Testing for Grit

The quality of grit, or a passionate persistence, is considered a priceless attribute when hiring prospective team members. 

The idea of grit refers to a person’s ability to persevere and remain determined in the face of challenge, adversity, or obstacles.  People with grit maintain a commitment to long-term goals and consistently work toward them despite the difficulties that may arise along the way. 

This makes them generally more successful than others. 

Those with grit bounce back from setbacks, displaying a resilience to cope with whatever is thrown at them. They move forward. They don’t allow obstacles to become a distraction or to derail them from achieving their goals. 

Gritty team members share a host of positive assets, including a growth mindset and the ability to maintain a deeper focus on long-term goals. They commonly view challenges as opportunities and have a penchant for confronting adversity rather than falling victim to it. No wonder learning whether a candidate has grit is such an important piece of evaluating talent. 

But testing for grit can be tricky. To avoid a false conclusion, leaders and organizations that prize this quality often employ a variety of methods to make the assessment. 

The most common way to confirm grit is by asking those who know the person to describe their tenacity, and further, to share stories that demonstrate the elusive quality of this candidate’s perseverance and resilience. Asking for specific examples will likely confirm or disconfirm that this person is gritty.  

Another pathway to assess grit is through the interview process. In behavioral interviews, leaders can learn when candidates have walked away from a challenge and why. They can also explore at what point a candidate is likely to surrender to a goal and when. Questions that probe how prospective team members have overcome adversities they have encountered in life and what have they learned from the process are also popular.  

Some leaders and organizations prefer to use puzzles or case studies to test for grit. They design challenges that require persistence in finding solutions. The presumption is that gritty candidates will find a way around the impediments posed by the case or riddle.

Because grit is such a complex quality and so hard to see in real-time, it makes sense to use a variety of measures to discern whether a candidate possesses it. In this search for grit, one avenue not to overlook is to identify whether the candidate has habits that reflect or reveal this steely persistence. 

Individuals with grit are likely to share the following habits: 

• They set long-range goals for personal success.

• They craft definitive plans and processes to improve in areas that matter to them. 

• They intentionally express gratefulness at the beginning or the end of the day.

• They frame situations in positive and optimistic terms on purpose. 

• They share with their colleagues why they are intrinsically motivated to complete work.

• They purposely display energy and passion for any task they are asked to complete.

Before concluding whether a current or prospective team member possesses grit, good leaders make sure those candidates have developed the habits most often associated with this beneficial quality. Ironically, it takes a lot of effort and grit to test for it. Maybe that’s why some leaders are less interested in the attribute. It takes a gritty person to know one.