11 Leveraging Strengths
Part of taking personal responsibility for your life is setting goals and achieving them. Understanding your personal strengths and then leveraging them can help you reach your goals. Read and watch the resources in this chapter to learn more about leveraging your strengths.
Leveraging Strengths
Reflect for a moment on the phrases, “Success is never final” and “Failure is not an option.” What do you think of these statements? Do you feel they’re contradictory or complementary? Are there problems with these statements? Think about which of them you identify more with. Why?
Personal leadership includes self-efficacy: the belief in your own abilities and strengths that helps you know you can accomplish the task or goal at hand. Even after you’ve succeeded in a particular area, there may be setbacks. And how you handle those setbacks is a test of your personal leadership. This is where grit and resilience come in.
While it’s important to recognize and work on your weaknesses, focusing on where you excel may provide you with better results or successes. Tom Rath, author of the Strengths Finder 2.0 (Gallup Press, 2007), shows how we all have strengths, but some strengths are more pronounced than others. Instead of focusing on your weaknesses, the emphasis here is on using your strengths, even your lesser developed ones, to accomplish your goals.
In addition to leveraging grit and resilience, the assignments in this lesson focus on helping you develop your strengths. both personal strengths and those identified through strength based assessments. The focus on strengths is derived from Positive Psychology, pioneered by Martin Seligman. See Seligman’s Ted Talk below:
Martin Seligman, “The New Era of Positive Psychology” (00:23:42)
For supplemental reading on the strengths-based movement in college, download a short article on the topic here: Building a Strengths-Based Campus
Reference: Soria, K. M., & Stubblefield, R. (January 01, 2015), Building a Strengths-Based Campus to Support Student Retention, Journal of College Student Development, 56, 6, 626-631.)
GRIT: PASSION + PERSEVERANCE
So where does grit fit in? Grit is a way of seeing oneself through adversity and becoming excellent. Grit is “passion and perseverance.” See Angela Duckworth’s video below.
Angela Lee Duckworth: “The key to success? Grit.” (00:06:12)
Take Duckworth’s grit scale assessment here. Forbes Magazine summarized and questioned Duckworth’s work with a list of grit characteristics here .
How would you summarize grit? Have you shown “grittiness” in your own life? What are some experiences you’ve had where you’ve shown it? What are some things that you might do to attain or enhance grit like characteristics?
GRIT and RESILIENCE
In an interview Duckworth discussed the questions in her grit scale assessment and makes an important distinction between grit and resilience. Duckworth stated, “[T]he [grit scale] questions are about responding resiliently to situations of failure and adversity or being a hard worker. The other half of the questionnaire is about having consistent interests—focused passions—over a long time. That doesn’t have anything to do with failure and adversity. It means that you choose to do a particular thing in life and choose to give up a lot of other things in order to do it. And you stick with those interests and goals over the long term. So grit is not just having resilience in the face of failure, but also having deep commitments that you remain loyal to over many years.”
Here’s an example of someone who showed grit. Diana Nyad shares here story as a 64 year old swimmer who swam from Cuba to Florida.
Diana Nyad: “Never, Ever Give Up.” (00:15:35)
As you complete the assignments connected to this lesson, keep in mind that grittiness can be learned, even through failure.
GETTING IT RIGHT
You know when you’re getting it right when your mindset helps you persevere through moments of challenge or failure. Consider adopting Camille Farrington’s four key beliefs (a summary of growth mindset research) for that challenging class.
1. I belong in this academic community.
2. My ability and competence grow with my effort.
3. I can succeed at this.
4. This work has value for me.