Grit: and the 7 Habits of Those Who are Highly Successful…

Quotes from Stephen Covey

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a

habit.

Knowledge is the theoretical paradigm, the what to do and the why. Skill is the how to do. And

desire is the motivation, the want to do. In order to make something

a habit in our lives, we have to have all three.

AgendaThis Discussion

• What is grit?• Where do we start for the 7 habits?

• Effective goals

• Being proactive and staying on track?

• Begin with the end in mind

• Exercises to do • Tools for DN and MN members

• Discussion from attendees

• What is upcoming?

Comin Up Next…• How to plan so that your graduate work blends

easily with your life• Principles• Roles vs centeredness• What we can influence• Taking proactive to a new level• Understanding before being understood• Now look at your life/work/graduate work• Exercise• Tools to Help

• How to LOVE Your Masters or Doctoral Work in 2018

• What does it take to love something?• Beginning with the end in mind• Moving from individual to interdependent strength• Dynamic or Static decisions?• Centeredness, getting your needs met w/o trapping

yourself• Synergy• Sharpening the saw

What is grit?What do we know from research?

What is grit?• The ability to stick to it no matter what…

• But is stick to it, working harder what we want?• Not necessarily –

• Covey would say “we don’t want to work hard climbing a ladder, only to find it is propped against the wrong wall”

• So grit that really sticks first starts with our internal locus of control or metacognition – knowing ourselves

• So TRUE grit is first knowing ourselves/desires/goals and then sticking with the until we reap the benefits

Research into grit… 50% of us have it easier than others• Grit is the disposition to pursue long-term goals with sustained interest and effort over

time (Duckworth et al., 2007). The notion that sustained effort and focused interests are distinct from talent but equally vital to success has been discussed in the psychological literature for well over a century. In perhaps the earliest systematic inquiry into the psychological determinants of high achievement, Galton (1892) reviewed biographical information on prominent individuals in an array of disciplines including science, poetry, music, art, and the law. Galton proposed that talent was insufficient for eminent achievement. Rather, the most eminent individuals displayed ability combined with “zeal,” and the “capacity for hard labour” (p. 38).

Eskreis-Winkler, L., Shulman, E. P., Beal, S., & Duckworth, A. L. (2014). The grit effect: predicting retention in the military, the workplace, school and marriage. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(36). doi:https://dx.doi.org/10.3389%2Ffpsyg.2014.00036

Do you have zeal and the capacity for hard work?

• Five constructs – grit and elf-discipline, dutifulness, achievement striving

• Not like other facets of conscientiousness, grit denotes extreme stamina in terms of particular interests and applied effort toward these interests. Grit is not just about working hard on tasks at hand but, rather, working diligently toward the same higher-order goals over extremely long stretches of time.

• Grit correlates with finishing over all the others.

Hypothesis

• Do set backs discourage you? Enough to stop?

• Hypothesis – it helps to aim higher

• The 7 Habits of highly effective people are like the line this arrow runs on

How does Stephen Covey Fit?What are the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?

What are the 7 Habits? What will we be covering?Habits…

1. Individual effectiveness1. Be Proactive2. Begin with the end in mind3. Put first things first

2. Group Interdependence and Effective Growth

1. Think win-win2. Seek first to understand then be

understood3. Synergize

3. Rinse and Repeat1. Sharpen the saw

In our series…• Grit

• Effective goals• Be proactive• Begin with the end in mind

• Next week• Go deeper with principles and not • Go deeper into roles, centeredness and influence • Which allows us to move to thinking win-win and

understanding before being understood

• Loving your graduate work• First things first• Dynamic vs static decisions• Synergy • Sharpening the saw

Effective Goals• Focus on results

• Stir your heart

• Are based on principles (more later)

• Gives you important information about how to get where you want to go

• Unifies your efforts and energy within your sphere of influence (more later)

• Translates into daily activities so you experience control over your life

• You can see how they are achieved within the roles of your life and how they fit your personal mission (more on those later in this series)

Being Proactive

• The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values – carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.

