated or do you recognize that you need to improve, or go actually ask for that next promotion?
Successful people aren’t all well educated geniuses, most weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and the overwhelming majority have fallen flat on their faces so many times that the average person would quit. That’s what separates them from the unsuccessful.
Nothing is ever good enough, and for heaven’s sake, it’s never finished just because success is upon them. Like Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Grit. Get some.
