Episode 483 — The Hidden Traits of the Most Successful People with Rich Diviney
What if the thing separating high performers from everyone else has nothing to do with skill?
In this encore episode of The Game Changing Attorney Podcast, Michael Mogill revisits his conversation with Rich Diviney, retired Navy SEAL Commander and bestselling author of The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance. Rich reveals why the innate qualities that define how we show up under stress, challenge, and uncertainty are far more predictive of success than any resume credential or technical ability, and what that means for leaders building teams in high-stakes environments.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- Why the attributes that drive performance under uncertainty can’t be taught the same way skills can, and how to develop them anyway
- How to identify what separates someone who thrives under pressure from someone who folds, long before the pressure arrives
- What the five categories of attributes (grit, drive, mental acuity, leadership, and team ability) reveal about your own performance profile and the teams you build
If you’ve ever wondered what it actually takes to build a team that performs when things don’t go as planned, this conversation is your blueprint.
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Show Notes:
Leadership isn’t something you can claim for yourself. “Leadership is not a position. Leadership is a behavior. You also can’t self-designate. You can’t call yourself a leader. That’s like calling yourself good looking or funny. Other people decide whether or not you are someone they want to follow, and they do so based on the way you behave.”
Attributes reveal what skills never will. “Skills don’t tell us how we’re going to show up in stress, challenge, and uncertainty. Because in an unknown environment, it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to apply a known skill. And so this is when we lean on attributes.”
Grit isn’t a single trait. “Grit is a combination of things blended and catalyzed and stewed together to create the result that is grit. And the attributes that do that are courage, adaptability, perseverance, and resilience.”
Fear is a formula you can break down. “Fear is a combination of anxiety plus uncertainty. You can, in fact, buy down one or the other or both in many cases so that you actually decrease your fear and you can actually step in a little bit further.”
Peak performance is actually limiting. “Peak performance is an apex. There’s only one place you can go from an apex, that’s down. Optimal performance means I’m going to do the very best in the moment, whatever the best looks like in that moment.”
The SEALs never hype themselves up before a mission. “Most of the time we’d be in the helicopter flying into combat, and the guys around me would be napping. We don’t know what’s coming. We’re not going to waste an ounce of energy doing things we don’t need to do, including worrying about stuff.”
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