Angela Duckworth on why grit isn’t enough

**Jeff Berman** (0:01)
Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I'm thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale Summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reid Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad and more will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, we want you there with us too. Join us at mastersofscale.com/apply26.
That's mastersofscale.com/apply26.

**Angela Duckworth** (0:43)
When human beings think about what determines behavior, they think intentions determine behavior. That's not wrong, but what social psychologists will point out is that we make an error when we forget about how powerful the situation is. I was astonished. I have never seen in all of my years of studying companies, a culture where unvarnished negative feedback was taken with such maturity and even enthusiasm. I'm sure a lot of people hate me for saying so many negative things about working in your home office all day. And I know there are upsides, but I have to say I have so many misgivings about it.
The NFL may be the last bipartisan community builder we have. Whether you're red or blue, like EAGLES Goat Eagles.

**Jeff Berman** (1:38)
Oh, Angel, please, no. No, no, we can't. That's where we gotta cut it.

**Rana El-Khaloubi** (1:42)
We can't have that.

**Angela Duckworth** (1:43)
We're going to edit that out.
Fly, EAGLES, fly. I'm a Philly girl.

**Jeff Berman** (1:50)
This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. I am thrilled to be joined today by Angela Duckworth. Angela is a brilliant psychology professor and co-director of the Penn Wharton Behavior Change for Good Institute. With millions of copies sold, it's a good bet that her first book, Grit, is already on your shelf. She's now back with a fascinating follow-up. Angela, welcome back to Masters of Scale.

**Angela Duckworth** (2:17)
It is good to be back, and it's good to be talking to you again, Jeff.

**Jeff Berman** (2:19)
It is great to be talking to you. It occurred to me that maybe you perceived that the market overcorrected toward Grit, and Situated almost reads as a response to that overcorrection.
Is that a fair way to talk about why Situated is such an important follow-up to Grit?

**Angela Duckworth** (2:37)
Jeff, I think that the idea of this second book is maybe not a correction of Grit, but it is a completion. I mean, I'm a psychologist who will always be obsessed with achievement. I think the completion of the story of Grit says that for all the things that we need to work on, so that the inside game, you know, our mental game, our mindset, our attitudes, our assumptions, our goals, the way we think about our goals, the inside game is always going to be important.
If there's a message of grit, it's that effort matters. And effort matters arguably more than natural talent.
If there's a message of this second book, I mean, you can call it a sequel in some ways, as we'll discuss, it may be a prequel.
The outside game matters too, because all of that effort pays off more and is more rational in some ecosystems, in some environments, in some cultures, in some places with some people, and less so in others. I think if you're going to achieve your potential, you need to master both the inside game and the outside game, but I don't think either negate the other.

**Jeff Berman** (3:43)
There's the story in the book of Cody Coleman, which I'm going to ask you to share a little bit about Cody.

**Angela Duckworth** (3:49)
I met Cody Coleman through an email that he sent over the transom on a day in May 2013, that introduces himself as a senior at MIT, studying computer science and electrical engineering.
And he's apparently watched my TED Talk. He feels compelled to tell me that the journey he's taken from being born in a prison near Trenton, New Jersey to be graduating from MIT with a nearly perfect GPA in the hardest majors that you can have at MIT, that this is a story of grit. What happened next? Well, an internship at Google, enrolling in the PhD program in computer science at Stanford, where he successfully earns his PhD, studying with some of the pioneers in artificial intelligence and becoming the third black recipient of a PhD in computer science in Stanford's entire history.
He is a paragon of grit, but the reason he's very relevant to this conversation is that he's more than that. He has very strategically oriented himself to situations that make the most of his grit. And he will tell you that the only way you get exponential growth in your personal development is by leapfrogging from a good situation to a better one, and yet a better one, and ever improving. Now he's the CEO of an AI startup called Coactive in San Jose.