What is the best predictor of your healthcare team’s success? Is it the IQ of your employees or their talent, training, and experience? Could it be team leadership, resources, and support? Or is it team composition, communication, or innovation that will be the best predictor of team success?
Although each of these team characteristics is important, the No. 1 predictor of team success very well may be grit. That’s the assertion of Thomas H. Lee and Angela L. Duckworth(1) based on decades of their respective experiences and findings as a clinician and a researcher. Lee and Duckworth say, “Grit predicts who will accomplish challenging goals.” Others agree and among these is Kristen Hamilton,(2) who says, “It’s not smarts, it’s not talent, it’s not even luck or chance that separates the risers from the fallers – it’s grit.” Phil Blair(3) adds, “It’s ‘grit,’ more than anything else … because grit will always trump talent.”
What Is Grit?
Grit is a relatively new term in personal, employee, and team development. Simply defined, an individual or team that has grit has the passion, drive, and stick-to-itiveness needed to achieve their long-term goals. Grit differs from conscientiousness in its emphasis on long-term stamina rather than short-term intensity. It differs from self-control in its specification of consistent goals and interests.
A team that lacks grit does not have what it takes to keep going full tilt in the pursuit of long-term goals, especially in the face of struggles, disappointments, obstacles, and failures. Without grit, a team will be unlikely to excel, even if its members are the most brilliant and talented employees in your healthcare organization. Without gritty teams, your front-line healthcare providers and your organization may not be able to achieve their goals, either. Hamilton says, “I’ll add – grit isn’t just working hard; it’s continuing that effort long after the fat lady has begun singing. It’s finishing the race when you’re dead last. It’s seeing failure as a simple, necessary step to achieve what you want. To me, grit is an indomitable spirit.”
Patients have long depended on the grit of individual physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, technicians, and other healthcare professionals. But in modern healthcare, providing superior care has become so complex that no lone practitioner can do it all, no matter how driven or talented that individual may be. Lee and Duckworth say, “Today great care requires great collaboration — gritty teams of clinicians [and support staff] who all relentlessly push for improvement.” In addition, Lee and Duckworth urge, “Health care institutions must exhibit grit across the entire provider system” to achieve their goals.
In this article, we explore workplace grit with an eye toward how you can develop grit in your healthcare team. As you’ll see, it’s going to take a lot more than you encouraging your team from the sidelines to keep going when the going gets tough. You must lay the foundation for a gritty team well before your team’s grit will be tested. We’ll get to developing that foundation shortly. First, let’s understand how grit has become such an important concept in work team development.
A Brief History of Workplace Grit
The concept of grit as it relates to workplace success was popularized by Angela Duckworth, Christopher Peterson, Michael D. Matthews, and Dennis Kelly in 2007.(4) The researchers defined grit as the quality of being able to sustain your passions and work very hard at them, over sometimes disappointingly long periods of time. In this and later work, Duckworth argued that individuals with grit can overcome stress and use their own failures as a means to achieve their ultimate goals. Duckworth and others developed a measure of grit (see the sidebar that accompanies this article) and used it to predict successful outcomes among various groups from West Point cadets to the Scripps National Spelling Bee contestants to students in the Chicago public schools. In various studies, participants with high levels of grit consistently prevailed over those with high IQs.
In 2016, Duckworth’s book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance(5) became a New York Times bestseller. Duckworth’s theory caught on among the public as audiences from elementary school teachers to U.S. Army generals wanted to know how to make their charges gritty. However, skeptics did not readily accept Duckworth’s grit theory, arguing that grit’s contribution to success has been overstated. In 2019, Duckworth, Angela Quirk, Robert Gallow, and Michael D. Matthews(6) explored grit in the context of other factors that influence success. They concluded that grit, while important, if not essential, is just one of the ingredients necessary for success. Kristen Weir(7) quotes Duckworth as saying, “The story of success isn’t a simple one, and there isn’t one single characteristic that predicts success over all others.” Research on this topic continues today. Nonetheless, grit continues to be regarded as an extremely important ingredient in the success of an individual or a workplace team, thanks to the work of Duckworth and other researchers.
