Angela Duckworth | Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

**Tanya** (0:07)
Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Tanya, bringing you this week's episode with author Angela Duckworth. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers and doers all to one place. Every episode is taken from a video that can be seen at youtube.com/talks at Google.
Author Angela Duckworth visits Google to discuss her book, Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance. In the book, Angela explores the science of why some people succeed and others fail and why talent alone doesn't guarantee success. Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently criticized her supposed lack of genius, Duckworth describes her early eye-opening stints in teaching, business consulting and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not genius, but a unique combination of passion and long-term perseverance. In Grit, she takes readers into the field to visit cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, teachers working in some of the toughest schools and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also minds fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from the modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she's learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers, from JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon, to New Yorker cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff, to Seattle Seahawks coach, Pete Carroll.
Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down and how that, not talent or luck, makes all the difference. Originally published in May of 2016, here is Angela Duckworth. Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance.

**Ben** (2:42)
We're here today to talk to Angela Duckworth, whose book, Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance, today is the official publication date, right?

**Angela Duckworth** (2:51)
Today is the official publication date.

**Ben** (2:53)
Congratulations. Saw.
And incredibly gracious of her to fit time in at Google with a really, really busy publicity tour, which I was getting exhausted just hearing about it a few minutes ago. So for those of you who aren't familiar with Angela Duckworth's work, let me try to briefly read a biography. Angela Duckworth is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder and scientific director of the Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development. In 2013, Angela was named a MacArthur Fellow in recognition of her research on grit, self-control and other non-IQ competencies that predict success in life.
It's a very impressive resume. Prior to her career in research, Angela founded a summer school for low-income children that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study. She's been a McKinsey Management Consultant, a math and science teacher in the public schools of New York City, San Francisco and Philadelphia. She has degrees from Harvard, Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania in neuroscience and in psychology.
And did I mention she's a MacArthur Fellow, 2013 MacArthur Fellow? All right, I'll stop there. And Grit is her first book, it says. So welcome again, Angela. Thank you for coming.

**Angela Duckworth** (4:12)
Thank you, Ben. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted.

**Ben** (4:19)
So let's get right into it. If you're not familiar with her work, the TED Talk, the book, I guess, is it maybe hopefully it's fair for me to summarize the thesis as that the power, as you put it, the power of passion and perseverance are at least as strong indicators and contributors to success or achievement as things like IQ and talent, which are, I think, what societally, at least, we've traditionally focused on. And that resonated enormously for me, because I think at Google, we spend a lot of time thinking about talent, IQ, raw talent. It's kind of baked into this crazy hiring process that we have, which brought me to the first question I had for you, which was, do you think that, I mean, from what you know about Google, do you think that we, or do you think that organizations, in general, select for the wrong things in the hiring process? And would we be better off, would organizations be better off if they looked for grit plus fit, as opposed to attempting to measure innate talent?

**Angela Duckworth** (5:23)
You know, I think the interest that we all have in talent, right, and it's not just Google, it's me too, you know? I wish I were more talented. Talent's great.
And if you could give me five more IQ points, I'd take them. It's not that, I don't think it's wrong to think about talent. I don't think it's wrong to think about potential. I do think it's useful to think about what we really mean when we say the word talent. And if you force yourself to write down on a piece of paper in a sentence that ends with a period, talent is, it's really hard to actually feel it. Like, what do I mean? I mean, we start to use metaphors. Here's my definition of talent, and I think it reveals that I do think it's important. Talent is the rate at which you increase in your skill with effort. Some people are going to increase their skills faster than others, and I think it's legitimate to say, those are the quick studies, those are the talented people. I think it's legitimate for Google to look for them. Why not? Why not try to hire the more talented people? But in my data, I find two things.