• It is not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us or helps us.

Proactivity and Your Circle of Influence

Self control

Circle of Influence

Outside of your control

• Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase.

First things first

• Vision then Act

• Make Your Own Map

• Build habits that take you there, one step, one day at attime

Exercises

Exercise One: Building the Vision• List 3-5 people you admire or who have be influential or inspirational to you

• List 3-5 characteristics of those people each

• Notice those that over lap

• If you imagine yourself with those characteristics, how do you feel?

• Imagine and then write about your life after you have become the person you imagine

Knowledge: What to do

Desire: Want to

do

Skills: How to do it

HABIT

• Task:

• Think of the people you described in exercise one…

• Identify the various areas of your life you want to move ahead to bring your life in concert with the inspiration you get from those people give you– list each area across the top of a series of columns

• Within those plan 2 or 3 of the most important results you feel you should accomplish, run those down the column under each heading

• Are they within your circle of influence? If not, reconsider what is

• Consider how you feel when you look at that list and imagine the tasks complete? Energized? If so, good you are on track. Are you ready to set them as a goal?

Exercise Three: Putting a direction to building habits

Academic Example

• Task:

• Person you admire is a leader in your field – maybe your supervisor – qualities you admire are their quick brain, how much they know, maybe their kindness

• You identify that you want to understand more about your field and you wish you could respond with as much kindness as they do

• On column then is your field and the second is kindness• Are they within your circle of influence? Yes they are, as they are both responses from you that do not require

an outsider to agree

• In order to grow what do you need more of? Knowledge? Skill? Desire?

• What do you already have the most of in this area?

• Now you have analyzed what is important to you, the area(s) that would make you strong in building that habit and what you need more of in order to have the GRIT to do it.

Back to CoveyBringing Habit 1: Being Proactive to Grit

Being Proactive• The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the

proactive person. • You build a list of activities for the year that would be exciting and through which you

would learn more about your field –• You commit to treating people well.

• It is not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us or helps us. So you make it to the first couple of new activities/lectures etc and you are conscious of being nicer.• BUT… stuff happens – you miss a lecture, you snap at a friend

• Are you ready to be proactive about the goals you came up with?• What does it take to stay on track?• What does it take to come back to on track?

Covey’s Proactive Model

Stimulus Freedom to Choose

Self Awareness Imagination Conscience Independent Will

Response

Knowledge: What to do

Desire: Want to

do

Skills: How to do it

Covey’s Proactive Model with Grit

Stimulus Freedom to Choose

Self Awareness Imagination Conscience Independent Will

Response

Past Sucess

This week…• Do the exercises, choose a few goals, plan some steps, do them, see what

happens.

Next week • We go deeper into thinking about a plan for work-life

• Principles• Roles vs centeredness• What we can influence• Taking proactive to a new level• Understanding before being understood• Now look at your life/work/graduate work• Exercise• Tools to Help

Tools from DN & MN Portals

Tools to add ease to your Masters/Doctoral habits• Add knowledge

• Do the self assessments on your control panel – check your work against the criteria for examination

• What Does It Take to Graduate This Year? Part One: Backward-Mapping• Transferable skills boxed set

• Add skill• Video: Strategic Planning for Graduate Students• 30 day writing challenge• Critical thinking boxed set

• Add inspiration (the desire is all yours of course)• 365 motivational emails• E-motivations under resources• You-tube of the week – also under resources menu

What’s coming?• Webinars

https://www.bigmarker.com/communities/doctoralnet/conferences• Improve your reading• Plan for work-life• Conducting mixed methods• Love this graduate year!

• Groups coming in Feb once a month – will be listed as webinars• Prep for your final document• Lingerers

• New Content• Boxed sets – sign up now under resources menu• Webinars will be privately on youtube with tabs• Academic writing once a week tips