This is an installment of the ongoing “Fatherpreneurship Series”, which is defined here.

Scientific American has a terrific article about raising kids, titled The Secret of Raising Smart Kids. The article confirms my own instinct that raising your child to be “hard-working” rather than “smart” leads to success in school and life. I encourage you to read the article; here’s one of many interesting insights:

In studies involving several hundred fifth graders published in 1998, for example, Columbia psychologist Claudia M. Mueller and I gave children questions from a nonverbal IQ test. After the first 10 problems, on which most children did fairly well, we praised them. We praised some of them for their intelligence: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” We commended others for their effort: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.”

We found that intelligence praise encouraged a fixed mind-set more often than did pats on the back for effort. Those congratulated for their intelligence, for example, shied away from a challenging assignment—they wanted an easy one instead—far more often than the kids applauded for their effort. (Most of those lauded for their hard work wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.) When we gave everyone hard problems anyway, those praised for being smart became discouraged, doubting their ability. And their scores, even on an easier problem set we gave them afterward, declined as compared with their previous results on equivalent problems. In contrast, students praised for their effort did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions, and their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.

When hiring, I try to look for “grinders,” people who will work hard to solve problems. In fact, I will take a grinder over a merely smart employee any day. In the article:

In 1972, when I taught a group of elementary and middle school children who displayed helpless behavior in school that a lack of effort (rather than lack of ability) led to their mistakes on math problems, the kids learned to keep trying when the problems got tough.

I find that putting smart people around the table can lead to interesting (and often long discussions), but put together a bunch of hard-workers, well, progress happens. Now when we can find people who are wicked smart and hard working, well, these people we do anything to keep for life.