{"id":923,"date":"2017-04-12T08:56:04","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T12:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/?p=923"},"modified":"2017-04-14T08:36:08","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T12:36:08","slug":"why-grit-is-more-important-than-iq-when-youre-trying-to-become-successful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/2017\/04\/12\/why-grit-is-more-important-than-iq-when-youre-trying-to-become-successful\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Grit is More Important than IQ When You\u2019re Trying to Become Successful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/lisaquast\/2017\/03\/06\/why-grit-is-more-important-than-iq-when-youre-trying-to-become-successful\/#31137b277e45\">Forbes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You attended the party of a long-time friend and ran into a lot of people from high school that you hadn\u2019t seen in years. During chit-chat over appetizers and drinks, you could feel the friendly competition heating up.<\/p>\n<p>While comparing career accomplishments, you were shocked to learn that the kid from school with the genius IQ, the one all the teachers thought would be spectacularly successful, had struggled with his career.\u00a0<em>How could this be,<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>you wondered.\u00a0<em>This was the person everyone thought would invent something that would change the world.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It turns out that intelligence might not be the best indicator of future success. According to psychologist Angela Duckworth,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Grit-Passion-Perseverance-Angela-Duckworth\/dp\/1501111108\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1480296769&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=grit+the+power+of+passion+and+perseverance\">the secret to outstanding achievement isn\u2019t talent<\/a>. Instead, it\u2019s a special blend of persistence and passion that she calls \u201cgrit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Duckworth has spent years studying people, trying to understand what it is that makes high achievers so successful. And what she found surprised even her. It wasn\u2019t SAT scores. It wasn\u2019t IQ scores. It wasn\u2019t even a degree from a top-ranking business school that turned out to be the best predictor of success. \u201cIt was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special,\u201d Duckworth said. \u201cIn a word, they had grit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Being gritty, according to Duckworth, is the ability to\u00a0<em>persevere<\/em>. It\u2019s about being unusually resilient and hardworking, so much so that you\u2019re willing to continue on in the face of difficulties, obstacles and even failures. It\u2019s about being constantly driven to improve.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to perseverance, being gritty is also about being\u00a0<em>passionate<\/em>\u00a0about something. For the highly successful, Duckworth found that the journey was just as important as the end result. \u201cEven if some of the things they had to do were boring, or frustrating, or even painful, they wouldn\u2019t dream of giving up. Their passion was enduring.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What her research demonstrated is that it wasn\u2019t natural talent that made the biggest difference in who was highly successful and who wasn\u2019t \u2013 it was more about effort than IQ. Duckworth even came up with two equations she uses to explain this concept:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Talent x effort = skill<\/li>\n<li>Skill x effort = achievement<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cTalent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them,\u201d Duckworth explained.<\/p>\n<p>As you can see from the equations, effort counts twice. That\u2019s why IQ and SAT scores aren\u2019t a good indicator of someone\u2019s future success. It\u2019s because those scores are missing the most important part of the equation \u2013 the person\u2019s effort level or what Duckworth calls their \u201cgrittiness\u201d factor (their level of persistence and passion).<\/p>\n<p>What does that mean for you? It means that it\u2019s OK if you aren\u2019t the smartest person in the room or the smartest person in the job. It means the effort you expend toward your goals (perseverance) and your dedication throughout your career journey (passion) are what matter more than how you scored on your SAT or an IQ test.<\/p>\n<p>Why? Because grit will always trump talent. Or as Duckworth notes, \u201cOur potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Lisa Quast\u00a0is the\u00a0author of\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Secrets-Hiring-Manager-Turned-Career\/dp\/1936048132\/ref=la_B001K8A1VY_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1410464079&amp;sr=1-2\"><em>Secrets of a Hiring Manager Turned Career Coach: A Foolproof Guide to Getting the Job You Want.\u00a0Every\u00a0Time<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published by Forbes. You attended the party of a long-time friend and ran into a lot of people from high school that you hadn\u2019t seen in years. During chit-chat over appetizers and drinks, you could feel the friendly competition heating up. While comparing career accomplishments, you were shocked to learn that the kid from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2177,"featured_media":924,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29934],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice-from-students-and-alumni"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/files\/2017\/04\/Grit.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2177"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/richmondlawcdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}