Here are my thoughts on an often used term in sports, GRIT. It's simple to understand but challenging to implement. Let's see if this helps you to bring this to your culture.
Perhaps more than any other characteristic of successful people is the quality of grit. Every one of the 115 champion team cultures I’ve been associated with demonstrated grit. As a competitive distance runner for many years, I admired the mentality of the great Steve Prefontaine. I still remember his words prior to a big race when he said, and I paraphrase, “they may beat me but they’ll have to bleed to do it.” That is grit.
Coach Bob Hansen of the Middlebury College tennis program tells a story about the grit of one of his athletes. It was Spring break, he had a job, he practiced his tennis yet still turned up the volume of life by taking a simple “breather class” and still spend 24 hour writing a paper for his project. According to Bob, he was an “all-in” guy wanting to get the most from himself. This is grit.
In the culture of Anson Dorrance, grit is related to character; real personal character is what he calls it. Included in such character traits is self- discipline, competitive fire, self-belief, love for the ball and love for the game, watching or playing it. He loves Duckworth’s GRIT TEST (included in her book) and requires all his athletes to take it to determine who has grit and to teach them through such a test, the elements that make up grit. Like Anson, I believe that being mindful of what grit truly is, raises the possibility that you can develop it within yourself. I also believe that if you have passion and perseverance, you demonstrate grit. However, these qualities cannot be legislated by you, the coach. The athlete must want to have grit.
In my win the day culture, we never give up, we never fear failure, we never lose confidence and we never let an opponent defeat our spirits. Cindy Timchal’s teams are the epitome of grit. In a recent conversation she admitted to me that our work together on grit was the one key factor in getting them to the women’s lacrosse final four.
Legendary NFL champion Coach Bill Walsh of the San Francisco 49’ers had a strong conviction about his guys being “gritty.” He referred to it as being resilient In his words, “to succeed you must fail which is part and parcel of pursuing and achieving very ambitious goals.” I remember when his team was on an eight-game losing streak early on in his tenure with the Niners. After a dark, dismal period, rather than give up he discovered something inside (Grit) that helped the team to keep fighting regardless of their record. The next season they won the Super Bowl.
While so many coaches and athletes seem to think that greatness is the result of physical talent, I refuse to accept this myth. While physical talent is important it is the Mental talent that brings championships. Believing it is just physical talent lets you off the hook – “I don’t have the talent so that’s why I’m not great.” It becomes an excuse to not work hard. From my experience with all of my 115 championship teams, I’ve observed that a majority of them won with mental grit, not physical talent alone. When I was a competitive athlete, I had less physical talent than many but few, if any, could outwork me.
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