Between Grit and Conscientiousness: Which One is Better in Predicting Employee’s Performance?
Angela Duckworth’s grit has been taking the spotlight on the psychology of productivity, but how does it compare to the well-established conscientiousness?
The concept of grit, as some of us might already know, was popularized by psychologist Angela Duckworth. Duckworth explained in her book, Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance , that grit is “the combination of passion and perseverance for long- term goals”. The passion construct (or “consistency of interest” —a tendency not to change goals and interest frequently) is reflected from items that measure whether your “interests change from year to year” and the extent to which you “have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest”. As for the perseverance (or “perseverance of effort” — an individual’s tendency to work hard in the face of setbacks or obstacles), it is measured from statements like “I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge” and “I finish whatever I begin”. You can try the grit scale for yourself on this Angela Duckworth’s personal site and see how gritty you are.
According to Duckworth, grit is amongst the most leading predictors of success. For example, she pointed out that some commonly measured personality traits—such as extroversion, emotional stability, and conscientiousness — could not predict job retention as effective as grit could. Kristen Hamilton, CEO and co-founder of Koru, Inc. —a Seattle-based talent screening and selection technology company —even made grit her number one thing she looks in a candidate; saying that grit prevails intelligence, talents, or even luck and chance in separating the winner and the quitter.
As grit starts to gain its popularity, a question emerges: how does it compare to another long-standing trait of success predictor called conscientiousness? After all, both feature the hardworking element to reach certain goal — and both are often cited as excellent predictor of a high-performing employee. Should we seek for gritty candidate or the most conscientious one?
(For anyone who’s not familiar with conscientiousness, it is one of the five traits in Five Factor Model/FFM which influences people to set goals, show a self-discipline, act carefully, and being orderly)
To answer these questions, we should examine the research done by Marcus Crede and his team from Iowa State University. Crede et al. stated that the construct of grit is not that different from the construct of conscientiousness, as can be seen in how the grit scores are very highly correlated with conscientiousness scores. According to them, Duckworth’s concept of grit is just an example of “old wine in new bottles”, since there is nothing new or unique about it. Another research by Andrei Ion et al. called “Grit in the workplace: Hype or ripe?” shows that, compared to another measurement tool (FFM), grit has “limited power in predicting work-relevant outcomes and attitudes”. For example, a low level of grit cannot predict the occurrence of counter-productive behavior over conscientiousness. Grittier employees are as productive as less grittier ones and may not perform any better— especially in the early phase of their jobs. These two studies suggest that grit shows no difference and not even be any better predictor compared to conscientiousness. Duckworth herself, as the answer of these criticism, later said that she would like people to think her concept of grit as "a member of the conscientiousness family”, along with other similar traits like industriousness, achievement need, or self-control. After all, she did say to us in her book (and on her recent interview) that grit isn’t everything. There are other aspects of personality that are as important as grit that help people grow and flourish, such as self-control, gratitude, social intelligence, emotional restraint, curiosity, and zest.
So far, it seems like conscientiousness trumps over grit. Does that mean that we should ditch grit and focus on conscientiousness when recruiting candidates? Can we really apply grit to the organizational setting after all?
Thomas Schoenfelder, a Senior Vice President, Research and Development at talent management solution Caliper Corporation, stated that adopting grit to business environment does possess a tough challenge. This is because Duckworth’s study of grit is mainly focused on the educational setting, which might face very different circumstances compared to the workplace setting. “Consistency of interest in completing a curriculum of study in one’s major,” Schoenfelder wrote, “may not always have a direct analogue in the working world, where objectives like getting promoted and receiving a raise often do not include a detailed roadmap, nor do they involve extensive skills development within an engaging course of study”. He also further wrote that the “consistency of interest” — grit’s longer term for passion — adds only a little predictive value, meaning that there is a little guarantee that employees who get a high score in this area (“they who are very passionate with their job”) will show a stellar performance in the future.
His solution? Tailor every performance and hiring indicators according to the jobs’ conditions and needs. “But if you really need to hire someone on the spot and don’t have time for the scientists to crunch all the recent data,” he said, “focus on conscientiousness and persistence. These traits have much deeper evidence of predicting work-related success and are safer bets to predict who’s going to make a good employee.”
In the end, conscientiousness seems to be winning over grit in the workplace — and it will not be going away any time soon.
