Floating in a lake in upstate New York, Herb smiled up at the warm sun, then took a deep breath and dove down as far as he could. Touching the bottom, he pushed off and came up, gasping for air. The 12-year old would spend this and his next three summers at this Boy Scout camp, connecting with kids from all across the state, competing, cooperating, and just having fun. This was such a completely different experience from the first camp he had gone to, where he was mercilessly beat up by anti-Semitic bullies. At first, Herb said, he had nightmares about going to another camp. His scoutmaster, though, encouraged him to let those fears go.
“It’s hard to explain what being accepted into the Boy Scouts meant to me,” Herb says. “Initially, I was told that I could join a Boy Scout troop in the upper Bronx, which was exclusively for blind kids. But there was no way my parents could get me there in time for the meetings after school.”
“Finally, Lionel Goldman, the scoutmaster of Troop 271 [which met at his elementary school], said he’d take a chance on me. And he became one of my mentors,” Herb adds. It was there that Herb felt, as he says, “accepted, challenged, and just one of the kids.”
For Herb, once again, like his experience of going to school, getting accepted into the Boy Scouts took the intervention of someone who was willing to stick his neck out and give this young blind boy a shot at being just a normal, everyday kid.
By bending the rules and allowing a blind boy into his troop, Herb said, Lionel gave him the chance to make new friends and do things he never would have otherwise, including spending four summers at camp. “Lionel was comfortable with my being blind. He didn’t view it as something that should hold me back. I’m eternally grateful to him for that,” Herb says.
Under Lionel’s tutelage, Herb went on to become a patrol leader, an assistant scoutmaster, and a Life Scout. But simply being “one of the guys” was what mattered most to Herb at that time. “It was so much fun,” he says. “We were all good at different things. We all had a shot of standing out in one way or another. And we worked together, in teams. One of my specialties happened to be knot tying. I could tie all nine knots more accurately and faster than anyone else whenever we had team competitions, whether it was a square knot, the sheepshank, the bowline, or two half hitches, which you use for horses.”
Not bad for a city kid.
His favorite part of being a Boy Scout was summer camp at Ten Mile River, in New York’s Catskills, just outside of Narrowsburg. “To get there, you’d take the Erie Railroad and get off at Port Jarvis station,” Herb explained. There he could swim, canoe, sing songs around a campfire, and go hiking in the hills along the Delaware River.
Herb says, “I still remember most of those camp songs. Would you like to hear one now?”
Let’s hold off on that for just a little bit.
When he was a senior in high school, Herb was just two merit badges shy of being an Eagle Scout (the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scout program). But he had little hope of getting those badges. The one was in bird study, and the other was in lifesaving. “I happen to be a strong swimmer,” he said, “but I couldn’t get the merit badge for lifesaving because you had to dive down to the bottom of a lake, find a 20-pound ball, bring it up, and swim to shore with it. Of course, since I couldn’t see, there was no way that I could find the ball. Then when it came to the bird study, I was able to remember all of the colors of the birds and I could imitate some of their sounds, but I couldn’t point them out in the sky, since I couldn’t see them.” While the Scout Master was supportive of Herb in every way possible, he could not completely bend the rules to allow Herb to become an Eagle Scout. That was until just 10 years ago when, in a special ceremony, the Boy Scouts named Herb an honorary Eagle Scout.
In Herb’s life, Lionel Goldman arrived at just the right time. As we reflect on our own lives, it is interesting to think about a time when a mentor appeared for us. Have you ever heard the saying “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear”? Has that ever happened to you? Were you seeking a mentor? Were you searching for an answer? Were you open to a new experience? Do you see the world as creating unforeseen possibilities?
If you have not found a mentor, perhaps the question is: Are you ready?
In Greek mythology, when Odysseus went off to fight the Trojan War, he selected Mentor to advise his son in the legendary king’s absence. Since then, the term “mentor” has been adapted as a term meaning someone who imparts wisdom to a less-experienced colleague.
