Develop grit and resilience in your protégé

- There was always someone who, in one way or another, told me to keep going. I think everyone needs someone like that. This quote is from Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. As a mentor, one of the most important things you can do is be the person to tell a protege to keep going. We'll take a look at applying new research by leading scholars, by Angela Duckworth and Carol Dweck, to help you develop your protege's grit and resilience.

What is Grit? Grit scholars say Grit is a combination of persistence and passion in terms of sticking with something like goals or challenging situations. As a mentor, when you help a protege stick with something hard, your protege becomes more resilient. So how can you help your protege develop their grit and resilience? One, assess your grit. Read Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Duckworth. And ask your protege to do the same.

Take the grit measure and have a real conversation about it's results with one another. This will give you a starting point and further develop trust and rapport that we cover in the video, Developing Trust With Your Protege. Two, be gritty yourself. Research shows that if you role model gritty behavior, your protege will watch you and follow your lead. For example, I had a mentor who taught in the same classroom I did right before me. I would often arrive early just to watch him.

He was an excellent instructor. But what was remarkable is that he was excellent. Just a few short weeks after his young son had tragically passed away. At the time, I was going through some health issues myself and questioned whether I could even summon the energy to be excellent in the classroom. However, watching him function through his grief gave me the grit I needed to overcome my own difficulties.

Reflect on past adversity. Ask your protege to reflect on their past experiences in dealing with adversity, and how they overcame these difficulties. Remind them that the skill of dealing with adversity transcends context. And when you practice grit, you get better at it. Show and tell optimistic self-talk. Research shows that when you send yourself a message, or someone does it for you, it is really powerful. One of my favorite children's books is The Little Engine That Could.

This book is about the little engine that was told she would never be able to climb a big mountain. However, the little engine decided to try and chanted to herself, "I think I can, I think I can." And in doing so, reached the top of the mountain. I wonder if this resonates for you. Have you ever felt like the little engine? If you have, that's grit. Remember, life will keep handing us unwanted learning experiences. When we get one of those, let's try to be gritty.

Not just for yourself, but for your protege too.