How to Hire Employees with Grit: Eight Strategies
Building gritty teams begins with the recruitment and selection of job candidates who have grit. What should you be looking for during recruitment? Lee and Duckworth suggest, “The two critical components of grit are passion and perseverance.” Passion, they say, comes from intrinsic interest in your craft and from a sense of purpose — the conviction that your work is meaningful, matters, and helps others. Although passion and perseverance are required in spades in healthcare careers, do not take that as a given. Not every job candidate will interpret and appreciate their purpose the way that the rest of your team does.
Perseverance takes two forms, and both are important. The first is resilience in the face of adversity; the second is an unwavering devotion to continuous improvement. That means that the ideal candidate will come on board with passion, a sense of purpose, resilience, and the commitment to continuous improvement for themselves and the organization that employs them. It will be your job to figure out if the candidates you consider have these characteristics. Here are eight strategies to help you do that during the recruitment process:
Look for evidence that the candidate demonstrates big-picture thinking. Ask job candidates why they want the job and why the job matters to them. Do they focus on low-level tasks that are a means to an end? Or do they place what they would do as a member of your team in the context of increasing patients’ quality and length of life? Those who speak of more important, broader, and loftier goals may have the single-minded determination that characterizes the grittiest candidates, Lee and Duckworth suggest.
Assess whether the candidate’s goals align with those of the rest of your team. Lee and Duckworth warn, “Assembling a group of gritty people does not necessarily create a gritty organization.” It instead could yield a disorganized team of driven individuals, each pursuing a separate passion.
Ask behavioral questions. Pay close attention at interviews to the challenges the candidate faced and the obstacles and setbacks they encountered. Jobya(8) suggests you ask questions such as, “Can you tell me about a time when you had to learn a challenging new skill to complete a project or implement a new system? And how did you approach the learning process?” John Sullivan(9) suggests that you ask candidates about their biggest failure to date, or a major crisis, and how they dealt with it. Sullivan urges, “Ask broader questions too, such as, ‘How do you deal with setbacks?’ and ‘How do you cope with pressure?’”
Ask hypothetical questions. Present hypothetical scenarios that require adapting to unexpected changes or overcoming obstacles. Ask candidates what they would do if their first attempts failed. Observe candidates’ thought process and reactions. Ask them what they want to learn to improve themselves professionally and how they plan to go about it. Encourage them to describe their past self-improvement efforts, goals, and learning experiences.
Use role plays. Role-play exercises simulate challenging work scenarios, allowing candidates to showcase their problem-solving skills, adaptability, and resilience in real-time. Testlify(10) says, “Observing how candidates respond to unexpected obstacles and pressures can provide valuable insights into their ability to remain composed and find effective solutions.” Pay close attention if you sense that the candidate would run out of ideas or give up easily.
Be on the lookout for factors that can limit a candidate’s resilience. It’s best to hire employees who already have had their resilience tested. Hamilton says, “When I hire, I look for the person who failed the first time around and came back a second time with an arsenal. I don’t just want the risk-takers, I want the people who use those risks and failures to learn. Grit is resilience.” Eliza Taylor(11) has identified five factors that can constrain an individual’s resilience, any of which may be a red flag during an interview. These are lack of social support, negative thought patterns, inflexibility, isolation, and poor coping skills. Personal insecurities and a fear of failure also may inhibit resilience. Taylor adds, “External factors such as chronic stress, financial instability, or a toxic work environment can act as formidable barriers [to resilience], eroding an individual’s capacity to cope effectively.”
