703: Angela Duckworth - Why Grit Isn't Enough, Situation Over Willpower, How Belief Gets Borrowed, John Wooden's Socks, and How the Right People and Places Bring Out Your Best

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

In this episode of The Learning Leader Show, Ryan Hawk interviews Angela Duckworth, renowned psychologist and author of 'Grit' and her new book 'Situated'. The conversation explores the limitations of grit alone,

Key takeaways

• Grit alone is insufficient; effort must be supported by favorable environments.
• The situation often determines success more than individual willpower or effort.

Main topics

• The limitations of grit
• Situational agency

Notable quotes

"No amount of effort in the world was going to save my mother or myself. I had to change the situation in a fundamental way."

Conclusion

Angela Duckworth's insights challenge the traditional focus on individual effort, advocating instead for intentional cultivation of supportive

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) We have just opened applications for our once per year learning leader circle. I just got a testimonial from, I think, one of the most impressive members in my current circle, Alex Feldmeier. She is a sensory sciences manager, wickedly smart, but this is what she said about being a part of our learning leader circle. She said, our leadership circle meetings. are experiences that go unmatched with anything else in my life. The biggest part is learning that we have so much within ourselves to catalyze massive potential, but we often don't know how to access it. This group is about learning how to unlock it, live it, and most importantly, sustain it. With the carefully crafted discussion points and the intentional people around us, It's like being invited to a machine that gives us the tools to harvest our own superpowers. So cool. If you want to apply to be part of our next Learning Leader Circle, go to learningleadercircle.com to apply. That is learningleadercircle.com and apply today. Speaker 2 (1:16) Welcome to The Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. Angela Duckworth is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her first book, Grit is one of the best-selling books of all time, and her TED Talk remains among the most viewed TED Talks ever. Her new book is called Situated. Find the people and places that bring out your best. During our conversation, we discuss your environment is quietly voting for or against your goals every single day. You're going to learn a simple way to audit whether the room you're in right now is your ally or your enemy. Really good. And then you'll learn why the belief someone else has in you can carry you a lot further than your own and where to find it if nobody's offering. And then Angela has mentored under some of the greatest psychologists who ever lived. She shares what she wants the next chapter of her own career to look like. and it might change how you think about yours. This is one of my favorite conversations I've had in years. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my talk with the great Angela Duckworth. I love reading about your mom. You wrote, when I am my best self, I am my mother's daughter. Very cool dedication. Tell me more about why you chose that specific phrase to dedicate this book to. Speaker 1 (3:13) I've only written two books, as you know. And the first one, I think in some ways, was an ode to my father, very influenced by his obsession with achievement, maybe in an improbable way in some ways, because... You know, you talked a lot about talent. I wrote a book about grit, which is not talent, not natural talent anyway. The second book is about the outside game, if you will, of achieving your potential, all the things that you need around you, including and especially the people. When I wrote this book, I dedicated it to my mother in part because I don't think she was situated in the way that I hope, for example, my daughters are situated to be their best. And so... It's a belated, in a way, acknowledgement that my mother in some ways deserved a better situation than she had. She's now 91. And I actually think that her situation, she's an artist, has improved a lot in the last 10 years. And now I'm seeing all this great painting and ceramics and watercolors, you know, coming out of my 91-year-old mother. Speaker 2 (4:17) The story that you open with. was scary. I don't know another way to phrase it. I was envisioning being out in the ocean with my mom doing that, thinking, how would I have reacted? Can you take us to that moment where you're going to go try to look at some cool stuff in the ocean and the guy's like, sure, just jump right in. You'll be fine. You'll be fine, Angela. Take your mom. She's 87. No big deal. Yeah. Can you take me to that moment? Speaker 1 (4:43) I will tell you the story of my poor judgment of going on a snorkeling expedition with my not very young mother, who also had never snorkeled before and probably hadn't swum in decades. And the captain, you know, outfits us with our snorkeling gear and we plop into the water and I follow my mom. So it was only after my mom was in the Atlantic Ocean, miles off the coast, that I realized how... tragic this decision really was. I mean, it happened in a split second. I was like, I'm trying not to swear, Ryan, but words crossed my mind that are one syllable. I mean, I've never in my life been that afraid. I also can say confidently, I've never had that much adrenaline in my veins that in that moment when I realized that my mom was going to drown, which is essentially what She aspirated water into both lungs. She was unconscious. So this tiny little like 107 pound wet