[Music]
hey everybody welcome to impact theory
today's guest is organizational
psychologist adam grant he's a four-time
new york times best-selling author who's
been called one of the top 10 most
influential management thinkers of our
time he's been ranked wharton's number
one professor for seven years running
and is one of the most sought after
speakers on the planet additionally this
former junior olympics diver was named
by fortune magazine to their prestigious
40 under 40 list and everyone from bill
gates and richard branson to j.j abrams
and malcolm gladwell have praised his
work and his ted talks together have a
collective view count north of 20
million views adam welcome to the show
man
thanks for that tom i can assure you
it's all downhill from here that's
hilarious it's uh it's funny how hearing
one's accomplishments strung out like
that can sound very weird at times but
it is pretty impressive man like what
you've been able to do is um is is
pretty extraordinary and what i love is
that it comes from
a pretty aggressive approach to getting
people to tell you what you're doing
wrong so that you can get better
and right now we are living through some
extraordinarily
um
interesting times the the tables being
overturned we're in the middle of a lot
of protesting there's going to be just
tremendous change hopefully a tremendous
change taking place and to get us
through that kind of change well we're
obviously going to need a lot of
tremendous leadership and i was
wondering in your research i know that
you've focused heavily on what are sort
of the universal principles of
leadership
and i'd love to start there like what do
you think makes for a great leader
oh where do we begin how many hours do
you have time as many as you'll give me
to be honest all right i'm here uh i i
have not a lot else on my agenda today
so
um you know when when i think about
leadership the first thing i want to do
is i want to break it down into values
and skills
and i think the for me the values are
table stakes right so you can't lead if
you're a taker rather than a giver if
it's all about you as opposed to saying
look i care more about my people and the
mission we're trying to advance than i
do about glorifying myself
uh so that'll be the first value i'd put
on the team so before we before we move
off that one just give people a quick
breakdown of givers versus takers you
have a whole book on it it's really
extraordinary um you talk about the
three types i think it'd be useful for
people to understand that
yeah happy too so when i think about
your style of giving and taking the
question is just when you interact with
somebody new what's your default
instinct is it to give and say what can
i do for you to take and think about
what can you do for me or to match and
say okay can we trade some kind of favor
and what i found over and over again is
that most people default to matching
they don't want to be too selfish or too
generous and yet in the long run the
most successful leaders especially are
the servant leaders
who are interested in helping others
with no strings attached and who will
put other people above their own narrow
self-interest and so i think
that's just that's a must-have in
leadership and it's far more rare than i
would like it to be
fair um
i think beyond that i think a second
attribute i look for in leaders
value-wise is humility uh to recognize
your shortcomings but also be motivated
to overcome those shortcomings it's it's
not that helpful if you can say yeah i
can i can make a list of the 19
weaknesses that i have but i don't care
about fixing any of them right i think
being an effective leader is is heavily
about striving for self-improvement
and the third value i put on the table
is integrity uh it's a consistency
between your words and your deeds
and a lot of people will say look you
know you you have to practice what you
preach i actually think leaders should
be doing the reverse which is to say i
am only going to preach what i already
practice
and if we could just get leaders who
value generosity humility and integrity
i would be overjoyed and then we get to
skills
all right so before we go on to skills
let's talk about those in a little more
depth so one of the things i found
interesting in the book
is when you're talking about takers
givers matchers that you said the
interesting thing about givers is that
they represent both ends of the spectrum
so you see some of the least successful
people are givers and then the most
successful people are givers and so i'd
love to know how to use it functionally
and when it sort of metastasizes and
becomes a problem
yeah so if you look at the differences
between failed and successful givers
they break down into the question of
actually it's three questions one who do
you help two when do you help and three
how do you help
and what you see with failed givers is
they're basically self-sacrificing so
they're helping all the people all the
time with all the requests which is a
recipe for burnout it's also an easy way
to get burned by takers
what you see with successful givers is
they're more thoughtful about their
helping choices and they say look i will
do whatever i can to support people who
are either generous or fair right givers
or matchers but if somebody has a
history or reputation of selfish
behavior
then they might be a taker and so i'm
gonna be a little bit more cautious with
