Personal Assessment of Traits and Habits to Success
Objective: To have students increase their self-awareness by evaluating how often they practice the traits and habits of successful people.
Directions: For each of the 20 traits and habits of successful people listed below, ask yourself how often you practiced each one during the last month: never, seldom, sometimes, often, always. For example, “during the last month I sometimes practiced the trait of believing I create my own life.”
Introduction: The ability to engage in routine self-evaluations of personal traits and professional skills is a necessary component of communicating one’s value to the marketplace. The Personal Assessment of Traits and Habits (PATH) to Success lists 20 of the most common personal traits and habits frequently practiced by successful professionals and organizations. Each one is listed below with a definition and an example of someone who has demonstrated that specific trait or habit.
1. Believe you create your own life: The influence of other people and circumstances are all around us, but you need to believe that you can make an impact on them if you want to achieve your goals.
a. Madame Walker was an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, regarded as the first female African-American self-made millionaire. She created her own life and doing so allowed her to make her fortune by developing and marketing a successful line of beauty and hair products for women.
2. Create a vision for your life: Know where you are going, where you need to turn, and what resources you need along the way, so you can live with intention.
a. Jack Dorsey is an American web developer and businessman widely known as the creator of Twitter and as the founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company. In a 60 Minutes interview in April 2013, Dorsey outlined his vision for his life and expressed interest in becoming Mayor of New York City one day.
3. Define a specific goal: It is impossible to work toward something if you do not know exactly what it is you are trying to achieve.
a. Charles Kemmons Wilson defined a specific goal of creating the Holiday Inn chain of hotels that were friendly to families. Wilson came up with the idea after a family road trip during which he was disappointed by the quality provided by motels of that era.
4. Exercise self-discipline: Once you have clearly identified a vision and goals, it requires inner drive and deliberate effort over an extended period of time to achieve them. Exercising self-discipline can help you travel down your PATH to success as you manage the other traits and habits needed to succeed.
a. Christopher Paul Gardner exercised self-discipline to overcome homelessness to become an American entrepreneur, investor, stockbroker, motivational speaker, author, and philanthropist.
5. Deal with change: The world is in constant motion and people that live with intention and work with purpose have to deal with change on a constant basis. Instead of avoiding or ignoring change, it is important to recognize its existence and figure out ways to manage the change in order to life with intention and work with purpose.
a. Gabrielle “Coco” Bonheur Chanel dealt with change as she had to overcome a difficult childhood and became a French fashion designer and founder of the Chanel brand. She was the only fashion designer to appear on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
6. Rebound from failure: Nobody is successful all the time with everything they try to do. If we give up after a failure or two, we will fall short of achieving the life we envision. Few, if any, people or organizations achieved success without experiencing some degree of failure along the way.
a. Eric Thomas rebounded from failure as a high school dropout to eventually obtain his Master’s degree and developed The Advantage Program, an undergraduate retention program targeting academically high-risk students of color.
7. Believe in yourself when others do not: Your goals and desires are uniquely yours and may not be shared by anyone else. To achieve them, you must retain self-confidence in what you are doing despite what others say.
a. Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, The Wright brothers, believed in themselves when others did not as they pioneered aviation inventing and building the world’s first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered, and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903.
8. Exhibit courageous behavior: Courage is facing situations that scare us but demand our attention if we want to take action and achieve a new goal.
a. Valentino Deng demonstrated courageous behavior by building schools in Sudan, the very place where decades earlier the Second Sudanese Civil War wiped out his village. Deng is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan—the name given to 20,000 boys who were displaced and/or orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983 to 2005).
9. Get comfortable being uncomfortable: Many things in life make us uncomfortable, so we must routinely practice getting comfortable in uncomfortable situations, both personally and professionally. Doing so can help us take the smallest of steps toward our next goal.
a. Dick Fosbury was able to get comfortable being uncomfortable and revolutionized the high jump event, inventing a unique “back-first” technique, now known as the Fosbury Flop, adopted by almost all high jumpers today. His method was to sprint diagonally toward the bar, then curve and leap backward over the bar.
10. Persevere through a difficult situation: Reaching any goal requires you to keep moving forward no matter what the obstacle or how difficult the situation.
a. Mario Renato Capecchi persevered through a difficult situation when as a child he was left to fend for himself on the streets of northern Italy for the 4 years, living in various orphanages and almost died of malnutrition. Capecchi eventually became a molecular geneticist and a co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
11. Be more resourceful: Be aware that other resources or people might exist to help you answer a question, address an issue, or resolve a problem.
a. Jimmy Wales learned to be more resourceful when he helped create Wikipedia after two previous business ventures provided the funding he needed to launch the free online encyclopedia.
12. Prioritize your to-do list: There are many things we have to do, but not all things are necessary for us to meet our timelines and accomplish our goals.
a. Fred Smith prioritized his to-do list in order to become the founder, chairman, president, and CEO of FedEx, originally known as Federal Express, the first overnight express delivery company in the world, and the largest in the world.
13. Collaborate with others: Working with others can make you more effective by exponentially increasing your capabilities.
a. Paul Orfalea collaborated with others when he grew his first Kinko’s store in 1970 to a network of over 80 stores in the United States. Rather than franchise, Orfalea formed partnerships with each individual store’s local co-owners.
14. Differentiate yourself: Examine your traits and skills, so you can identify what makes you unique and valuable to others in a specific situation.
a. S. Truett Cathy differentiated himself when he launched Chick-fil-A restaurant chain centered on the chicken sandwich. A devout Baptist, Truett further differentiated himself by always closing his stores on Sunday.
15. Communicate your value: Present a compelling story about yourself, so that others can better understand how you differentiate and offer value to them.
a. Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, urges women to communicate their value in order to advocate for themselves whether in the workplace, home, or in school.
16. Understand events and people more clearly: Assumptions block communication, hurt collaboration, and derail action.
a. Dale Chihuly, as a world renowned glass sculptor and entrepreneur, needed to understand events and people more clearly when glass blinded him in a car accident. Unable to create the glass art he taught others and learned how to become “more choreographer than dancer, more supervisor than participant, more director than actor.”
17. Respect and discuss new ideas: Growth comes from inviting, processing, and implementing new ideas without judging the validity of those ideas before thinking about them. New perspectives can help you become more creative and open opportunities.
a. Michael Wesch respects and discusses new ideas, especially the effect of new media on human interaction through the emerging field of digital ethnography.
18. Take calculated risks: To live with intention is to move forward without a guaranteed outcome because one or more of the variables are unknown.
a. Philip Petite is a French high-wire artist who took a calculated risk and gained fame for his high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, on August 7, 1974.
19. Ask yourself empowering questions: Question what is happening around you to deepen your understanding. Instead of lamenting when something occurs, you can ask “what is life trying to teach me at this very moment?”
a. Randy Pausch was an American professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. Upon learning that he had pancreatic cancer in September 2006, he asked himself empowering questions and gave an upbeat lecture titled “The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” on September 18, 2007. Pausch died of complications from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008.
20. Practice self-improvement: The more you intentionally improve the other traits and habits, the more effective you become in other areas of your life. Only you can take the steps needed to practice self-improvement on a regular basis as you look to achieve the personal growth required for professional development.
a. Reid Hoffman is an American entrepreneur who co-founded LinkedIn, venture capitalist, and an author. In his book The Start-Up of You, Hoffman wrote that we are all in a state of permanent beta. “Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, grow more.” Permanent beta is a lifelong commitment to continuous personal growth.
Next Steps
1. Which two or three traits or habits of successful people can you rely on during the next month?
2. Which two or three traits or habits of successful people would you like to practice more often during the next month?
