Grit Is Essential If You Want to Be a Leader People Respect

If you asked me to compare work life today with when I began my career, I’d tell you people now are nicer to each other.

That’s a sign of progress. Nobody wants to work with a**holes. However, our age of niceness has created leadership attribute gaps.

The gaps exist because we’ve confused timeless leadership qualities with “old-fashioned” or “out-of-date” attitudes. Timeless means something is always relevant, regardless of the current fashion.

This brings me to grit. I think it’s ready for a comeback.

Understanding Grit: The Secret Ingredient of Successful Leadership

Physical grit is small, loose particles of stone or sand. Grit, when used in a rock tumbler, polishes the rocks as they fall. Constant, abrasive action results in smooth, refined rocks.

Constant, abrasive action is a pretty good description of the challenges leaders face. The way you endure and respond to those challenges will make or break you in the eyes of those who report to you.

People, regardless of the era, respect leaders who face challenges with courage, determination, and an unyielding spirit.

Put simply, people respect leaders who possess a secret ingredient: grit.

Psychological grit is timeless. People want their leaders to make tough decisions in uncertain times. And it’s the leader’s responsibility to make those tough decisions, often with incomplete or partial information. Without grit, you’ll retreat from a leadership challenge. Retreat or freeze and your team will lose confidence in you. A leader who loses the respect of her team is unable to lead effectively, and the team will be without direction.

Yes, our kinder, gentler world still needs and expects leaders with grit.

Defining Grit in A Leadership Context

If you feel you could do with some grit, here are a few examples of it in a leadership context.

Unyielding Persistence: Leadership is a constant battleground of decision-making and problem-solving. Here, grit translates into a persistent spirit that says, "I won't give up."

Prioritizing the Long-haul: Gritty leaders pursue their long-term vision. They're less concerned about immediate, surface-level triumphs and more driven by sustainable success.

Embrace Failures: A leader with grit chooses to see failures and setbacks as opportunities to learn, adjust strategies, and come back stronger. Just like NFL quarterback Peyton Manning. He underwent multiple neck surgeries in 2011, putting his football career in jeopardy. Through perseverance, Manning returned to the field and led the Denver Broncos to a Super Bowl victory in 2016. That’s grit!

A Time When I Put Grit into Action

Grit gets you through tough situations. Such as pursuing a vision when success is not guaranteed.

I came to appreciate the value of grit while I was responsible for almost a million square feet of manufacturing space for IBM in North America during the mid-1990s.

The engineers who reported to me – bright, talented folks – came up with a manufacturing process for our computers that was state of the art at the time. Truly groundbreaking, so we wanted to reconfigure our full factory layout to mobilize their idea.

The catch was I needed to secure $25 million to change our manufacturing facility. That was a lot of money in the 1990s! A lot of meetings and a lot of resistance followed my request for such a large sum.

I met with the Senior Vice President (the boss of my boss’s boss!) and Chief Financial Officer to make a case for the funds. It was a long meeting. They asked me to prove the return on investment of our idea, but that was difficult to do without starting our project. And to start, we needed the money. Plus, hardware manufacturing was experiencing a slump at the time. The appetite for spending $25 million in a downturn was not great.

After repeatedly being asked how I could guarantee the success of our idea, I took my badge off and threw it on the conference room table. While I believed in our idea and knew it would result in savings, I realized I needed to make a bold statement.

“If it doesn’t work and we do not get this much return in this period – there’s my badge. Take it. You won’t have to fire me. I will resign.”

It was scary to put everything on the line. The Senior Vice President was older than me and had a lot more experience, too. He was impressed with my commitment and gave us the green light. Years later, he told me that because I showed passion, energy, and, more importantly, confidence, he knew there was no way I would let him and the IBM team down.

It was a big deal for me to get the go-ahead. I had young children at that time, and I was the breadwinner. I could not let this thing fail! There were long days, nights, and weekends to get it right, but with grit, we made it. We delivered what we told him we were going to deliver and achieved better results in almost all our KPIs and metrics.

That experience impressed upon me what grit isn’t. Grit is not willful ignorance. Grit gives you the courage to back yourself when you know every aspect of a challenge. That’s why I could put my name and badge behind our new manufacturing process. Yes, it was still a risk, but an informed one.

Grit Builds Team Resilience

One reason timeless leadership qualities like grit seem “old-fashioned” today is people are suspicious of the idea of a tough, strong leader.

But that misses the point of leadership. It’s not to be praised, worshiped, or feared. A leader must increase the effectiveness of her team. To do that, she must model the behavior she wants to see in them.

If you want your team to be resilient, become an example of grittiness for them to imitate.

Grit is a significant factor in team resilience. In the face of adversity or setbacks, gritty teams display exceptional resilience and adaptability. They embrace challenges, remain focused on their long-term goals, and bounce back stronger from failures because they see you do the same.

Gritty teams operate on a resilient cycle: experiencing adversity, learning from it, and then forging ahead with renewed determination. This cycle strengthens their overall resilience, creating a team that not only survives amidst adversity but thrives.

Grit, Balls, and Emotional Intelligence: An Unbeatable Combination

Grit is the perfect partner to courage, or, as I prefer to call it, having balls.

This is not a license to be cruel or unkind. Your "ballsiness" and "grittiness" must be balanced with emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence, or EQ, refers to the ability to recognize, understand, and manage our own emotions while recognizing, understanding, and influencing the emotions of others. For leaders with balls and grit, EQ acts like a compass guiding their passion and perseverance.

• Balls + Grit + EQ = Effective, empathetic, and resilient leadership.

Balls and grit drive the action, but EQ ensures it’s steered in the right direction. Working together, balls and grit give leaders the tenacity to meet their goals, while EQ helps them understand their feelings and those of others along the way.

Grit Is the Key to Overcoming Business Challenges

The world feels different from the one I began my career in, but one thing has remained constant: the key to overcoming business challenges is grit.

If grit (and ballsiness!) doesn’t come naturally to you, expose yourself to situations that force you to harness their power. The best way to do that is to step into the arena of discomfort and potential failure.

Each small victory or bounce back from setbacks helps you evolve as a leader.

Welcome to leadership with grit. I believe you’re ready.