In addition to providing sound advice and wisdom, mentors also share an abiding connection with their protégés. Often mentors and protégés connect on a very deep level with each other because they recognize or sense a part of themselves in each other. Particularly when we are in the midst of a challenging time, a mentor can provide the special connection we need, allowing our hearts to be felt and our thoughts to be heard.
A mentor may help you on your leadership journey by accompanying you for part of the way, preparing you for something you may not be ready for, listening and allowing you to come to your own conclusions, revealing how your thought patterns may be holding you back, and just believing in you.
That special connection with your mentor can also help you realize that you are not alone on your leadership journey—that you are connected to a long and noble past. That connection can help you persevere through times of uncertainty and prepare you to face the unknown with confidence.
Ultimately, a mentor will help you not just to find the right answers—but to ask the right questions.
If you have been fortunate enough to have a mentor, the next question is: Are you ready to return the favor? Are you ready to be a mentor to someone else? Have you opened yourself up to the possibility? And will you know when the student has found you?
It is daunting to ponder the sheer determination it took for Herb just to get to school, let alone to excel there. Just consider: to get to Bushwick High School, he would walk, with his cane, to Utica Avenue, where he would catch a trolley that would take him to Gates Avenue. From there, he would catch a trolley that would take him to Irving Street. From there, it was a short walk to Bushwick High School, which took up an entire city block. “Getting there was a drag,” he says. “Assuming all of the trolleys were on time, it would take a little over an hour each way. But all it would cost was a nickel, because once you bought a ticket, the route transfers were free all day.”
When he got to school, Herb continued memorizing. He memorized his way through elementary, junior high, and senior high school. He memorized facts and figures that intrigued him, as well as information that bored him to tears. Rather than take notes and refer back to what he needed, Herb found it easier to listen intently to his teachers and turn his mind into a tape recorder. “I never cut class,” he says, “because I needed to hear everything the teacher was saying. That’s how I would learn. I remember some kids would ask me how I was doing it, as if there was some trick I had up my sleeve that I could show them. And I’d say that all I was doing was paying attention.” He laughs and says, “Then most of them would say, ‘Oh, I was hoping you knew of some other way I could learn this stuff.’ “
So his head became full of desultory bits of information that he says he still remembers, but hasn’t the faintest idea what to do with—such as how to draw parallelograms, that an isosceles triangle has two angles that are equal, and how to solve a quadratic equation.
Many of us will dive into subjects that intrigue us, while we just barely skim over the subjects that we find less appealing. But Herb had to pay the same amount of attention to everything the teachers were teaching so that he would be ready for the test, where he would try to be, as his father said, “just a little better.” “I knew that’s what I had to do, what I had to be, in order to get into City College, which is what I was shooting for,” he says.
In high school, Herb had a teacher who, like Gertrude Ruhman in elementary school, served as his homeroom teacher, making sure he had everything he needed to get through the day. Sam Ellis, like Gertrude, became a mentor to Herb, seeing in him things that others missed, but would later prove to be true—in spades. Sam proved to be a major force supporting Herb’s sense of identity and belonging to something important. Most significant, he was the school official who encouraged Herb to apply to City College. In fact, Sam called Herb after the first of two days of entrance examinations to see how the young student was doing. When Herb said that he felt so unsure that he did not want to go back the next day, Sam just smiled and said that all Herb needed was a good night’s sleep, and he was sure that Herb would pass with flying colors.
With unbridled confidence, Sam Ellis conveyed the message to Herb that he could do anything he set his mind to. It was an echo and a confirmation of what Herb had heard from his parents, from scoutmaster Lionel Goldman, and from Pee Wee Reese of the Dodgers.
Still, through it all, Herb had heard two different and extremely contradictory messages during his childhood and young adulthood. First, he had kids who wanted to beat him up because he was different, whether for them that meant being blind or Jewish. He also had a school system that wanted to send him away because of his blindness. Second, he had his parents who stuck by him, fought for him, and let him know at every turn that they believed in him. And his mentors in school and the Boy Scouts echoed and amplified that belief.
