Later today Michael Phelps, the most successful Olympic athlete in history, will lead the American team into Maracana Stadium to begin the 2016 Olympic Games.  In the days that will follow, Phelps will step onto the starting blocks and attempt to add to his unprecedented collection of 22 Olympic medals.  When asked how he came to be so successful, Phelps replied, “If you want to be the best, you have to do things other people aren’t willing to do.”

Our aspirations to achieve something significant often demand that we persevere on challenging, distasteful tasks that are, nonetheless, important for us to realize success. A recent study tested this belief.  Specifically, Critcher and Ferguson (2016) conducted a series of experiments to see that if goal importance could predict people’s persistence and ultimate success.

The research discovered that, indeed, the level of goal importance was highly correlated with an individual’s self-regulation of the efforts and activities to achieve success.  For example, if better grades were deemed important, more studying and practice were put forth. In particular, those for whom tasks were most taxing were those who most benefitted from the association between importance and effort. Interestingly, when participants were reminded of recent self-regulatory failure that they believed could be overcome through hard work, persistence and commitment toward goal success increased. Consistent with this, increased reminders of the importance of the outcomes increased both self-discipline and commitment toward the activities perceived most necessary for successful goal attainment.  This perhaps explains why last Christmas, Michael Phelps was in the pool and training hard.

The lesson for leaders and those who aspire to high achievement is this: focus on the importance of the outcome.  Keeping in mind the importance of a successful outcome will cause one to put forth the sustained effort and resources necessary to achieve your greatest goals.

Reference

Critcher, C. R., & Ferguson, M. J. (2016). ‘Whether I like it or not, it’s important’: Implicit importance of means predicts self-regulatory persistence and success. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 110(6), 818-839.