them and set some boundaries
one because i don't want to reinforce
that behavior and reward it and two
because they're going to take advantage
of me and prevent me from helping the
people who are going to pay it back and
pay it forward
and then you also see that successful
givers are more likely to say okay i'll
block out time for my own agenda and own
priorities because i want to be
ambitious around my own goals not just
around helping other people and yeah if
it's an emergency i will show up and
help you but otherwise i have some
priorities that i need to take care of
here so i will be available to you when
you know when it's not going to be a
huge cost to me
and then they're also careful about
helping in ways that energize them and
where they add distinctive value so you
see a lot of failed givers becoming
jacks of all trades and you know pretty
soon they get a reputation for being
capable and helpful and then no good
deed goes unpunished
whereas the successful givers are more
likely to say look i've got a couple
ways of helping that i really like and
that i excel at and i'm going to focus
on those so that i can add more value
and so when i do help it's energizing to
me as opposed to exhausting
one of the things i found in a company
context and i'm not even sure yet how
applicable this is to
the greater time that we're living
through right now um but when i think
about trying to provide leadership in a
company context it's it's a pretty
interesting dynamic when you talk about
humility where you do have to have a
degree of certainty you have to have a
degree of like being able to step out
front to um galvanize everybody's
attention hopefully not on yourself but
you're galvanizing it on a vision and
you have to get everybody pointed in the
same direction i often talk about one of
the things i think that leaders really
have to do is you have to understand how
to generate momentum so we're in a
moment right now where if we can
capitalize on the sort of emotional
momentum that we have point it in a
direction that is
ultimately bringing everybody together
and is um is thoughtful in terms of the
long-term outcome that we want to have
that that could be such a powerful
moment but
getting everybody to
move in the same direction
is
is a difficult task without getting
people to stare at you so you want them
to stare at the idea right you don't
want them to overfocus on you but
somebody has to present it somebody has
to present it with clarity and get
everybody going keep them enthusiastic
keep that energy level up and
so the type of person and you've talked
really powerfully about this the type of
person that is drawn to that can often
spill into the narcissistic right they
enjoy the attention and so some of what
they're seeking is that and i'm just
curious how
how somebody who really wants to help
they really want to help sustain that
momentum they want to be a beacon of
hope in this time
how do they make it about the mission
and not about themselves
i think that's such an important
question tom and i love how you've
you've highlighted that distinction
i think that you know for me it comes
down to promoting your ideas not
yourself
and
when i look at how leaders do that
effectively one of the things that
really surprised me is sometimes the
message doesn't even come from them
so as an example years ago i was
studying fundraising callers and they
were trying to bring in donations to a
university
and the the leaders were trying to
motivate them because this is hard work
right you you interrupt people's dinner
you try to convince them that no your
tuition was not enough you should keep
sending money into the university and
now you should get nothing back for that
donation uh so they got yelled at a lot
they you know they shouldered a lot of
complaints and
the leaders tried to talk about why the
money was important and where it was
going and the callers just they looked
at that and they said
wait these these managers have an
ulterior motive they want to motivate me
to work harder and bring in more
donations and so you know
i don't really buy into this whole story
they're telling me
so what some of the leaders did then was
they actually outsourced inspiration and
they said okay you know why why do we
have to be the megaphone what if instead
we bring in some scholarship students
who could talk about being the
first-hand beneficiaries of the money
that's being raised by this call center
and so we ended up designing some
experiments together and lo and behold
it turned out that that message was much
more compelling coming from the end user
who could say look you know i i might
not have been able to afford tuition and
because of the work that you all do i am
in college today and really show that
sense of appreciation as opposed to
managers doing it themselves and so i
think sometimes one of the best ways to
energize people is to shut up
say instead let me find the you know if
i've got a mission here it's probably
affecting some group of clients or
customers or patients or end users and
let me bring their voices front and
center
yeah i love that notion of sometimes
what you need to do is listen that's one
of my rules about being a leader is you
really have to listen um i read nelson
mandela's extraordinary book long walk
to freedom and in that he talks about
his father who was sort of a local
chief in his village and he said that