Use interviews, not questionnaires. Don’t use questionnaires to assess grit in job candidates. Lee and Duckworth warn, “Questionnaires are useful for research and self-reflection, but because they’re easy to game, we don’t recommend using them as hiring tools.” Instead, conduct interviews and review the applicant’s track record. In particular, look for multiyear commitments and objective evidence of advancement and achievement, as opposed to frequent lateral moves. Jobya adds that it can be helpful to examine the candidate’s history of employment to uncover patterns of adaptability and resilience, such as recovering from a job loss or industry shifts.
Check references for grit. Ask references whether the candidate has bounced back from disappointments or failure in the past, demonstrated flexibility and stick-to-it-iveness when dealing with unexpected obstacles, and/or sustained a habit of continuous self-improvement. Lee and Duckworth suggest, “Most of all, look for signs [from references] that people are driven by a purpose bigger than themselves, one that resonates with the mission of your organization.”
Creating an Environment that Fosters Grit
Creating and fostering a team that has grit often is easier said than done. Jacquelyn Brassey, Aaron De Smet, and Dana Maor(12) explain, “Human beings have a natural affinity for order, predictability, and control. They will do everything they can to avoid chaos, uncertainty, and volatility.” Creating the right environment can help organizations foster grit even in times of confusion, stress, and uncertainty.
Grit can be strengthened in environments where employees feel challenged by their work but not that they’ve been thrown to the wolves. Lee and Duckworth say, “The optimal environment will be both demanding and supportive.” Ideally, you’ll ask your employees to meet high expectations, but do so only after you define those expectations clearly and choose ones that are challenging but feasible. Don’t set the bar so low that your employees’ work becomes dull and unmotivating. Yet, avoid demands that are so high that they will create a constantly tense environment in which employees are likely to experience burnout. That will encourage them to stop trying or look for greener pastures. Offer your team the psychological safety, trust, and resources they need to take risks, make mistakes, and keep learning. Then, reframe their setbacks and failures as opportunities and encourage employees to bounce forward from them, not back.
An environment that fosters grit is one where grit is valued and celebrated. Become a grit role model by sharing with your team your passion for your work, how you keep learning and growing, and how you have faced and overcome challenges. Encourage employees to do the same and ask them to share their stories with one another. Reinforce moments of grit by highlighting excellent examples of it when you see it. Show your team that grit is held in high regard in your organization by including it in performance evaluations and thanking them for having grit when the going got tough. Often, the best environments for fostering grit are those in which employees feel seen and believe that their extra efforts are appreciated.
Senior leaders can help foster grit by pointing their teams toward a common North Star — for instance, some shared objectives and core principles or values (such as purpose, integrity, authenticity) that employees can cling to. For example, a leader may set a core value of “putting patients first in all we do.” Brassey et al., say, “That North Star can be a source of stability when a new entrant upends the market and teams need to quickly … learn new skills or adopt new ways of working.” That specific North Star reminds your team that no matter what happens, there is and always will be a need for them to put your patients first.
An environment that fosters grit also is one in which each employee is held accountable. Employees will find the strength to keep going when they feel that everyone on their team is pulling their weight and that they, alone, are not shouldering a huge burden. John Hall(13) says, “When members of an organization are held responsible for their actions, it creates a healthier, happier, and safer working environment where everyone can focus on work instead of dealing with colleagues’ inappropriate actions or behavior.” We can chalk up to human nature our tendency to notice what our colleagues are or are not doing; few among us want to give it our all when we see others around us coasting with ease, or worse, loafing.
Grit and Healthcare Teams
Did you know that healthcare teams naturally may be grittier than other types of workplace teams? That has everything to do with healthcare’s mission and the necessity of having teams to accomplish healthcare’s shared goals.