person who would have struggled even if she were awake was now just a floating body. The reason I wrote about all that, and now I've already told you that she's 91, so you know there is a happy ending, is that the situation is like the ocean. It is so powerful. We don't realize it sometimes. We don't know the water we're swimming in. But being in that situation, I think, just brought home how all the effort in the world was not going to save my mother or myself. I had to change the situation in a fundamental way. I treaded water. I held up her head that was heavy in my hand with one arm. I used the other to wave it around and to signal for help. Help eventually came. There's no way I could have swum my mother to safety. There's no way that grit would have saved us. It was a change in the situation. It was essentially bringing to our side people who could take care of us. And so my mom did live. It was a miracle. She's great. I opened the book with that because it is to me the perfect metaphor. for the power of the situation, and also, maybe less obviously, our power to change the situation so that our effort is not lost, it's not swallowed, as it was when I was flailing about in the ocean, but that our effort is multiplied, that our situation is our ally. Speaker 2 (7:08) It's interesting that, as you just said it in your response, but grit is not enough. Right. You're known as the grit person, the number one person in Speaker 1 (7:18) the world. Speaker 2 (7:18) I'm Speaker 1 (7:18) sometimes Speaker 2 (7:18) called the Speaker 1 (7:18) grit lady, my students say. I mean, it's Speaker 2 (7:21) pretty cool. It's pretty cool to be known for that. Like, it's actually probably a lot of pressure, too. I think so. I mean, if I say someone is gritty or they have grit, that's as big of a compliment as I could. probably give somebody. But in this case, it wasn't enough, right? It's not enough all the time. And so you can't just grit your way through some of the adversity that you're going to face. And I love that that's the kind of transitional message from, yes, important. Yes, develop it. Got it. Need it. But there's more to it. And it feels like that's how we get to situated and being better about optimizing. your situation and having agency over putting yourself in better situations to where you can accomplish the things that you want to accomplish. I Speaker 1 (8:08) think you said it perfectly, Ryan. And I want to say that very often people talk about discovering that everything that they used to think was wrong and now they think the opposite. That's not the case for me. It's not that I've discovered that grit is wrong. It's just that it's not. sufficient. It's an incomplete recipe for achieving great things. And it's not necessarily a renouncement, but it is an expansion. And the reason I think that's so urgent is, I mean, I grew up my whole life as a striver. I knew I wasn't the most talented kid, but wow, you like try to outwork me. And it was for everything. You know, I want to make the cheerleading squad, but like, I can't do a split and I'm not. particularly coordinated. I want to solo and chorus, but I can hardly carry a tune. You know, I just worked my way to get to the things that I wanted to achieve. And that worked fabulously for a long time. And I think many people might themselves discover that they can go much farther than they ever imagined by just sheer effort. But at some point, what you discover, at least I did, is that To get as far as you really want to go and also to do it in a sustainable way for yourself and for others, it's a great mistake to ignore the situation. And so rather than just making the best of the situation through your own effort, you should make your situation better first. And I think that's been a skill, you know, this idea of situational agency. It's something that I have exercised not my whole life, but definitely for this last decade or so. Speaker 2 (9:47) The talk about willpower is really interesting. To make it as dumbed down as possible, and I want you to smart it up for me. If there is sugar in my house... I'm going to eat it. I'm a very disciplined person. Speaker 1 (10:01) You're actually speaking not hypothetically. You're saying like... Speaker 2 (10:04) This is real. Yeah, Speaker 1 (10:05) this is real. This is you. Speaker 2 (10:06) But this is the power of situation. Very disciplined. I care a lot about health. Work out seven days a week. Eat healthy most of the time. However, if the donuts come in the house, I'm going to eat them. And it's like that's a situational problem. And you talk about how willpower... is overrated. This is quote of all the ways you can change your behavior. Willpower is the absolute worst, right? Quoted from the book. So a lot of us think, especially if we're disciplined, we think, oh, I'll just, I'll just will it to make it happen. I will. I'm tough. I'm gritty. Willpower will work in the science does not agree, right? It is not the way to do it. So talk about this idea of willpower, not being the thing in optimizing your situation is being the thing. Speaker 1 (10:52) So science affirms your personal experience. The idea that you can will yourself not to do something is not entirely unfounded. I mean, all of us can willfully resist looking at our phone. If I tell you, Ryan, you know, this is like a really great thing I want to show you, but just look away. You can do it. And if I put a donut in front of you and I say, Ryan, for a million dollars, don't eat this donut for 10 minutes or even a day, you could do it. But it is exhausting. I mean, research shows that reliably when you ask someone to do those kinds of things, they tell you that was tiring, that