he would always listen before he would
speak and he would make sure that
everybody else had their opportunity to
air their ideas to air their grievances
and only after that would he come in and
say okay here's what i think that we
need to do to move forward so i'm a big
believer when you read something if it
hits you and you think that this is a
useful thing you should be deploying
that you deploy it immediately i love
the reference to mandela uh because the
one thing that's always stuck with me
from from his writing is the idea that a
leader is like a shepherd
if if you watch a shepherd with a flock
the shepherd is is rarely out front
right you will often see a bunch of
sheep leading the way and the shepherd
is kind of taking care of the stragglers
there's a great organizational
psychologist victor vroom
who incidentally his license plate says
vroom on it which is just how could it
not how could a detail right i would do
that if that were my name so
uh one of the things that victor studied
for years was the the tension between
being a directive leader and a
participative leader
and he said one of the fundamental
mistakes that a lot of leaders make is
they they develop a style and then they
stick to that style but the whole point
of leadership is flexibility and
adaptability and so you can't just say
well i'm a i'm either an empowering
leader or i'm more of an authoritative
leader you actually have to be willing
to adjust your style to fit the
situation
and so what he was really interested in
is is how do you flex effectively and he
found that there are a bunch of
conditions that really matter a few that
stood out for me
one
relative expertise is huge right so when
i look at effective leaders one of the
things i see over and over again is they
know what they know they know what they
don't know and in situations where they
have more knowledge than their team
they're comfortable in the driver's seat
when they don't know what they're
talking about they'll step back and move
into the passenger seat
um some others were around getting by
and saying okay you know the more
critical it is for people to you know to
really get behind this mission the more
i need to hear their voices and and give
them a say if people are already bought
in then you know then i can i can kind
of lead
um and i think that when i think about
leaders who've done this really
effectively the the examples that come
to mind all follow a common meeting
structure which is to open up by saying
look here's the objective of the meeting
does anybody have any feedback on that
before we go forward okay once we're
aligned on the objective now i want to
go around and hear everybody's
independent view before i share mine and
then at the end i'm going to try to
synthesize add my perspective and then
move us toward a decision and what i
like about that is the leader is still
providing some guidance and direction
but the leader is actually not
disclosing hey you know here's where i
stand and that way we don't run into
this conformity or group thing problem
i'd like to effect where the highest
paid person's opinion the moment that's
known everyone wants to jump on the
bandwagon
yeah you you cut out right as you said
it but it's the hippo effect if i
remember correctly i just want to make
sure people hear that such a interesting
concept so we we hit the first part of
your leadership which is super powerful
now talk to me about skills like what
are skills that a leader should be
developing
yeah so when i break down leadership
into skills i think obviously
decision-making skills are critical we
started talking about those already um
and i think decision-making skills have
to do with being willing to hear
dissenting views right being willing to
confront perspectives that maybe bruise
your ego a little bit
in order to learn and then in order to
gather better information and make
better choices can you give people an
example because this may be the most the
thing that i've taken most deeply away
from your work is this because this dude
of all the powerful things that you have
already said and will say in the rest of
this time this how to
improve yourself
to me is is at the the foundation of the
human experience so
why have you become so
dogged in your pursuit of
critical feedback
i mean from my perspective it's the only
way you get better if if people just
praise you over and over again you're
only going to repeat the excellence
you've already achieved
and you hit a plateau and then you're
you're done like great how exciting is
it to just say okay i i peaked already
i'm gonna just try to maintain that
level uh what i want to do is i want to
keep getting better
and i think to me it's it's so much
better to be on an upward trajectory
than it is to you know to flatline at
some level uh or to stagnate and so
i i think that that requires short-term
sacrifices and it's a little bit like
the you know the professional version of
what you just you described you know in
a personal relationship which is if i
want to if i want to achieve whatever
potential i'm capable of
i have to be willing to hurt myself uh
in the moment in order to you know to be
a little bit stronger tomorrow i mean
it's a lot like weight training right
you you know you have to tear a muscle
in order to build it into you know into
a stronger muscle and so
i feel like we should think about our