In healthcare, teams often are defined by the population they serve (for example, patients with breast cancer) or the site where they work (such as the coronary care unit). Lee and Duckworth say, “While gritty team members may have their own professional goal hierarchies, each must embrace the team’s high-level goal — typically, a team-specific objective.” For example, a team-specific objective may be to “improve our prostate cancer patients’ outcomes.” That, in turn, supports the organization’s overarching goal. Lee and Duckworth warn that many people working in healthcare may associate commitment to a team with the loss of autonomy, which can have negative connotations. However, they say, “Gritty people view it as an opportunity to provide better care for their patients.” They see the whole as greater than the sum of its parts, recognizing that they can achieve more for their patients as a team than as individuals. In fact, your employees may have been drawn to working in healthcare in the first place because they enjoy the idea of being part of a team.
The hallmarks of healthcare’s integrated practice units (IPUs) are commitment to a shared purpose, a focus on constant improvement, and mutual trust. Lee and Duckworth say, “These multidisciplinary units provide the full cycle of care for a group of patients, usually those with the same condition or closely related conditions.” Because IPUs focus on well-defined segments of patients with similar needs, meaningful data can be collected on their costs and outcomes. That means that the value a unit creates can be measured, optimized, and rewarded. IPUs can gather the feedback they need to keep getting better, which, in turn, reinforces team resilience and grit.
Although healthcare organizations may have an advantage in fostering team grit over other types of organizations, you cannot assume that team grit will develop and grow on its own. It will be up to you to help your employees value the strength of working in teams with passion and purpose. Team grit will be especially challenged when the chips are down and when no one beyond your corner of the world seems to notice or care how hard your team is working. For that, team grit must be fostered at the organizational level.
Nine Ways Healthcare Organizations Can Foster Team Grit
Organizations that foster team grit are those that can bring clarity and strategy to their goals. They are the ones that make their goal hierarchies explicit. Lee and Duckworth warn, “If an organization declares that it has multiple missions, and can’t prioritize them, it will have difficulty making good strategic choices.” Also, organizations that foster team grit are those that choose objectives that generate employee buy-in. Healthcare organizations can undermine and deter grit when they choose objectives that their teams won’t embrace. Lee and Duckworth explain, “In health care, making cost cutting or growth in market share the top priority is unlikely to resonate with caregivers whose passion is improving outcomes that matter to patients.” That is why, Lee and Duckworth say, “In our experience, every gritty health care organization has a primary goal of putting patients first.”
Of course, even when the high-level goal is clear and appropriate, rhetoric alone won’t suffice to promote it. Even worse, ambiguous or wrong words can backfire and do more harm than good. Leaders will undermine their credibility if they don’t use the goals they set to make decisions. Below are nine ways organizations and their leaders can foster team grit.
Engage employees in an appreciative inquiry program. The appreciative inquiry model is a positive, strengths-based organizational approach to development and collective learning. Catherine Moore(14) says, “It is a way to engage groups of people in self-determined change.” Appreciative inquiry focuses on what’s working, rather than on what’s not working, and leads people to co-designing their future. Lee and Duckworth point to the example of the Cleveland Clinic, where all employees engaged in a half-day appreciative inquiry program. Lee and Duckworth explain, “Personnel in various roles sat at tables of about 10 and discussed cases in which the care a patient received had made them proud. The perspectives of physicians, nurses, janitors, and administrative staff were intertwined, and the focus was on positive real-life examples that captured Cleveland Clinic at its best.” Each group addressed two questions: What made the care great in this instance? How can Cleveland Clinic make that greatness happen every time?
Establish social norms that support the top-level organizational goal. For example, an organization may make it a social norm to have clinicians respond to questions about patients immediately, even if that means they must pull over when they are driving or excuse themselves from a meeting. Or it may be a social norm to make eye contact with every patient when greeting them.
Don’t accept the status quo. Change in a healthcare organization can be a true test of leadership. Lee and Duckworth explain, “Healthcare is full of people who are well trained and work hard — but often are not receptive to hearing that change is needed.” However, a goal of “preserving our greatness” will not be a compelling argument for change or an attraction for gritty employees. Instead, the focus should be on patients, not on providing pleasant service. Organizations that foster gritty teams are on the endless quest to meet patients’ medical and emotional needs.
