When asked the secret to motivating her students, a high school English teacher responded confidently: “I’ve never had a problem inspiring my students. Every class is notified at the beginning of the year that 50 percent of them will fail my class.” 

Speaking of education, I was reading an article in “The Harvard Gazette” that a close friend sent me on “What makes a good student?” The further I read the more it made me think it’s the same for good employees – curiosity, critical thinking, integrity, inner drive, passion and purpose.

Let me give you my take on each of the points that the Harvard professors highlighted.

Curiosity. The future belongs to the curious. Curiosity is a hunger to explore and a delight in discovery. When we are curious, we approach the world with a child-like habit of poking and prodding and asking questions. 

Curiosity makes us interested in a broad range of information about the world around us, not only that with direct utility. We learn for the joy of learning. To great thinkers, curiosity is essential.

Critical thinking. When I speak to corporate audiences, the first lesson I share is how some of the best people spend their most productive time looking out the window. Every organization has people who can see the big picture. They don’t get bogged down with a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. They’re thinking. It’s the hardest, most valuable task any person performs without question.   

Making your points to your boss or anyone else requires more than information, which amplifies the need for critical thinking. With so much information bombarding us 24/7, sifting through the content to find factual, legitimate and useful material is no small task. 

Drive. There are many formulas for success – but none of them work unless you do.Hard work is an important key to success. Without a willingness to work hard, business success is nearly impossible. No matter what industry you work in, hard work is most often the secret to success. Take it from Thomas Edison, who said success is “One percent inspiration, 99% perspiration.”

The harder you work for something, the greater you’ll feel when you achieve it. Working hard becomes a habit, a serious kind of fun. You get self-satisfaction from pushing yourself to the limit, knowing that all the effort is going to pay off. Remember, there is no off switch on a tiger.

Integrity. As I have said so many times before: If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.

Assuming the leadership of an organization understands the importance of integrity, the next important decision involves the quality of the people who are hired to work for it. You must be able to trust the people you work with. Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing to do.

Complete honesty in little things is not a little thing at all. Honesty, ethics, integrity, values, morals – all mean the same thing. In my estimation, you can interchange them, because they all convey the single attribute that determines whether a person or an organization can be trusted.

Passion and Purpose. Passion is at the top of the list of skills you need to excel no matter what your profession. There is no substitute for passion. If you don’t have an intense, burning desire for what you are doing, there’s no way you’ll be able to work the long, hard hours it takes to become successful. Passion never goes out of fashion.

The subtitle to one of my books is, “Love what you do and do what you love.” That pretty much sums up passion. However, I will offer one caveat about passion. If you’re not good at what you are passionate about, it doesn’t matter. 

Everyone needs a purpose in life. People with a strong sense of purpose know what they want, why they want it, and how they plan to achieve it. Purpose-driven people get in the habit of doing things they don’t like to do in order to accomplish the purpose they have defined for themselves. A life with a purpose is a life full of promise.

An anxious mother was questioning Princeton University President Woodrow Wilson, who later became U.S. President, about what Princeton could do for her son.

“Madam,” the exasperated Wilson replied, “We guarantee satisfaction or you will get your child back.”

Mackay’s Moral: The father of success is work; the mother of achievement is ambition.