While many become derailed by obstacles and setbacks, and struggle to bounce back from difficulties, failures and rejection by others, the “gritty” individual is able to dust himself or herself off, carry on and find success over the long-term.
In trying to explain why some students persist in succeeding academically under difficult situations (e.g., low socio-economic conditions, little or no family support) while others fail under the same conditions, Angela Duckworth and her colleagues identified the construct of grit.
Since then the concept of grit has become widely accepted and is defined as the perseverance and passion for long-term goals which entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity and plateaus in progress.
Duckworth and subsequent researchers have found a significant relationship between grit and academic success in both adult and school-aged populations, across different contexts such as high school and ivy league universities, as well as across different pursuits such as attaining a four-year and graduate degrees, and the successful completing military training.
Grit and beyond academics
Can the positive effects of grit be generalized beyond the educational context? Is there a relationship between grit and work performance? And does measuring someone’s “grittiness” meaningfully predict performance above and beyond other traits that have previously been shown to predict work performance?
The relationship between individual differences (e.g., personality traits, cognitive ability) and work performance has been well established in both research and practice. That is, gaining an accurate understanding of individuals’ traits, behavioral tendencies, motivational factors, and intellectual ability allows us to match those individuals to jobs and work environments that play to their strengths, thereby increasing the likelihood of both individual career success and company goal attainment.
For example, high levels of persuasiveness and sociability often support sales success, high levels of accommodation and detail focus often relate to providing good customer service, empathy and urgency often relate to strong supervisory performance, assertiveness and idea orientation allow the senior leader to communicate strategy in a compelling manner, etc.
It is also well-established that certain characteristics are related to work performance almost regardless of industry, organization, or job context. This includes a significant relationship between cognitive ability and performance in a wide range of job categories in which problem solving is a meaningful part of the job.
Much like cognitive ability, conscientiousness is another well-defined personality trait that supports work performance and career success almost regardless of type of role, tasks, organization or industry in which the individual works.
Gaining insight
In addition to this well-known relationship between work performance and conscientiousness, Caliper has found that traits such as perseverance, resilience, emotional control and focus (all traits related to grit) significantly enhance individuals’ success and when assessed in candidates, provide highly valuable insight into potential across a wide range of contexts including sales, leadership, service roles and even professional sports.
These traits relate to characteristics beyond dutifulness and self-discipline and tap into one’s self-efficacy, confidence as well as attributional style when assessing the causes of good and bad outcomes. Grit functions as a highly effective combination of these traits and provides predictive value that goes well beyond what measures of conscientiousness, work effort or effortful persistence have provided previously.
Assessing job candidates for combinations of traits that include such areas as level-headedness (emotional expressivity), stress tolerance, ego-strength (resiliency) and confidence, in addition to conscientiousness will provide great insight into not only candidates’ work ethic, but also how they are likely to react under a variety of adverse conditions and challenging contexts. This will remain a critical advantage, especially in highly complex, difficult, and potentially stress-inducing work environments that require focus on long-term goal attainment.
Tom Schoenfelder, Ph.D., leads a team of industrial/organizational psychologists, psychometricians, statisticians, and product development professionals to develop, deliver, and monitor all of Caliper’s research based products, services and processes. This involves processes ranging from maintaining and monitoring core psychometrics to conducting basic and applied research to advance scientific knowledge in the industrial/organizational psychology and organizational development disciplines.
