6 Factors Of Career Success
We all want to be successful in our careers, but very few of us know how to make it happen. We're so busy running from one task to the next and endlessly checking our phones for see if anyone has responded that we never take a step back and evaluate what's actually going on. But with a little self-reflection, change can happen.
In this post, you'll find out how to identify the factors that contribute most to your career success. You'll learn about some of the factors you might not even realize are affecting your results and about how small adjustments can make a big difference in your overall life satisfaction.
So let's go ahead and get started. And as usual, this is all based on the research of Angela Duckworth, a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a MacArthur genius grant recipient for her research on self-control and achievement.
1) Your Ability To Persevere
Have you ever tried learning a new language or working out at the gym? If so, then you already have some experience with one of Angela Duckworth's key insights about success: our ability to persevere toward long-term goals is just as important as our talents and past achievements in determining how far we'll go in life.
You've probably already experienced this firsthand with your own personal aspirations. If you're like most people, you've spent a lot of time in your life wishing you could be more disciplined, more outgoing and more productive. But with all the demands on our time, we can't quite seem to find the extra time or energy required to pursue these dreams.
But research shows that if you have self-control – i.e., the ability to plan ahead and resist the urge to get sidetracked – then we can focus all those extra pieces of energy into pursuing those goals in general. If we do this effectively and consistently, then we'll end up getting pretty far along the path towards success in any given area.
This is why we're so fond of this quote from Angela Duckworth:
"Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality."
More specifically, grit means being able to burn through temporary failures and setbacks without letting them stop you from pursuing your long-term goals. You'll have to persevere through failure after failure until you eventually make a breakthrough.
But while perseverance is crucial to success, researchers have uncovered a handful of other factors that can help you persevere in the face of failure. You'll learn about those factors in the next section.
2) Your Ability To Build Friendships And Networks
We all know that having a large network of important relationships can be an enormous advantage for our careers. But how can we actually put this idea into practice? Here's what Angela Duckworth says:
"People with extraordinarily strong networks tend to get promoted. People with extraordinarily weak networks tend to end up as a busboy. Sometimes we argue that it's not the people with a great network that gets promoted, but the network itself. In other words, if you are in a hierarchical team, if you are in a sales team where your supervisor is valued and respected, then you will probably also be valued and respected by people at every level of your organization.
So what's true of sales is also true of friendship. I have plenty of friends who are successful professionals and they all started out as the guy who won't stop talking about himself. If you have multiple friends who have those same interests then getting invited to a lunch or party or to give a speech is much easier for them. I think this is why it's so important to have one close friend you can trust. It's not because your friend will say, 'Hey, go ahead and ask for this raise.' But they can help you get excited about your goals. They can speak truth to you."
This is a more advanced idea that requires both guts and effort. As much as we might like to be the kind of person who makes friends easily, those people are rare. According to the latest research on this subject, most of us don't come by our friendships naturally at all; in fact, we have very little control over the types of people we become friends with.
As long as you're open to meeting new people and don't shy away from the idea of going out of your way to connect with others, then you'll have a much better chance at building a strong network. Of course, there are plenty of successful people who don't maintain a large social circle, but it still helps to have some friends when things get tough.
The next factor that contributes to career success is closely related to the ability to build friendships and networks: your ability to be brave in the face of uncertainty.
3) Your Ability To Be Courageous
The next crucial element of Angela Duckworth's research is courage. She says this about courage:
"There are two kinds of people in the world: The first kind of person, people who avoid failure, say it's just not safe to go there. 'It's too hard.' 'I'm not ready.' Or they just don't think it will work out. But I have this friend who told me that her whole professional life started when she failed at something. Her mother died, and she felt so badly about the fact that her mother had not been able to get appropriate medical treatment for all these years before she passed away. My friend took her mother's problem and she literally went after it with a vengeance. She wouldn't rest until they got to the bottom of why it wasn't happening. When my friend was a young lawyer, her boss said, 'Here's your next case.' And she said, 'No I don't want to do this case because I think it's too hard.' Her boss said, 'What do you mean you don't want to take the case? This is what you've been hired for. It's your job.' And she said, 'No I'm not doing the case.' He said, 'You know what? If you're not going to do this case then I'm going to fire you. You're not going to have a job in this firm.' She said, 'I'm not doing your case because I'm afraid of failure. I'm afraid of failing.' But she had the courage to say, 'No. No, this is my job. This is what I came to do.' That's the first kind of person – people who avoid failure and go around it. There's another kind of person who says, 'Oh, no.' And they're not sure if they can do it but they feel compelled to take on challenges. People like these are the ones who make us different – people who give us our self-esteem and our purpose.