skills and our capabilities the same way
that we do
you know our bodies in that sense so
i guess this is something i learned
first as an athlete not a real athlete
mind you just a springboard diver but
i've seen footage of your springboard
diving it's pretty impressive uh it
would be a lot more impressive if i was
a little bit more talented and a little
bit less
less stubborn but one of the things that
i i learned as a diver right away was i
couldn't see myself in the air right and
so what i would feel when i was flipping
or twisting or even when i was entering
the water was completely different in
many cases from what the judges would
see
and so you know very early on i became
extremely dependent on my coach and then
also on video to really try to process
the disconnect between what i thought i
was doing and what was coming across
and that as i moved into you know into
work life that became sort of a metaphor
for what we all deal with um you know i
think we definitely have we all have
bright spots right which are strengths
we can't see but we have also lots of
blind spots which are weaknesses that we
don't have have access to and so what i
wanted was the clearest possible rear
view mirror to say if i can't see in
that then you know i can't really figure
out what i need to learn and what i need
to get better at so
um i started doing this in the classroom
where you know i would just have
students fill out feedback forms first
when i gave guest lectures then when i
started teaching classes i just said
tell me everything you want me to do
more of and everything you want me to
change
and then i would just share all the
feedback with them verbatim which was my
own version of radical transparency i
guess and then we can have a thoughtful
conversation about how i can fix those
problems and improve upon those you know
those areas of weakness and that became
a conversation that really turned the
students i was teaching into my coaches
which was immensely helpful and made me
much less awful at public speaking than
i was when i started dude i love that
going back to what you were saying about
in athletics
so i used to skateboard i will put that
very lightly
i used to enjoy standing on a board with
four wheels is probably a more accurate
description and i remember trying to
learn how to ollie and i'd finally
gotten good where i could all eat pretty
high i was really proud of it and then
the kids that i was skating with are
like you do know that your back wheels
never leave the ground right and i was
like
what what are you talking about that
that's not possible i'm all-ing hi i
legitimately did not believe them i'm
like when you talk about how it feels
inside versus what it actually looks
like outside
i was like i can feel it man i'm like
really doing this and so they said let
me film you and they filmed me and i
wasn't only my front wheels were coming
off i could not fathom that that
feedback was real and because of that
disconnect and so getting that objective
look at myself was really transformative
at the beginning you said that you'd be
a better diver if you were less stubborn
what did you mean by that i remember one
day i was i was just trying to do a
front dive with a half twist so you take
off you're going in the water and then
you kind of turn into a back dive
and i had i guess a mental image of
where the twist happened that defied the
laws of physics and by the way my diving
coach was a physics teacher
and i still argued with it right i was
so sure that i was right because i felt
like i was turning over one way and he
said okay i'm just gonna have to show
you the tape because you won't believe
me and my teammates were making fun of
me and you know i wasted an hour and a
half of that practice but that became a
microcosm for a series of mistakes that
i was making which is i was so
determined to be right
that i was standing in my own way of
getting it right and so i i decided i
was going to be really quick moving
forward
to admit when i was wrong about
something and then try to improve upon
it and that's i guess that's become a
metaphor for how i try to with my life
oh my god you have to talk about shane
please tell us a story because it is so
crazy and so perfect for how i think
people should approach life
yeah so
i think anybody who hasn't heard of
shane battier uh there's a reason for
that um if you know if you don't follow
basketball closely uh shane shane was a
superstar for his whole career uh he was
the player of the year in high school he
was the captain of the duke national
championship team
and then he got to the nba and
discovered that pretty much everybody
there was more physically talented than
he was
people would complain that he was too
slow he couldn't dribble
and this was a real liability right if
you want to be one of a few hundred
people in the world who can play
professional basketball and so what
shane did this was first captured by
michael lewis a wonderful article called
the no stats all-star
was he said okay i'm going to master the
intangibles and some of that is obvious
right i'm going to dive for loose balls
i'm going to you know i'm going to take
shots that
that are really critical for the team
even though they don't bring me a lot of
glory necessarily but he also said you
know what i'm going to master statistics
and i'm going to find the one spot on
the court that you know that the guy i'm