Develop a growth mindset. A growth mindset is simply the belief that our basic abilities can and should be developed and improved through dedication and hard work. Tchiki Davis(15) explains, “It’s not so much that this belief is some kind of magic. It’s just that without a growth mindset, we don’t exert the required effort and so we remain perpetually stuck.” One way that organizations can develop a growth mindset is to embrace the notion that “not yet” is OK. They can teach their teams that when they are struggling with a task to remind themselves that they haven’t mastered it “yet”. Another strategy organizations can use is to encourage employees to take risks in front of others. Davis says, “Be willing to make mistakes in front of others, because if you’re growing, this is bound to happen.”
Seize crisis opportunities. Crises offer special opportunities to exercise team grit. Lee and Duckworth say, “Organizations that have provided care after natural disasters or terrorist attacks have found that the experience leads to powerful bonding, a reinforced sense of purpose, the desire to excel, and a renewed commitment to organizational goals.”
Develop gritty leaders. Gritty organizations ensure that their leaders are resilient and adaptable, and that they can serve as grit role models. That means that healthcare leaders who want to develop gritty teams should personify the passion and perseverance that we associate with grit. They must provide a visible, authoritative role model for every other person in the organization. In their personal interactions, they must be demanding, keeping standards high, and supportive. Ronald A. Riggio(16) suggests, “Grit is a bit like a muscle. Exercise it and it gets stronger. Surround yourself with gritty people — those who can push you and support you to achieve your goals.”
Create a learning culture. Organizations that develop gritty teams encourage them to learn something new. Blair says, “We develop grit when we believe we can learn something and we work to do it.” At first the learning objective can be anything, just something that’s hard and new that you’ve never done. Blair suggests, “Get a mentor and put some time and effort into crafting a new skill.” As teams work on learning new things, they’ll gain confidence in their ability to learn. Blair says, “You will be amazed at what happens next; you’ll inspire them! They’ll believe they can do anything and they’ll be right.”
Focus on improvement rather than perfection. Gritty employees realize that they are human beings with flaws and imperfections. Organizations can encourage gritty teams by creating a culture of improvement rather than one that demands perfection.
Shine a light on grit. Organizations that develop gritty teams talk about grit so everyone knows what it looks like and why it is so important. Leaders within the organization can brainstorm how they can develop grit to improve their teams’ performance. They can ask their employees to read about grit and discuss it with them at staff meetings. Also, managers can send employees personalized cards to express their appreciation and gratitude for their gritty behavior.
How Consistency Builds Grit
Consistency can be a challenge for any type of goal. Yet, Michael Teti(17) says, “If a team is to have grit, then it must understand that consistency is its heartbeat.” Consistency is the gritty team’s best friend — a better tool for building grit than motivation. Make Me Better(18) explains, “When it comes to achieving long-term goals, many people rely on motivation to get started. While motivation can be a great kick-starter, it’s often fleeting. Consistency, on the other hand, is the steady force that brings lasting results and strengthens grit.”
Teams build grit by consistently showing up and living up to their commitments, especially on days when their motivation wanes. That’s because motivation often is emotional and short-lived. It may surge after a motivational speech or a successful start, but it typically fades when the journey gets tough. Consistency, on the other hand, is sustainable. Make Me Better says, “When you commit to regular action, you’re creating a foundation that makes progress possible even when motivation is absent.” Sticking to a routine or living up to a commitment, especially when it’s difficult, will prove to your team that nothing can or will derail them from their goals.
These five practices will help your team to become more consistent in their efforts:
Establish routines. Consistency transforms one-off actions into habits. Routines will make it easier for your team to push forward without relying on willpower alone.
Promote mental toughness. Hold your team accountable. Do not allow excuses to creep into team culture.
Encourage iterative improvement. Help your team see how consistency will help them refine their techniques, learn from mistakes, and steadily enhance their performance.
