Sep 24, 2015
(To listen to the interview, please CLICK on the 'Pod' icon above left next to the title. Thank you.)
KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with
advertising maven,
Linda Kaplan Thaler (@lindathaler2),
on 'Grit
to Great', co-written with
Robin Koval. In this, they tackle a topic that is close to
their hearts, one that they feel is the real secret to their
own success in their careers--and in the careers of so many people
they know and have met. And that is the incredible power
of grit, perseverance, perspiration, determination, and sheer
stick-to-it-tiveness. They say we are all dazzled by the notion
that there are some people who get ahead, who reach the corner
office because they are simply gifted, or well-connected, or both.
In fact, research shows that we far overvalue talent and
intellectual ability in our culture. So many people get ahead--even
the gifted ones--because they worked incredibly hard, put in
the thousands of hours of practice and extra sweat equity, and made
their own luck. Linda and Robin should know--they are two
girls from the Bronx who had no special advantages or privileges
and rose up through their own hard work and relentless drive
to succeed to the top of their highly competitive
profession.
In a book illustrated with a
cornucopia of stories and the latest research on success, the
authors reveal the strategies that helped them, and countless
others, succeed at the highest levels in their careers and
professions, and in their personal lives. They talk about
the guts--the courage--necessary to take on tough challenges
and not give up at the first sign of difficulty. They discuss the
essential quality of resiliency. Everyone suffers setbacks in
their careers and in life. The key, however, is to pick yourself up
and bounce back. Drawing on the latest research in positive
psychology, they discuss why optimists do better in school, work,
and on the playing field--and how to reset that optimistic set
point. They talk about industriousness, the notion that
Malcolm Gladwell popularized with the 10,000-hour rule in
his book
Outliers. Creativity theorist
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi believes it takes a minimum of 10 years
for one's true creative potential to be realized. And the
authors explore the concept of tenacity--the quality that allows us
to remain focused and avoid distraction in order to get the
job done--an increasingly difficult task in today's fragmented,
cluttered, high-tech, connected world.