guarding tonight can't shoot from and
i'm gonna force him there
and i'm also gonna figure out where you
know where my game is optimized by
studying what the gaps in my team are
and then figuring out how i can film
and if you think about that that is the
nexus of you know of generosity and
humility right shane is asking how do i
make my team better right it's not about
me i want to i want to contribute to a
championship team
and he's asking how do i reinvent myself
in order to you know to become the
player who adds that kind of value
and you know if you look at the data he
was one of the most effective players on
a court in the sense that there's a huge
discrepancy between how well a team
performs when he's on the bench versus
when he's playing
even though he doesn't have you know a
crazy number of points scored or assists
or rebounds or shots blocked
and i think that that's that's something
we need in every team
i think it's you know it's somebody
who's there to say there is no task
that's beneath me
and if the leader is that person that
has a huge cascading effect
dude that like you want to talk about
something that leaders need to be able
to do it's
nothing is beneath you another stat in
basketball that you've talked about
which is teams that have the most
all-stars tend to perform the worst
which i think is is really pretty
interesting if you have a whole team of
all-stars
they're less likely to want to do that
right everybody wants to take the
game-winning shot and so yeah their are
studies both in basketball as well as in
in professional soccer
showing that if you have a team of more
than about 60
superstars your odds of winning a
championship or having a highly
successful season go down because you're
missing the role players and so whenever
i hear a ceo say well i only hire a
players i think well you know what
there's a lot of important work that a
players don't want to do and so i think
that's the wrong mentality i think the
evidence would tell us that an a team is
actually composed of a and b and c
players i am so desperate to get phil
jackson on the show i don't know if you
read his book 11 rings but oh man when
he talks about how
we weren't winning championships when
jordan was just the best player in the
nba we started winning championships
when he became a leader and when he
realized you can't just punch people in
the face and hope that that is going to
take you like that it will inspire them
to elevate their game he was like you
have got to find a way to connect with
these guys to bring them together and he
said when i was able to focus him on
leadership and really being a leader
then we start taking off and he was like
look he was still michael he was still
super hardcore but
in recognizing that he wasn't going to
be able to win by himself um and you
know i think that speaks to your
earliest point about the best leaders
being servant leaders and being able to
um recognize how they have to give and
not just take is pretty extraordinary
yeah one of the the questions i've
gotten really interested in lately is
the question of leader emergence so
you've got a team uh and you have
different levels of ability um and then
you know somebody steps up and becomes
the the informal leader what drives that
and you know sometimes it's just the
most competent person
but often it's it's what psychologists
would call prototypicality which is to
say what does the group stand for and
then who's the person who's most likely
to exemplify uh the essence or the
identity of the group and
i think that's that's something that
very few people stop to think through
when you know when they either start a
new job or when they build a team is to
say okay if i were to make a list of the
values that are distinctive central and
enduring to this team or to this company
what are they and then how do i make
sure that i represent the most core
values all right now we have to talk and
i fear that i'm misremembering the words
you use but cognitive entrenchment
that's close
um so
that's the phrase when i think about
people getting stuck because humans hate
change as you were saying what larry
page said i was like oh good luck man
like people really hate change um but
it's such a powerful idea so
how do you deal with cognitive
entrenchment
so when i think about cognitive
entrenchment there was a brilliant paper
that eric dain wrote about this and he
said look you know we we generally
assume that the more expertise you gain
the more creative you're going to be and
yet if you study the relationship
between expertise and creativity it's
not linear it's curvilinear uh there's
such a thing as being too knowledgeable
like wait how could that be wait i jus i
should i should stop learning
no what he's saying is that oftentimes
when you get really deep in a domain
you start to take for granted
assumptions that need to be questioned
and you don't even know you're taking
them for granted you're like a fish that
doesn't realize it's in water and there
are some really funny demonstrations of
this like expert bridge players if you
change the rules up on them they
actually perform worse than a lot of
novices do or if you take really skilled
and experienced accountants if uh if you
look at how they adjust to a tax law
they're slower to adapt than people who
are just learning the accounting trade
uh and you know those are examples of
cognitive entrenchment right people get