Drive incremental progress. Small, regular steps, taken consistently, will build momentum and accumulate over time, leading your team to significant achievements. Break larger team goals into smaller ones.
Celebrate milestones. Reinforce consistency by rewarding your team for small wins along the way.
Effective Ways to Teach Grit to Your Team
The most effective way to build team grit is to involve them in the process. That will help them to take ownership and encourage them to foster and reinforce grit in themselves and in one another.
To begin, share Angela Duckworth’s(19) six-minute TED Talk about the passion and perseverance of GRIT. Or share one or two or the resources about team grit from the references listed at the end of this article. Then, meet with your team to discuss grit and teach them Paul G. Stoltz’s(20) GRIT acronym (GRIT) to help them remember and use the attributes of a grit mindset. Table 1 summarizes Stoltz’s GRIT Acronym; share it with your team.
Demonstrate to your team that they already have grit by giving them examples of grit you’ve observed in them. Use Stoltz’s GRIT acronym to highlight their growth, resilience, instinct, and tenacity, especially in the face of a big challenge. Then ask them to share additional stories of grit both at work and in their personal lives. Highlight those that speak strongly to daily discipline, optimism, and overcoming setbacks.
Then, most importantly, ask your employees to make a commitment to their own grit, both individually and as a team. Ben Fanning(21) warns, “Leaders often pass down goals to their team members but rarely ask for their commitment to those goals. Many leaders assume that the team is committed, and this is a mistake.” A better strategy is to ask for your team’s initial commitment to their own grit, then regularly ask if they are still committed to having the grit to achieve their goals. If they waver, or you sense that they are not fully committed, Fanning suggests that you have another conversation with your team seeking their renewed commitment. Do this right away, Fanning urges, not at the end of the year when it is annual review time. By then, your ability to renew their commitment will be hampered by the passage of time.
Continue to teach grit building topics at your staff meetings and training programs. Hamilton suggests that if teams want to have grit, there will be specific attributes you will ask of them. Each of these could be a topic for a staff training:
Know how to fail. Innovation requires failure, yet schools continue to teach us to avoid it. Engage your team in a discussion of potentially harmful and beneficial ways to fail, drawing upon real and hypothetical examples.
Forget the grade. Grit requires working hard without the need for recognition and applause. Hamilton suggests that you ask employees, “You want to be gritty? Put in your time — not for your own betterment, but for the team’s betterment. Be dependable and follow through for your team. Make it your goal to show up for something bigger than you.” Then, engage your team in a discussion about that “bigger than you” thing that drives them. If they can’t identify anything, start with their personal lives. For example, some of them may say that they work hard on being the best parent possible, without the need for recognition. Then, explore how they can bring that same level of passion to their work.
Be an owner. Grit requires you to own your own development. Hamilton suggests that you tell your team, “If you want to learn something, don’t wait. Go after it with everything you’ve got.” Engage your team in a discussion about their learning — what they’ve learned through the trainings your organization has provided, and what they’ve learned on their own. Ask them to share their best learning tools and resources. Guide them to create learning goals, learning strategies, and, perhaps, learning communities. Explore obstacles to their learning, and what they can do to overcome them.
Throw away your entitlement. Help your team see that their credentials and experience, while important, do not alone reveal who they truly are. Hamilton says, “Being authentic and present in your own skin and not relying on any name, person or score — that’s grit. That’s what we want to see.” Engage your team in a discussion about authenticity. Put them in pairs or small groups to identify their special gifts and uniqueness. Then reunite them into the larger group for sharing and discussion. Create a list of your team’s best attributes and discuss how to build on them. Also identify new attributes your team wishes to develop and how they can do that.