was exhausting. Like, I don't feel like I can do not only that anymore. I don't want to like do anything anymore. I need a nap. And so willpower is the worst, not only because it feels bad, but because this temporary ability to suppress impulses is highly fallible. I mean, how many of us have one day resisted a temptation? And maybe the next day, but just eventually succumbs. You know, it's not only food. I mean, just to use, I think, the other popular temptation right now in modern culture, it's screens. And in research, including my own, Americans, for example, but I think everyone now around the world has like a deep... ambivalence about their phone. They don't want to get rid of it altogether, but many of us feel like we're spending way too much time on it and the wrong time. For example, like, you know, first thing when we wake up, last thing before we go to bed, maybe interrupting our workday, our workflow. So the idea that you could use willpower to resist donuts or your phone is in some ways the most direct and obvious, but the worst. It's a little more sophisticated and a lot more effective to ask yourself, where did this urge come from? Why do I want to eat this donut? Why do I want to scroll on Instagram? And what you learn is what psychologists have long observed for at least 50 years, which is that these urges, these impulses come from our thoughts. You know, you have a simple thought like, donut, delicious, or... what is Timothee Chalamet doing today? Like you just, you know, you have this thought and then it creates an urge, you know, to pick up the donut, to pick up your phone. The trick that I would hope people would learn, and it's more than a trick, but I do think it's clever. So I'll call it a trick for now, is that you can ask another question. You can say, okay, I don't want those thoughts that make me want to eat donuts and go on my phone all the time. What situation could I be in where I'm not going to have those thoughts? In fact, I'm going to have the positive, optimistic thoughts that are related to my most important personal goals. I want to have those thoughts. I want to remember what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I don't want to go to bed feeling like, oh, yet another day where I didn't do what I wanted to do. That is asking what situation am I in and is it the best situation? And if it's not the best situation, what do I need to do to change it? So in this... research, I not only say, hey, willpower is stupid. I mean, I do say that. But what I'm trying to do is give you a glimpse of a blueprint for human behavior. Your urges to say things, to do things, and even to feel things come from your thoughts. And your thoughts, more than you realize, are, like the ocean current, incredibly powerfully influenced. And they are influenced by the people around you. the physical objects within reach, and the place where you are. Speaker 2 (14:17) I love the stories of people, mentors, and environments. I mean, that's the through line in this book. And so if you're cool with it, I'd love to kind of surface some of them and riff on a few of these stories. Yeah, Speaker 1 (14:30) I'd love that. Speaker 2 (14:31) So Bob Bowman, I remember when Michael Phelps was winning all those medals. He started to become more well-known. And then this guy, I may mispronounce this, Leon Marchand. Is that right? Speaker 1 (14:41) He's French. So I think if I try, I'm going to Speaker 2 (14:44) pull out my old Speaker 1 (14:45) high school French. Leon Marchand. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 2 (14:47) That sounds good. But he decided like, I need to change my situation. He's a pretty good swimmer in France. He's doing well. Very good. Very good swimmer, but wants to be better. And part of the... solution in his mind was to go to Arizona State, right, and be with Bob Bowman. Can you tell me what happened in the power of Marchand's situation and how that propelled him to achieve the things that he wanted to do? Speaker 1 (15:13) Leon Marchand was not just a good swimmer. He was a great swimmer, placed sixth in the 400 individual medley at the Tokyo Olympics. So he didn't medal, but he did phenomenally well. And yet he knew he could be better. He realized or he intuited that he had greater potential. He sat down with his parents, both of them former Olympians, to talk about what he could do. And the advice was not to try harder. The advice was not to train harder, to wake up earlier, to stay at practice longer. The advice was to change his situation, which was already very good, but wasn't as good as it could be. So he writes an email to Bob Bowman. And, of course, he had known about Bob Bowman, as every swimmer knows, the lifelong coach of Michael Phelps and many other great swimmers. And he asked if he can come over to the United States and train under his guidance. And that's exactly what he did. When he crossed the ocean and moved to another country, another culture, he exercised, to me, situational agency. He said the situation isn't a given. The situation is taken. Everything changed. You know, not only did he have now, I think, the best swimming coach in global history, he had a team of fellow competitors who were not just looking to be very good. They all thought they could win it all. That every day in practice, you are pushed by somebody in your lane to truly, you know, go to your edge. And so that was very important. And some of the trivial things that might seem like, oh, well, how important is it? I think are very important. The physical facilities of going to train under Bob Bowman in Arizona. Right. So, you know, far cry from France, where Leon was, where he went to a very, very good pool,