they get sort of accustomed to a
particular way of thinking and solving
problems and then they don't want to
undo that
and i worry a lot about that
i think that you know organizations
you're starting to talk about
organizations get entrenched too right
this is the way we've always done it
well that will never work around here
and those those to me are are some of
the great warning signs that a culture
is in danger of groupthink um i think
the first thing to do is to to run run
the exercise of asking what's missing
from our culture uh if you know if
there's a pattern of behavior a routine
a way of thinking that we wish we had
but we didn't what is it
and then how do we go out and find
people who excel at that how do we
collectively and you know adjust our
behaviors a little bit to move in that
direction
um i think ideo did this beautifully so
you you know ideo of course tom um i um
i knew them originally as the the
company that invented the mouse for
apple uh and they've done all kinds of
creative work since then as as a great
design consultancy and after a while
they realized you know we have a lot of
engineers and designers
but we're getting called into these
weird worlds and we're not really sure
how to solve the problems that we face
in those worlds like they were tasked to
redesign a shopping cart in a grocery
store
and then to reimagine sesame street as a
tv show this is not mouse building
anymore
we need to figure out how to how to
learn about a new world really quickly
and so they actually created a new job
that was called anthropologists and they
said look this is what anthropologists
do for a living they go out into foreign
cultures and they make sense of them and
they bring that understanding back
and so they literally went and hired
anthropologists because they discovered
there was a skill set they were missing
in their culture which was very design
and engineering focused and i think that
exercise could be run in every company
and it's a great way of identifying
those gaps and then not getting
entrenched what's what's your take how
do you think about solving that problem
so one i think everybody has to agree on
what their goal is so part of what i try
to do is
make sure that core values that are
innate to the person that we hire are
already there so if somebody
doesn't like i think that you have to
filter to a large extent and so the
question is what do you filter for and i
think most people filter for skill set
it's very easy to put on a resume
it's much easier to test in an interview
but the thing that we filter for is do
you have a growth mindset and i feel
like that is one of the most fundamental
things um i get asked a lot about like
hey i want to be in a relationship like
you and your wife like how do i do it
and i'm like 80 of the battle is
selection and if lisa didn't have a
growth mindset or i didn't have a growth
mindset and we weren't willing to get
better and improve
then it would be nightmarish and you end
up
one of you grows typically and the other
doesn't and you know it becomes this
real drama so looking for people that
have a growth mindset so at the core all
i have to do is appeal to that right so
as you were talking about what people
have to do to improve a culture
my belief is
your current skill set or your current
culture however you want to think of it
has already taken you as far as it's
going to take you so if you're happy
where you're at and like you said
earlier and you're comfortable being in
that plateau forever then hey yay you
already won but my thing is i'm not and
certainly in a business if you're not
growing the odds of you getting
supplanted by somebody who comes out of
left field with some new innovation that
you're just gonna get beaten to death so
i'm i appeal to those sort of just they
are the physics of being human they are
the physics of running a company you
have to be improving um as a person the
meaning of life is to see how many
skills or how much potential you can
turn into actual usable skills so it's
like i would be asking all right as we
try to evolve this culture and somebody
offers an
idea i would say how does it make us
better in any sort of measurable way um
is it gonna help us innovate so that we
don't get supplanted by a new player is
it going to
allow us to do more with less like what
what is the outcome that you're trying
to get because i find that in life
people steer by a vague sense and you
have to migrate them away from a vague
sense into something that is
articulatable into a very specific goal
with a timeline how much exactly what
those three elements being critical to a
goal and then having an informed
hypothesis about how to get there and
the informed is the key part and so
we've broken down so what i call the
physics of progress and we've turned
everything into
sort of a stateable formula which is the
most effective way to do insert goal is
to insert what i call a lever action a
binary thing that you either do or don't
do it isn't um incumbent upon the
outside world to give you anything it's
like either we do this or we don't and
so that's our informed hypothesis i know
enough about it you know to say i think
this will work but i know enough about
the realities of myself and the world to
know i can't guess at whether this will
actually work i have to test it
i love formulating that as a hypothesis
because i i've seen so many companies
