Leadership Summit 2026: Inspiring Grit and Growth Amid Unprecedented Change

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**Adi Ignatius** (0:28)
Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast, I'm Adi Ignatius.
Artificial intelligence promises to make us faster and more productive. But there is an underlying question as to what it means to allow AI to do more of our thinking. What will happen to our ability to learn, to improve, and to develop expertise over time? Today's guest argues that the answer depends less on the technology itself and more on how we choose to use it. Angela Duckworth is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and her research has long focused on what separates high achievers from everyone else. Enter AI.
I spoke to her recently as part of the 2026 HBR Leadership Summit about her research that suggests AI can actually accelerate learning when it's used as a coach rather than a crutch. We'll also hear about why young workers feel both excited and uneasy about these tools. And we'll hear practical advice for leaders who want their teams to become more productive and more capable. Duckworth is the author of Grit, as well as of the forthcoming book, Situated, Find the People and Places that Bring Out Your Best.

**Angela Duckworth** (1:50)
As you know, I do study grit, but I want to put grit in the context of AI. And I want to cover three questions. One is how grit is integral to becoming excellent at what you do, no matter what it is, and how that relates to the second question, which is AI and whether AI helps or hinders grit, and under what circumstances a leader might make AI work for you versus against you.
That, of course, is the third question in particular, which is how a leader and a team might optimally use AI to become better at what they do. So, to begin, what is the relationship between grit and excellence? Why is grit a necessary, if not sufficient, element to successful leaders, successful individuals in any domain that I have studied?
I'm going to give you a little test, so you can take it right now. It's got four questions on it, and you're not going to formally score yourself, but these four items are from the grit scale. It's a questionnaire I developed from interviewing Olympic gold medalists and Nobel Prize winners, world-class achievers across domains. And here's one item. I am a hard worker. If I ask the people who know you best, how many would go out of their way to say that you are an especially hard worker? The more that is true, the higher your grit score, and in particular, the higher your perseverance sub score, because grit is not just perseverance, but it's also passion. So let's start with I am a hard worker.
Here's another perseverance item on the grit scale. I finish whatever I begin. High achievers who have grit have a bias toward completion. They hate to quit. They especially hate to quit when things are hard and everybody else is quitting. So these two items index your perseverance for long-term goals. That's half of grit. Let me show you two other items. You can reflect on your own character at the moment. Now, before I show them to you, I need to warn you.
They are reverse scored. And by that, I mean, when I show you these items, if you say, well, Angela knows me, these are just like me, you actually get a lower passion sub score and a lower overall grit score.
I have difficulty maintaining my focus on projects that take more than a few months to complete. Here's another reverse scored passion item. I often set a goal, but later choose to pursue a different one. When you ask me about the passion of high achievers, I want to point out that it's not about intensity, it's not about pulling all-nighters, it's not about being an extrovert, it's not about having manic levels of energy and enthusiasm. Excitement is common, but endurance is rare. The passion of gritty high achievers is consistency. It's being loyal to some top level goal that keeps you interested, keeps you committed over long periods of time.
And that is why grit is not just perseverance, but passion and perseverance for especially long-term goals, weeks, months, years, decades, in some cases, a lifetime.
Now, this diagram is kind of an x-ray of what goes on in the mind of a very gritty high achiever. They do have a top level goal. They have an ultimate why. That gives meaning and sense and direction to all of their mid-level goals, you know, things I want to accomplish in the next five years or three years. And then you go down. This is, of course, a simplified diagram. But at the very bottom of the hierarchy is your to-do list. You know, the very bottom is like what you have to get done today and this week. And here's where I think you need to be agile, adaptive, and respond to circumstances. You should be stubborn at the top. Your value shouldn't change. Your mission shouldn't change. Your top level goal should not change. But very agile at the bottom. And you have to be agile in part because the world is changing. So you want to capitalize on those opportunities, including AI.