Live outside your comfort zone. When we quit, we become safe in our comfort zone. We say, “This is too hard and I’m not comfortable doing that hard thing.” However, living outside one’s comfort zone is not only possible, but often desirable. Hamilton says, “It sounds cliché, but it’s grit at its finest.” Help your team to become comfortable in the uncomfortable. Teach them how to live with unknowns, fear, and surprises. Every time your team members encounter suffering or adversity is an opportunity to strengthen their resolve. Help them to identify that opportunity. Explore how they’ve dealt with being outside of their comfort zone before, and what they can do now so they will thrive when they become uncomfortable.
Recite daily grit affirmations. Affirmations are positive statements aimed at fostering self-improvement and boosting self-esteem. Regular repetition of affirmations can modify negative thought patterns and behaviors, potentially leading to improved mental health and well-being. Create and recite grit affirmations with your team, such: Setbacks don’t discourage me. I don’t give up easily. I am a hard worker. I finish what I begin.
The Dark Side of Grit
Grit typically is viewed as a positive trait that helps individuals and teams overcome obstacles and achieve their goals. However, excessive grit or grit misapplied or taken too far can be detrimental to your team. Eric Schnell(22) says, “Just as grit can polish metal, too much grit can wear you down, leading to physical and emotional exhaustion.”
Although grit enables us to achieve our goals, your team must learn to balance their gritty determination with periods of flow — what Julian Lewis(23) defines as “that state of effortless focus and creativity where tasks feel less like hard work and more like natural progress.” Without a healthy balance of grit to flow, a gritty team quickly can fall into the trap of burnout, losing their motivation and enthusiasm for what once inspired them.
Moreover, even the grittiest, most resilient teams need breaks to step back and recharge. Taking breaks when needed will prevent and reduce stress, elevate mood, improve physical health and overall wellbeing, restore motivation, improve concentration, fuel creativity, improve memory and learning, prevent fatigue, and increase productivity. Be careful not to overemphasize perseverance no matter what. Equally important is teaching your team how and when to pause and recalibrate. Lewis says, “The key is finding the sense to know when to push forward and when to take a break.”
Grit will be very hard if not impossible to achieve among teams that lack self-discipline and self-control. Vicki Zakrzewski(24) warns that encouraging or forcing employees who lack the emotional traits necessary for grit may, in some situations “do more harm than good” by inducing stress, anxiety, and distraction. That can have detrimental impacts on psychological well-being, and ultimately, employee performance and retention.
A gritty team’s refusal to give up in hopeless instances can become its downfall. Average teams put in a lot of effort when things are going well, but their effort tends to decline when they aren’t getting the results they want. Grittier teams, however, increase their efforts when they aren’t seeing the results they want. They kick into high gear when failure looks probable. Sometimes, unfortunately, that’s when things can backfire. Amy Morin(25) explains, “Even when they’re fighting a losing battle, grittier individuals refuse to give up. But sometimes, that steadfastness can be detrimental.” Lots of inspirational posters and Internet memes trumpet messages like “Champions never quit,” or “Quitting lasts forever,” or “Never give up.” However, Morin says, “Changing course or giving up isn’t always a bad thing.” The grittiest of teams will benefit from finding a balance between blind persistence and a defeatist mindset. Morin adds that in some cases, “Knowing when to quit — and giving yourself permission to do so — may help you achieve your biggest goals.”
There are other ways that too much grit can backfire. For example, it’s possible that your employees who demonstrate extremely high levels of grit are dealing with their emotions in a negative way. Maybe those with a history of complex trauma are using unhealthy emotional suppression strategies they learned in childhood as a method of survival. Or consider what can happen to employees who are assessed and rewarded for their ability to push through their personal challenges to succeed but who lack the resources and support they need. Research on grit may not provide the answers yet; the majority of studies focus on the correlation between grit and high performance, not the emotional consequences for the gritty individual. Nonetheless, it will be up to you to help your team find healthy ways to manage their emotions so they don’t take their grit too far, to their own detriment.