get in the trap of of declaring the best
practices and then never questioning
them until it's too late and i think
what you've just outlined is a really
effective way to keep learning
yeah and and at an institutional level
it becomes
harder because you have so many of the
a company is not a nameless faceless
entity it it is entirely the sum total
of the actual human beings that make up
that company so if at the individual
level you have a
sickness which could be cognitive
entrenchment then the organization is
going to have that same sickness of
cognitive entrenchment so it's
trying to find a way to boil this down
where everybody can take ownership of it
and make those changes be focused on the
same desired outcome which is constant
self-improvement in our company
otherwise you
there's so much inertia to staying the
same you just won't be able to get out
of it because everybody has that vague
sense and and i find that's the the most
prototypical human sickness is a vague
sense i have like what do you want to do
this is perfect to speak to an olympic
diver what do you want to do i want to
win a gold medal and that is where i
promise you most people stop i want to
win a gold medal awesome in what the
olympics yes the olympics amazing summer
or winter summer fantastic
swimming diving tennis like where are we
at here and then you get all the way
down to i want to be you know the 10
meter um springboard champion or
whatever i'm not even sure that's the
thing but like you get the idea you you
know exactly
would scare the hell out of everyone
so you you know specifically what you
want to do and therefore you know
specifically what you have to get good
at
do you ever feel like people get
exhausted by constant self-improvement
um
i i'll speak for myself i've never i
haven't been thoughtful enough to ask
that question so
where i come down on this is like you
talking about okay somebody telling me
that i move like a muppet it sucks in
the short term but obviously your
behavior tells me that you're focused on
the long term like what can be gained
from your improvement the fact that you
become one of the most recognized
thought leaders in the space the fact
that you're seven years running the
number one um ranked professor at
wharton i mean it's the the results
speak for themselves and so the way i
think about it in my own life is i have
so mentally conditioned myself to get a
dopamine rush from somebody pointing out
a flaw because i'm thinking you have no
idea my
adam i have the chills because i know
how true what i'm about to say is i'm
willing to
actually take the pain of that and then
go if i can improve this i'll now be a
step farther ahead and on a long enough
timeline i can win at anything because
i'm i'm willing to do that constant
iteration so
there are definitely things that i do in
my life where for sort of brief periods
of time i'm not thinking about getting
better but honestly man they're they're
really few and far between and i have
i have this thing in my life where it is
for 15 years because i was trying to
build a business so i could build a film
studio long story
i didn't watch movies because it it
wasn't the skill that i needed at that
moment and then i found that that
carried over even when i was building
the studio i wasn't watching movies
anymore because i'd gotten into such a
habit
and i found that they didn't make me
feel like i was getting better and so i
couldn't do anything that didn't make me
feel like i was getting better because
the conditioning i'd put under myself to
have this huge dopamine reaction so i
had to flip a switch and say i'm going
to now start deconstructing this stuff
and figuring out why it's good why it
works and now dude i love watching
movies more than i've ever loved it in
my life because before it was passive
and now it's it's very proactive it's it
feels far more creative and it feels
like i'm i'm getting stronger which is
my obsession
yeah so two things on that one is i
think you just laid out beautifully
robert eisenberger's theory of learned
industriousness which is the idea that
if if you look at kids who grow up to be
extremely gritty and hardworking
one of the things that that happens to
them very early on is they get praised
for effort over and over again or
rewarded for effort over and over again
and then the feeling of hard work itself
takes on secondary reward properties and
so it's like oh this hurts but it also
feels good and i want to keep doing it
because i've gotten rewarded for it in
the past and it sounds like you've
you've taken constructive criticism
as one of those reward keys uh that that
really motivates you to to keep getting
better
um the other thing that i thought was
really interesting about what you just
said is um i thought you were you were
actually going to go in a cognitive
entrenchment direction on this uh when
you said you didn't watch movies for a
long period it reminded me of a simpsons
writer that i uh that i interviewed once
george meyer who when he was writing for
the simpsons uh he refused to watch
seinfeld because he was afraid that he'd
fall into this clept amnesia trap and
accidentally misremember one of their
jokes as his and he just he didn't want
to take that risk
and i always feel like this is a
tightrope walk because
when you're you're trying to innovate in
an industry you can't be completely
clueless about what everybody else is
