Bosses: Are You Too Gritty for Your Own Good?

The Wall Street Journal article, "Bosses: Are You Too Gritty for Your Own Good?" features thoughts from Russell Reynolds Associates' Dean Stamoulis about our findings on the virtues of possessing grit as an executive. The article is excerpted below.

Grit is great, most of the time. But some leaders may be too gritty for their own good.

Long a hallmark of over­achievers, grit is trendy nowadays - largely due to research by Angela Duckworth, a psy­chology professor at University of Pennsylvania She finds that grit, defined as passion and per­severance toward long-term goals, better predicts success than talent or intelligence. Her 2013 TED talk about building grit has been watched nearly eight million times.

"Gritty executives excel at their jobs and have the greatest potential to be promoted," says Dean Stamoulis, head of the Center for Leadership Insight at re­cruiters Russell Reynolds Associates Inc. The search firm has conducted in-depth assessments of more than 7,000 executives since 2005, finding that "those with grit exhibit drive, emotional resilience and focused planning," Mr. Stamoulis adds. CEOs have higher levels of grit than other executives, the analysis showed.

To read the full article, click here.