Hi, I'm Mark Mitford. I spent 25 years working as a high level HR executive in corporate America with many fortune five hundreds and middle market size companies. If you're a small business owner, CEO, or any other professional, given the task of solving your company's HR issues, then you're in the right place. Today. Our episode is gonna be focused on a leadership attribute. You don't really hear a lot about its grit. So when you think about it, it's really critical.
When you think about grit, it's the ability to succeed in the face of adversity. It's the ability to get up and keep going. One of the key things that I focus on is if anybody's ever watched the original Sylvester Stallone iconic movie called Rocky, it has a great part in there. I wish I could do my Rocky voice, but anyway, it talks about focusing on a inspirational speech that Rocky gives to somebody else. Who's a boxer. And the key thing is coming out of it. It's really gotta go up.
And even though you get hit and you get knocked down, you have to keep getting up. So for those of you who haven't seen Rocky in a couple of years, then go ahead and actually take a look at it . It's a great movie. I highly recommend it . Grit is so important, especially in nowadays, we've gone through so much. This is being recorded in the summer of 2022.
There has been a lot going on within the organization, within the, within the economy, within coming out of a pandemic, there is just a lot going on. Whereas leaders, business owners, CEOs have had to show grit. It's one of those things that you really don't talk about too much, but it's, you know, a lot of times you talk about here's some great leadership competencies or attributes, grit. Isn't one of them. That's why I think it makes a lot of sense to actually talk through it today.
So what does grit look like? Actually, it really focuses on a couple of different facets. It's really one of those things that's kind of from an abstract perspective. It really is interesting cuz you can't define it, but use these as kind of some definitions for grit perseverance. The first thing is grit is persevering . It's pushing through things, getting through, get when you're knocked down, guess what you get back up.
And I think that's the epitome of coming out of C a lot of organizations, of course did not survive COVID and went out of business. But a lot of organizations were able to persevere and show perseverance. So they actually made it through the COVID time and the pandemic over the last few years, the next one around grid is problem solving. It's amazing because going back to the pandemic, a lot of organizations had to do things very, very differently.
Many organizations rein invented themselves so that they could actually survive and they problem solved through that problem. You know? So you go back to, and a lot of restaurants are great examples. Some restaurants who didn't survive, they kept waiting and waiting for people to come to their restaurants. And they had your traditional menu. A lot of restaurants who did survive and thrived during that time, they actually created this huge takeout business.
And quite often then also just the advent of curbside pickup . So curbside contact list , pickup and delivery and things like that. So those organizations who did that quickly in the first couple of months of the pandemic probably made it through if they were a restaurant, other organizations didn't so they just didn't problem solve enough. And then the other big one is confidence. When you have confidence, it's amazing how many people they have competence, but they do not have confidence.
And I always go back to it's a two prong approach to success. You have to be confident, good at what you do, but you also have to be confident in knowing that what you do is gonna be successful. And of course I'm realistic. It doesn't mean everything that you touch is gonna be a raving success. Baseball players are a great example, right? A baseball player who is considered extremely good and is a star.
They bat about 300. And for those of you, if you flip it upside down, that means seven times out of 10, they actually do not get on base. And so you think about it only three times, or they actually hit the ball successfully and get on base the rest of the times they don't. So that they're still confident in the way that they swing and they're batting mechanics and things like that. So one of the key things you have to do is really increase your grit.
A couple of things that you need to do to really boost your grit and really boost it up and be able to take it to another level is these couple of items let go of your failures. It's amazing how many people in life or in leadership roles or wherever it is. Doesn't matter if you're, if you make , uh, $20,000 a year or you make $200,000 a year, let go of your failures. Some people dwell on something. While I remember when I did this two years ago, that was two years ago.
A lot of things have happened that you've done things well, that you've had many more successes than you have failures. So don't dwell on things that haven't gone your way, because you need to let go and successful people let go of those. And they chalk it up to a learning experience. What did I learn to make sure I do not do that again? Learn from your mistakes. So that's the next one go , which goes along with failures.
What did you, if you made a mistake own up to it, be a hundred percent candid . Do not try to make up some answer or worst case lie about a situation own up to your mistake and then focus on what am I going to do differently. The next one is take it on the chin. Kind of going back to our , uh, Rocky movie a couple minutes ago, take it on the chin. And we all mess up.
We all screw up things, but get over it don't dwell on it because people, and I think we all know people in life, who they dwell on things that didn't go well, whether it's six months ago, two years ago or five years ago, it's, you know, you can't do that because the personal baggage you're gonna carry with you is gonna be huge. And that's gonna only increase your stress level. Always move forward. Always be thinking the way, the way kids walk.
If any of you have any , uh, a young child, probably 10 months old or 12 months old, the way that they learn how to walk is put one foot in front of the other and they stumble. And sometimes they fall and sometimes they hit their chin and they cry and they have a bloody chin, but they get up and guess what? Every one of us figured out how to walk sooner or later in our lives. The next one we wanted to focus on in the final one is learn from others. We are not the smartest persons.
I know that constantly. And I I'm reminded of that, even though I'm in my late fifties, I know that I'm not the smartest person in the room and don't act like you're the smartest person in the room. Learn from others, a person who's been doing a job like myself for over 30 years. I can learn from somebody younger because they're really good at technology. I have two daughters in their twenties. They can run circles around me from a technological perspective. So I could learn from them.
And I didn't think a year ago or two years ago that I would be doing POS podcasts and guess what? I'm doing podcasts now. And this is something that I learned how to do, and hopefully they are being successful and you are enjoying the podcast series we have out there. So that's where I wanted to finish up today is making sure you have grit. It doesn't matter if you are a , uh, manager in an office, an individual contributor with a company or you're the business owner.
Having grit is one of those things. That's going to give you a recipe for success, not only for today, but also five or 10 years from now. So thanks a lot. That's about covers it for today. Thanks for listening for all things pertaining to HR. Come visit our website, HRcatalystconsulting.com. And don't forget to like us and subscribe to our podcast until next time. This is Mark Mitford. Thanks for listening. Have a great day .