This year, the Montani team will work on getting gritty. A term made popular by Psychologist Angela Duckworth, grit is the combination of passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. People who are gritty, says Duckworth, tend to work in a diligent, daily way to improve. It’s having the stamina to “stick with your future” day in and day out. Not for the month, but for years.
This is the perseverance piece, and it’s what makes grit stand apart from other more “timely” buzzwords like resilience. No more limiting our thinking to what will serve us well in the next few months. It’s time to think about what we can do today to ensure we meet our goals a decade from now, when our environment and circumstances have changed.
The other piece of grit is passion. This is defined as the commitment to having an interest in what you do, and intersecting your interests with your values. This, too, is a great focus for our team at Montani – and we’re willing to bet it’s a great focus for your employees as well.
As a company still in our infancy, we’re always discussing new and better ways we can help our clients. Those discussions tend to stem from untapped passions of our team members. We can ensure each person’s role aligns with their personal interests if we employ their passions within their work. Not to mention, these added offerings are of great value to the companies we partner with.
The Nitty Gritty About Our Choice
If we’ve learned anything these past few years, it’s this: The one thing we can control is how we show up. Showing up as resilient and agile can lead to amazing things, and may even bring out the best in you. But both are dependent on difficult situations. Grit, however, doesn’t care what’s been handed to you or what you’re walking into.
Resilience and agility are dependent on challenging days, whereas grit allows you to consistently get after it day after day, no matter what. In a pyramid of success built on resilience, the motivation is always external (a global pandemic, an economic downturn, an illness, etc.). These circumstances won’t always be the case (we hope!), so we believe it’s time to reset this pyramid.
We want grit to be at the foundation of our pyramid of success. It requires internal motivation, completely within our own control. We all wish for our current situation to be a distant memory soon enough, but even if it isn’t, grit is going to serve us well.
Want to learn more about what it takes to be gritty? Check out Angela Duckworth’s original, groundbreaking TED talk. And listen to her more recent interview on the subject, recorded in 2021.
What buzzword will you and your team be focusing on in 2022? We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback → info@montani.consulting.