Fortunately, leaders can implement several strategies to improve their team’s culture and safeguard their employees from taking grit too far. Britta Han(26) suggests the following:
Promote team well-being. Han says, “Improving well-being reduces absenteeism and turnover and improves job satisfaction and productivity.” Encourage and provide consistently healthy options for food and sustenance regardless of time of day. Provide opportunities for physical and mental well-being such as protected time for doctor appointments, increased access to mental health professionals, and opportunities for physical fitness.
Increase meaning in work. Encourage team members to discuss the social and emotional aspects of their work. Offer them opportunities for personal and group reflection.
Acknowledge individual limits. Each employee is unique and will start at their own level of grit and resilience. Han says, “Even the grittiest and most resilient individual may encounter obstacles that can only be overcome with assistance and support.” Meet your employees where they are and offer individualized support.
Examine and address local barriers to team grit, resilience, and well-being. Healthcare teams often work long hours and encounter stressful challenges. Look for the adjustments you can make in schedules, the physical space, and work assignments that will help your team feel supported and valued.
As you can see, even though grit is desirable most of the time, there will be other times when it must be tempered. Lewis says, “Embracing grit does not mean sacrificing your well-being.” Be mindful of the potential pitfalls of too much grit and resist the urge to drive your team full speed ahead at all costs. As with all good leadership, you must be an astute observer and listener and use sound leadership strategies and common sense to improve your team’s performance, not drive them over the edge.
Team Grit and the Future of Your Organization
Grit can help your organization to improve and excel in today’s challenging healthcare environment. It also may be what enables you to survive and thrive in the years ahead. Brassey et al., explain, “When electricity was invented and replaced steam machines in factories, it took 30 years before that innovation led to improved efficiency and productivity. Many companies simply couldn’t adapt quickly enough to new circumstances.”
Today’s healthcare leaders and organizations face a similar dynamic — this time confronting not one but what Brassey et al., describe as “a range of technical, economic, geopolitical, and social disruptions that demand learning and adaptation (beyond agile organizational structures).” To avoid a fate like that of their historical factory-owner counterparts, today’s healthcare leaders must acknowledge two critical factors associated with change — resilience and adaptability — and the codependent relationship between them. They must build workplace conditions and employ leadership strategies that allow and encourage their teams to become more resilient and adaptable. And they must integrate these skills with their existing leadership strategies. Brassey et al., warn, “Leaders — and, frankly, the world — can’t afford to take another three decades to figure out how to integrate and adapt when the next big game changer emerges.”
Sidebar: Identify Your Team’s Grit Baseline with this Grit Test
How gritty is your team right now? To find out, ask the members of your team to complete
Psychology Today’s online grit test,27 a set of 20 questions gathered from three research sources. Your employees can submit their responses to Psychology Today for a grit score, or you can devise your own method of scoring. Here is the grit test:
Respond to each statement below as:
Strongly disagree
Disagree
Neither agree nor disagree
Agree
Strongly agree
I work tirelessly when trying to achieve a goal that is important to me.
I finish what I start.
I believe that I have found my passion.
New goals distract me from the goal I’m currently working on.
I’ve been working toward the same goal(s) for months/years.
I have a history of successfully overcoming obstacles.
I see myself as a very hard-working person.
I give up ambitious projects because I lose interest.
Putting in sustained effort over time is the best path to success.
I stay focused on important projects, no matter how long it takes.
I am easily discouraged by setbacks.
I am highly conscientious.
It takes a lot to make me give up on something I’ve set my mind to.
I have a sense of purpose in my life.
Once I get fixated on a goal, I follow through to the end.
I am dedicated to achieving success in my chosen domain.
I maintain steady effort over time.
I have continued pursuing my dreams even after experiencing failures.
I keep working on current projects even if a new idea pops into my head.
I don’t stay interested in one particular thing for very long.
Keep individual scores confidential, but feel free to share your team’s overall score with them. Don’t despair if your team reports low or moderate levels of grit. Your employees can learn to become grittier through a combination of their personal determination and self-discipline, your encouragement, and the grit-building strategies you learned in this article.
References
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