Grit is More Important Than Talent
Hard work is getting a bad rap.
Go all the way back to E-Impact 30 for some strong thoughts on this subject.
Here we are though at E-impact 99. Let’s say there has been plenty of hard work in keeping up with this blog. I don’t want to give myself too much credit but there has been significant effort.
It doesn’t matter if I’m working, on vacation, sick, quarantined (you could argue that this is helpful to writing), or if my esteemed editor (my wife, mrsdepasquale.com) is either of those. I always produce an article.
Thankfully, I’m normally not short of thoughts. They’re not always coherent (maybe this helps the blog) but they are there and I have developed the muscle that allows me to put them on paper (the web).
Grit
Climb the mountain of hard work.
Even though I just mentioned that I have built a writing skill, the key to my efforts is grit.
Grit is designed as:
courage and resolve; strength of character
It takes courage to put one’s thoughts out there. It takes a strong character to stick up for something. I’m still uncomfortable saying these things about myself but I’ve realized over the past year that I learn so much from people who have built a skill recently (or are in the act) and can share. It’s fresh in their mind and something they still appreciate. It’s not taken for granted.
These people can teach something and also provide motivation to display grit. This is an amazingly powerful combination.
The Impactmaker Movement will benefit greatly if we express grit in learning today’s relevant skills.
Learning
Just about all of the previous 98 editions of the blog were designed to teach something. A good example is E-Impact 64. This happens to be one of my favorite related to “selling” positive impact.
Most would agree that learning is extremely important. Read 10 Helpful Habits to Develop a Lifelong Learning Mindset for help with training this. If it is indeed important, then I hope and pray that my efforts are effective.
Let these article teach and motivate.
Football Camp
One of the best examples of teaching and motivation in my life comes from playing football - go figure.
When I was in high school, some of my teammates and I would attend a football camp in central Florida. I have many stories from these days but one sticks out in this case.
These camps were crammed into a long weekend. We would practice ten times in 4 days. Yes, ten! We would drive up on a Friday and practice twice, get after it three times on Saturday and Sunday, and practice twice on Monday before driving home. Grit was definitely involved.
Some of the best players from across the state (and I believe other states) would be there. It was an opportunity to improve your skills and display your talent (and character).
One year we learned a new drill that was designed to help you catch balls in traffic (not automobile traffic, sorry for the industry lingo). Receivers would run a “curl” route where they would run about twelve yards and stop and run on an angle back towards the quarterback. To simulate “traffic” there would be multiple people surrounding you when you turned around. They would hit you and try to distract you from catching the ball.
I’m going to risk praising myself again. My teammates and I were good. We didn’t often struggle to get open and so catches in traffic were rare. This drill provided a nice challenge as if we were covered well but still had to catch the ball. This would be helpful for those of us that played on the next level with better competition.
The challenge of this drill created a competitive environment and I believe the coaches and volunteering college players intended this. They did a great job of teaching us how to catch the ball with people around you and giving us motivation to get better (so that we could out perform our fellow campers).
This drill put us out of our comfort zone and it didn’t matter what level of talent anyone had. It was mostly a new scenario for everyone and the hardest worker would win the informal competition.
We were learning and doing at the same time. The leaders created the perfect atmosphere for positive impact (in this case that impact was making teenagers better football players).
Making it Relevant
I’m clearly a fan of training. But, how is this relevant to life and The Impactmaker Movement?
It depends.
You have to think about what season you are in. If you are at an advanced place in your business or impact project, this might be a lesson that you can share with your team.
Never miss a chance to learn as a team.
Here are some suggestions:
Ask them to evaluate their skills
Determine what they feel needs improvement
Create (or hire someone to) a “football camp” type environment
Teach the skill
Instill the motivation
Evaluate and apply grit to your own situation.
Notice how number six takes it back to you. You should always apply to your own situation. This is lifelong learning.
If you are in a situation where you know you need to learn something yourself, here’s a process to get there:
Research the skill - Who has it? Where did they learn it? Where is it applied best? What do the people that apply it have in common?
Ask questions - Reach out to the people from number one. Ask general questions in your social media circles (Twitter is great for this).
Find a community - You can’t do it alone. More minds mean faster learning and more motivation, healthy competition, accountability, compounding
Challenge yourself - Or else, someone will. Define your struggle because it’s easier to stick with what you want.
Measure effort - Don’t focus on results. Focus on completing the work; the grit.
Apply lessons early and often - The sooner you start using what you’ve learned the sooner it will benefit you and the faster you’ll advance.
Speed Kills
Sticking with the football theme, we always desire things and people to be faster. Coaches and general managers wants faster players and they want good things to happen sooner. It’s an impatient world just like the world seems to be in general.
Speed was the All-Consuming Obsesssion of Al Davis’ Raiders is a great example of why speed does kill, but maybe not how you think. The saying is generally used in a positive light.
It’s obvious that someone who can run faster than another will perform better in a one-on-one sprint scenario. However, the game of football includes much nuance and change of direction, or agility, and is more important in most scenarios. The same goes for the impact space.
Al Davis is the late owner of the National Football League’s (NFL) Raiders. They currently reside in Las Vegas but have had multiple homes over the years. Davis would often look at a prospect’s 40-yard dash time and draft them based on that number. It hurt in many situations as he would use very high draft picks on players who were otherwise unproven. In other words, speed was killing his team because he was drafting players just for that and not for their ability to play the sport.
Speed kills grit too. It’s the perfect tortoise and the hare example. Hard work is not rushing. In fact, rushing is not actually that hard.
What if one of those football players is lifting weights to train themselves to be a better athlete? It doesn’t make sense for them to rush through the exercise. It will ruin their form, train the wrong muscle, risk injury, and limit effectiveness. It’s easier to use momentum to swing the weight back and forth but what works the best is controlling the weight and making it harder. This is an example of choosing your stress.
The athlete would prefer burning muscles and an increased heart rate over a back injury and structural pain.
The impactmaker would prefer making technical mistakes related to the skill they are training over careless messaging.
Don’t rush.
A Dual Purpose
The Impactmaker Movement needs grit to push forward learning and to motivate others.
The most talented athletes and the most gifted communicators are not effective at the highest levels without the proper effort.
Solely talent is only effective in instances of mediocrity.
The NFL is the highest level of football. Talent alone will not win. The Impactmaker Movement is the highest level of intuition about positive impact in the world. Talent alone will not win.
The reason why the above is true is because talent doesn’t teach. Grit makes progress and and allows for learning along the way. This is why the best leaders allow their team to take action as they learn. Again, it’s compounding.
Application
It’s a good idea to ask yourself in any process if you, and anyone else involved, is learning and doing. This insures there is application of the lessons.
I’ve spent thirteen years working in the financial world. Thankfully, I’ve been applying since day one. It might seems like ages ago and that the early stages were very simple, but they were the building blocks of my career.
Don’t underestimate the early forms of application even if they seem easy. Keep pushing and finding the challenge you have defined.
Remember that your hard work is motivation to those in your immediate circle and the rest of us impactmakers. This is why I always ask to hear from you at the end of Speaking of Impact episodes. Hit me up @bdepa on IG or Twitter!
If mediocre isn’t good enough, you’ll be gritty.