So Herb had a choice of which of those extreme messages to believe in—those who doubted him, or those who were in his corner. Fortunately, he went for the corner. He leaned toward those who believed in him. And it made all the difference in the world.
In our personal and professional lives, as Herb quickly discovered, we are inundated with all kinds of messages—some that are very positive, others that are extremely negative, and many that are mixed. Which do you pay the most attention to? Do negative experiences seem to weigh more heavily for you? How can you give more weight to your positive experiences and emotions? At the end of the day, the more we can take in and give out positive messages, the more we will be able to believe in ourselves and in those around us. That positive belief can become the bedrock of our leadership.
Psychological Insights—Grit and Flow
At this stage in Herb’s life, some things seem to take an enormous amount of determination, and others just seem to flow.
What is the connection between flow, a pinnacle of engagement that seems effortless, and grit, the ability to passionately and persistently pursue a long-term goal?
Are grit and flow two sides of the same coin? Are they separate concepts, pointing us in slightly different directions? Or is grit what is needed to reach a state of flow?
To consider these questions, let’s first focus on flow. As defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his groundbreaking book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, flow is a transcendent experience of oneness that we may derive when we are completely engaged in an activity that stretches our capabilities.
It is important to underscore the difference between this feeling and where the feeling comes from. As Csikszentmihalyi explains, when people first hear about the flow experience, they may assume that the lack of “self-consciousness” has something to do with “just going with the flow.” To be in a state of flow, however, is quite different. As he describes it, this optimal experience involves our total engagement. Being in flow requires a considerable challenge, along with a feeling of personal control and a complete focus on a task that is believed to be important. Your entire being is involved, and you are using your skills to the utmost.
Under those conditions, we can attain a transcendent experience of oneness where our ego seems to fade away and time disappears. In this state of flow, we become one with what we are doing. When asked what they were thinking or feeling when they were in flow, people usually say, “nothing,” as Martin Seligman wrote in his trailblazing book Flourish. He believes this occurs because the concentrated attention that flow requires uses up all of our cognitive and emotional resources.
That’s why, when we enter a state of flow, it can seem as if some universal switch has been flipped. The transcendent feeling can feel effortless, almost magical. But like a magic trick, the effortlessness is an illusion. While the transcendent feeling derived from being in flow may seem effortless, preparing to arrive at a state of flow takes extensive effort. Behind the scenes, as Herb’s story demonstrates, to reach a state of flow requires passion and persistence. Those are the qualities that will enable us, ultimately, to hone our skills and succeed at our personally desired long-term goals.
So what is needed to reach a state of flow, in a word, is grit. As Angela Duckworth, a University of Pennsylvania associate professor who received a MacArthur Fellowship for her work in this area, describes, “Gritty individuals approach achievement as a marathon; their advantage is stamina.” Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges and maintaining our effort and interest over years, despite any and all setbacks.
Duckworth and her colleagues evolved this hypothesis after interviewing highly successful people who kept referring to grit (or a close synonym) when they were asked what quality distinguished them. Most significant, these top performers also mentioned being awed by the achievements of some of their peers who did not, initially, seem as inherently talented as others but remained driven by a sustained commitment. Equally baffling were stories about prodigiously gifted peers who did not end up performing well.
What was causing the difference? Neither intelligence nor conscientiousness could account for what distinguished individuals who succeeded from those who did not. The something else, which Duckworth and her colleagues uncovered in this and other studies, was grit, a never-yielding, passionate form of self-discipline focused on a long-term objective. This extreme persistence can fuel our efforts. So, the more grit we have, the more time we will spend on a chosen task, and those hours spent do not just add up, but they multiply our progress toward our goal.
This brings us back to the connection between grit and flow. Allow me to illustrate how they connect by sharing a story that Roger Staubach told Herb and me when we interviewed him for a book we coauthored about the qualities that drive individuals to succeed.
