7 Ways to Enhance Grit

The four virtues of a leader by Eric Kaufmann is a refreshingly nice book on leadership. The four virtues are focus which sets direction and clarity for the journey, courage which enables full engagement, grit which drives action forward and finally faith which ensures agility.In this article I am going to focus on grit which I found was brilliantly dealt with in this book. Here are the 7 factors that can enhance your grit muscles.
Gratitude – It is so important to be grateful when you are going through tough times. When you are grateful for everything in your life it is very difficult to be down. We see the world not as it is but as the way we are. It is a choice of attitude. Think about all the grateful things you have on leadership. It also ensures you have a healthy perspective on life.
Purpose – When you have a larger purpose for your life you will never be down for too long. The author has coined an acronym FOCUS to understand this better. F-fulfilling meaning is your goal fulfilling to you and how does it make you a better person. O-Optimistic this means being optimistic about your goal. C- Challenging unless you find something challenging you may not be motivated to go through. U- Urgent you need to have a sense of urgency to fulfill your purpose. S-Specific this means only focusing on the important and eliminating all other non-value added activities.
Values – This is a simple one basically define what values you want your life to stand for. Some values could be discipline, integrity, honesty, passion etc.  
Discernment – This is the ability to analyze situations and make good decisions based on sound judgement.
Competence –Become skilled in your area of endeavor. Engage in deliberate practice. Identify your strengths, work on your weakness, find role models, connect with experts, read their blogs, listen to their podcasts and document what you have learned. Bill Gates is sighted here as someone who slept six hours a night and never missed a day of work during the initial years of building his company. Your confidence will increase with competence.
Chunking – Chunking is basically reducing difficult experiences to smaller, more manageable events. “Fall down seven times, gets up eight.”  
Responsibility - You have to take responsibility for your actions and reactions. It is easy to blame but that’s not what leadership is about.
There you have it the 7 ways you can enhance your grit.
The views expressed here are my own and do not represent my organization.

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