Success takes more than grit. You must understand and take control of your situation

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The belief that grit will make you great gained popularity a decade ago with the pioneering research of University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth. But she now has something else to consider: Your situation.

“Grit is one thing; a great situation is another – and fully realizing your potential requires both,” she writes in her new book Situated: Find the People and Places that Bring out your Best.

In the thick of pursuing a goal, it’s easy to neglect the immense power of your situation. Effort is not always sufficient. A successful situation will amplify your effort while a losing situation diminishes it.

That means you need situational awareness, to understand the role being played by other factors such as people and the culture of the organization, city or country you are within. And you also need situational agency: You have choices and must make them because circumstances are never entirely beyond your control.

Her change in focus comes out of her intense curiosity with how we achieve. Before, with the 2016 book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, she was concerned with what goes on inside the minds of high achievers. Now she has been studying the influence of everything and everyone around them.

“It’s true that what we do is influenced by what we think – but it’s equally true that what we think is, in turn, influenced by where we are. Like it or not, our every thought and action is profoundly shaped by our peers and mentors, by our culture and even by the objects in our personal space,” she says.

Here’s the linkage: Your situation provokes thoughts. In turn, your thoughts – based on the brain’s interpretation of reality – provoke a response to the situation. Now you may feel an emotion. We often assume that our feelings lead to our thoughts but it’s the other way around.

That means to change your emotions – to change your behaviour and indeed to change yourself – you must begin by changing your situation. Accepting the situation as an unalterable given and depending on willpower to improve that situation won’t work, she argues.

“A challenging and supportive situation encourages positive thoughts, which lead you – without having to force yourself – to put forth your best effort. There are no shortcuts to excellence, but getting situated makes doing hard things easier,” she writes.

As well, she notes, your situation can influence your personality. Your personality has range. In certain situations, for example, she is an optimist while in others a pessimist. “You don’t have a single identity but several, and the specific triggers that elicit your different selves are embedded in the immediate situation: The people you’re with and the physical place you’re in at the moment,” she says.

To get situated for the life you want, she asks you to consider four elements of situational agency:

• Set up your space: You may not be able to control the world at large, but you reign supreme over your immediate surroundings. “What will you choose to add or subtract, once you become aware of the gravitational pull of objects within sight and reach?” she asks.
• Pick your peers: You can find a tribe that shares your values and interests. Whose company will you keep, she asks, when you understand the power of peers?
• Attract mentors: You don’t get to choose your parents, but you do get to choose your mentors. “How will you invest your time differently once you understand why mentors are a need-to-have, not a nice-to-have, and how anyone can become a mentor magnet?” she says.
• Choose your culture: You can’t change where you were born, but you can change where you work and live. Should you be making a move?

Addressing those four elements in that order moves you from near to far, from concrete to abstract, and from what you can change immediately to what may take weeks, months or years to figure out. All come with risk and fear. But if your current situation is failing you, grit won’t be enough.

Quick hits

• Begin your week with “time shielding,” advises neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff: Protect time for your priorities in your calendar and keep it that way.
• To reduce mental drain and be more present with your family, career coach Jenny Wood in her newsletter recommends deleting the email app from your phone. That will make it annoying – in a good way, she insists – to check your email through the browser on your phone or your computer.
• The smartest people you know aren’t the ones with the best answers, says author Mark Manson. They’re actually the ones still sitting with questions everyone else gave up on years ago.

Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.