success – The Leadership Professor

I just reread an interesting book[1] by social worker and psychotherapist Amy Morin. When I’ve assigned it in my classes, students have found it helpful. It occurred to me that Morin’s work might be just the thing I need for a project in development. Let me share her central messages: you might find them helpful too.

Morin’s main argument goes something like this. Life is tough for everyone, and we need mental strength to tackle the challenges life sends our way. We grow our mental strength by increasing what we know about our capacities and about the habits that hold us back.

We all set goals for ourselves, and they are usually pretty good. We know ourselves and the problems we face: our goals are ways to resolve big concerns that are stressing us out or holding us back.

The best of intentions, however, are too often derailed not by the quality or relevance of the goals we set for ourselves, but rather by the tacit habits of mind that block our ability to do what we need to do to achieve them.

Our bad habits drag us down – and we’re only as good as our worse habits! We strengthen our personal capacities and resolve, therefore, when we identify what we do that repeatedly gets in our way. Quite simply, we need to identify what we have to stop doing and let ourselves succeed!

Morin identifies 13 dysfunctional habits she has seen in her own life and practice, and notes that people who feel strong and successful in their lives just don’t do these 13 things. Here’s her list of habits that are very good to break:

1. Don’t waste time feeling sorry for yourself. Get on with what must be done to get back on track and moving ahead in the ways you want.

2. Don’t give away your power. We always have more power than we believe we do. Identify your sources of power, and use them!

3. Don’t shy away from change. Change is the only constant in life. Learn to embrace flexibility as a central life skill, and you’ll go far.

4. Don’t waste time on things you can’t change. There is no reason to keep hitting your head against an unmovable wall!

5. Don’t worry about pleasing people. Do what’s right and must be done, and you’ll please yourself. Good people are attracted to that!

6. Don’t fear calculated risks. Everyone has fear of the unknown, and that kind of fear need not hold you back. Make a list of the pros and cons, the costs and benefits of the risk; and invest your energy realistically assessing those.

7. Don’t dwell on the past. The past is the past: you can do nothing about it now!

8. Don’t make the same mistakes, again and again. Mistakes are only disastrous when we learn nothing from them. Failure is the best teacher.

9. Don’t resent others’ success. Invest your energies in creating your own. Success is not a fixed commodity: you and others can all have it.

10. Don’t give up in the face of failure. The best things are worth working and fighting for. Figure out what went wrong; then pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back to working on your goal.

11. Don’t fear time alone. Learn to be your own best friend, and use quiet time to invest in building your skills, knowledge, and resilience. Read! Read! Read!

12. Don’t feel the world owes you anything. Work for what you want, and the satisfaction in getting it will be magnified by the fact that you have become a stronger and smarter person from your efforts.

13. Don’t expect results immediately. Anything really worth achieving takes time.

We all need to build capacities to stand strong and thrive in the face of difficult situations. How does Morin’s list help you see your strengths and flat sides? Where are you strongest? Which areas and practices need shoring up?

Why not create an action plan for growing the supports and habits you need for your long-term success? Amy Morin has identified common mindsets and behaviors that can hold you back. Which dysfunctional habits are you holding onto, and what is your prioritized plan for jettisoning them – one by one?

[1] Amy Morin (2014). 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Training Your Brain for Happiness and Success. New York: William Morrow.

An article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education confirms what those who have studied gender and leadership know from research — and what many women know from personal experience: women need to be able to see themselves in a role before they can succeed in it.

I assert the same is true for people of color and for first generation college graduates.

If people can’t believe at their core that folks like them can do whatever they are setting out to do, that tiny kernel of insecurity can gnaw at their self-confidence. And guess what? They may not be able to do what they fear they can’t. It’s a tacit, self-fulfilling prophecy.

The message to educators in all this is clear: teaching skills and knowledge is not enough. Quality education is identify work and personal development, and we short change our students – undergraduates, graduate students, and executive audiences – when we design programs assuming facts, figures, and models are enough. We do students no service either when we think we know why they don’t succeed or persist.

Look at what the researchers found.

Research from Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research in the October issue of the American Sociological Review found that women who begin college intending to become engineers are more likely than men to change their major and choose another career. The interesting gender twist: they do it for lack of confidence, not competence.

Women lack what the researchers call "professional role confidence" — a term that loosely describes the outcome of a complex self-assessment on whether a person feels s/he has the right stuff for success: the core intellectual skills, the right expertise for a given profession, and a fit in interests and values with the expectations of the field’s career path.

Women’s family plans and concerns about their math skills have been traditional explanations for their low representation in engineering. The researchers, however, found otherwise.

Women’s family plans had little bearing on their career planning once they entered engineering training. Surprisingly, men were more likely to leave engineering if they had plans to start a family.

Women’s views of their math abilities were not significant predictors of persistence toward an engineering degree or entrance into the field. "Once students matriculate into this math-intensive field, more complex, profession-specific self-assessments appear to replace math self-assessment as the driving social-psychological reasons for attrition," the researchers concluded.

The authors suggest their findings about professional-role confidence may be relevant in other fields. I know they are. That’s why mentors, role models, and caring sponsors are so important.