How To Lead In A Post-COVID Reality

What Is Grit And Why Is It Necessary

In order to rekindle the daylight of clarity, the roadmaps of vision, and the motivational sounds of collaboration, support, belief, and courage, we need to become aware of the impending darkness and choose to replace it with the light of grit.

A recent business owner was hosting her regular check in with one of her key leaders. The key leader made mention of feeling “burned out”. After realizing that the team member had only been a part of the mission for less than 24 months, the owner had an honest narrative in her head saying, ‘you don’t even know what burnout is’, but chose not to say anything.

Instead, the owner made a decision to call the key leader to a higher level of leadership and to encourage the leader to realize that she was not even close to the ceiling of her capability telling her, “there are so many others waiting to be served and impacted through your work, we will not allow the public narrative of burnout to become the dominant narrative in her head. 

Instead, she chose to replace that narrative with one of potential, opportunity, risk, adventure, and work.

She chose to help her key leader bust the ceiling of her upper limit challenge.

Grit is defined as “courage and resolve, strength of character”.

Courage is tied directly to fear… courage cannot be displayed where fear is not present. In order to achieve courage, you must go through fear.

Resolve is an unyielding commitment to a specific direction.

Character is the person you are when no one else is looking.

Grit is courage, resolve, AND character.

Without grit…
• Race cars never go fast
• Athletes never break records
• Business never drives to new horizons
• Parents don’t produce kids that turn out to be awesome adults
• Marriages dissolve
• Mars doesn’t get explored
• The printing press is never created

In his enlightening podcast How I Built This, Guy Raz brings powerful stories from some of the most successful and sizable companies around the world.

Dave Dahl from Dave’s Killer Bread tells of his story of how he went from a prison conviction to building a powerful bread brand.

Or across the street in Milwaukie, Oregan where sits the famous Bob’s Red Mill. Bob explains how his life’s work went up in flames one night and how he led a life-long comeback.

Guy Raz certainly talks about the success of each company, and yet does a remarkable job of taking you into the underground of each. You start to realize that it is not so much that money that is interesting, but how each person had to show a constant display of grit, and cultivate a culture of grit in their team.

We’ve been sold a lie. Work a little, play a lot, retire early, and ride off into the sunset.

It’s a lie!

I’m giving you a warning now. The…

“Work-till-you-drop-now-so-you-can-play-golf-till-you-drop-later” strategy

…doesn’t satisfy. Not to mention, there is no guarantee that “later” comes (one of the more unfortunate lessons from a pandemic).

If you live in a retirement community, you will see what I mean. 

How Do We Cultivate GRIT in the workplace?

Grind At The Right Time
• Grind…
o Critical Thinking (drill down deeper and deeper)
o Active Listening (writing, repeating, responding)
o Giving 10% more than what you think is “enough”
o Look forward to feedback (ASK FOR FEEDBACK, SEEK IT, WANT IT) check-ins!
• At the right time
o Weekly Schedule
o Being ALL there (in that meeting, at that site visit, at that lunch meeting)
o Don’t cut corners…use the corners as time to bust through your upper limit challenges

Role Clarity (aka Do Your Job)
• If you are doing the wrong thing at the right time…that is frustrating
• As long as we know that our work is not in vain, it allows us to maintain the fuel needed to know we are doing the right work
• If you do not currently have a written role, even if you are the owner…WRITE IT DOWN!

Identify Fear And LEAVE THE HARBOR
• Aristotle said around 300BC, “Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil”…even when the evil never comes
• Around 64AD, Paul, a middle eastern vagabond, author and teacher said plainly to one of his students, “God simply has not pre-installed you with fear or a timid soul. Instead, your life BOOMS w/ power, love, and a sound mind”
• Nelson Mandela – “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
• Fear has been a theme of every generation in different expressions
• How do we conquer fear…
o Steer out of the safety of the harbor into the open ocean
o Of course, plan, use navigation, make sure you have supplies…THEN GO!

GRIT only comes through hardship, uphill climbs, and bad weather.

It’s conditioning. Muscles grow thru trauma.

Grit does NOT come merely with the passage of time…but comes instead with a cocktail of time marked by maturity!

GRIT as a training topic used to not make the top of the list of necessary instruction.

For a variety of reasons, that has changed. We need GRIT to lead, GRIT to serve, GRIT to show up, and GRIT to be generous.

When we
Grind At The Right Time
Role Clarity
Identify Fear And LEAVE THE HARBOR
Trail A Mentor And/Or Coaching

Then we are being liberated from chaos to make time for what matters most.

Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters.  Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.