Known as “Captain Comeback,” Staubach was the quarterback who led the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowl victories. He understood flow. Known for thriving under pressure, he called upon something deep within himself in the last few minutes of a game, particularly when his team was behind. Twenty-three times he led the Cowboys to victory from fourth-quarter deficits. One of the most memorable instances occurred with 30 seconds left on the clock. Against all odds, his go-for-broke, hope-and-pray throw has now entered the vernacular as the Hail Mary pass. His description is clearly about being in flow.
At midfield, behind by 4, with the cold Minnesota wind blowing at him, he took the snap, pump-faked left, then turned to his right and fired the ball deep down the field, aiming for his wide receiver, Drew Pearson, who was completely shadowed by a Viking defender. Then Staubach was hit, so he didn’t see Pearson make a spectacular catch, then, with the ball wedged between his right elbow and right hip, sprint into the end zone, sending Dallas to another Super Bowl.
After the game, when asked how it happened, Staubach replied, “I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary.”
What was it like for him being inside that moment? “It’s hard to describe,” he told us. “It comes down to confidence. You have to believe in yourself, especially when people are looking to you to pull them together. They want to believe in you, so you’re totally focused on being there for them.” He was clearly describing a flow experience, being in the moment, losing self-consciousness, stretching his abilities, having a sense of complete mastery of his performance, with time disappearing.
Then he talked about how grit was essential in preparing him to reach that state of flow. “It was just a matter of being prepared, then letting it happen,” he said. “We would practice for those last two minutes all week long. That was our drill, with the clock running. But you never knew what was going to happen until you were in the game.”
So grit prepared his mind. Then his prepared mind became fertile ground for flow.
Grit, then, is not just connected to, but is the way to flow. Csikszentmihalyi echoes this when he emphasizes that the ability to persevere despite any obstacles is probably the most important quality for succeeding, as well as for enjoying life.
The connection between grit and flow is particularly important for leaders. When we have passionately and persistently pursued a long-term goal, and we are engaged in achieving it at our highest level, we open ourselves up to the possibility of experiencing a state of flow. Grit is what drives us to that point. Then, from time to time, for reasons that we still do not totally understand, when we are completely in our zone, working on all cylinders, we can find flow. Or, more accurately, perhaps, flow can find us.
So if you, as a leader, are seeking to boost your level of engagement and accomplishment, discovering that one thing that brings out your grit is a clear starting place. “Your passion and persistence will trump those who may be much smarter, but not as committed,” Herb adds.
An equally significant message is for you to identify those around you who demonstrate grit, who exhibit an exceptional commitment to a particular goal. Those are the individuals you want to support with all the resources you have. Focus on identifying and developing grit in yourself and in those around you. Then reward that behavior handsomely. That’s how you can send a clear message and create a distinct culture where you and everyone in your organization experience more of those elusive moments of exceptional wonder known as flow.
Questions to Ask Yourself About Grit and Flow
These questions are posed for you to consider as you create your own vision, tap into your personal strengths, and pursue your own leadership journey. Your answers to these questions will provide a starting point for considering how grit and flow play into your approach to leadership. You are encouraged to consider these questions at different times, as your answers will undoubtedly evolve and change as your leadership journey unfolds.
1. When was the last time you gave your all to anything? What was it? What did it feel like?
2. What would you want to give your all to now?
3. Have you experienced a state of flow, where everything was moving forward perfectly in ways that you could not even imagine? Do you have any idea how to recreate such a moment?
4. Do you have a mentor? If so, what is the most important thing you have learned from your mentor? If you do not have a mentor, who would you like for it to be?
5. Are you a mentor to someone else? If so, how does that relationship make you feel about yourself? If you are not mentoring someone now, who would you like to mentor?
6. If someone is saying something negative about you, and someone else is saying something positive about you, which do you believe?
7. Do you say negative and positive things to yourself, as well? If so, which one wins out?
8. Do you have someone who is your biggest fan? Is there someone who believes in you thoroughly?
9. Are you someone else’s biggest fan? Do you believe in that person thoroughly?