doing otherwise you might miss something
really important
and yes blockbuster sears blackberry i'm
talking to you kodak
but
uh on the other hand if you're too
obsessed with what your competitors are
up to then you you get entrenched and
it's harder to see with fresh eyes do
you have thoughts on how to stay on that
tightrope and not fall off either side
yeah so i would say this is where
self-awareness is going to be really
really important i think there are
people that um
they they maybe exist better in a vacuum
or they have such strong intuition about
something and i i believe exclusively in
informed tuition i don't think you're
born with intuition i think that it's
developed just through your activities
and you give a great example on this uh
with steve jobs and how he had informed
intuition around technology but not
around transportation and so what he
does in apple is is life altering and
his investment in segway was a waste so
that i think is very very real but i
think that like anything it's a spectrum
and so there are some people maybe that
intuition is developed more intensely or
it's developed more quickly
invisibly whatever the case may be and
then there are people who i'll call
synthesizers so and that's me and if you
put me on a desert island what i would
come up with would probably not be very
interesting but if you put me in an
information rich environment i will make
connections that are unlike the
connections anybody else will make and i
have cultivated a fearlessness over
making unique connections and so i had
to embrace that i am a synthesizer and
that for me to take in all this data to
read broadly like people that i think
that confirm what i believe and people
that violently oppose what i believe and
all of that ends up coming together in a
unique way in my own mind and so for a
long time i was paralyzed because i felt
like i'm never going to think a unique
thought and that was really discouraging
to me and if you've seen a beautiful
mind that was at least as portrayed in
the movie is what he struggled with was
you know i'm never going to have an
original thought and it plagues him and
ends up being a driver for him and he
ends up obviously having a very original
thought and ends up really changing our
understanding of economics
but for me what i found was i'm a
process thinker so i need to i'm not i
don't sit in a vacuum and have these
amazing breakthroughs i suffer and then
have a breakthrough based on things that
i've read that finally collide and i put
them in a new context with a collision
that maybe other people would make
filtered through a value system that
other people don't have and now i know
how to move through in the world because
i'm trying to satisfy my own emotional
needs
and i'm a total slave to the physics of
the world so what actually moves me
towards my goals so you you put all that
together and i'm sort of unabashed
about like i need to take in all this
data i'm not worried about klepto
amnesia i'm happy to celebrate and
champion other people i
i don't have those fears because i
didn't need it to be my idea in the
first place so even when i think about
writing like i when when he's a writer
and he wants to say something original
he wants to be his own jokes i
understand all of that for sure
my thing as a writer is i'm i'm gonna
tell like if i were to try to do
seinfeld like literally i'm going to
make seinfeld i'm going to do this just
seinfeld i'm going to try to copy
seinfeld as hard as i can as long as i
trust my own intuition and i divert when
i feel something is even funnier i'm
trying to make it better it will just
end up being so different that
that gives me sort of that armor around
not really worried about this
and
i would never intentionally go down that
path of trying to mimic it so then once
you
put in i'm really trying to take this
somewhere new and i'm trusting my own
unique quirks and i'm fearless about
chasing them you get something that's
original
do you always trust your intuition
though because when you were describing
your hypothesis testing approach before
it sounds like to me you're not
following your gut you're testing it
so i it's funny i wouldn't if i just
gave the impression that i trust my
instincts the answer is no so what i'm
saying is when i'm writing something and
i have something that bends me in a
weird direction i'm going to follow that
but the only thing i care about is how
do people actually respond so what i
used to tell my students is because i
used to teach filmmaking i said you have
you have a choice before you you you can
be here to masturbate or you can be here
to make love and if you want to
masturbate go make some weird art house
film that nobody understands that's
absolutely fine like you're trying to
please yourself respect but if you're
here to make love you have to think
about your partner and your partner is
the audience and you have to understand
how the things you do impact them and so
your obsession has to be not what you
intend to communicate but what is
actually understood and so if you don't
understand that now you're in real
trouble so i'm not trying to exist in a
vacuum
i'm i'm trying to say my hypothesis is
that my unique way of interpreting this
will actually have a bigger response
than the other thing and i'm fearless
enough to try it now if i get feedback
that it didn't work then i'm going to
adjust a hundred percent i'm just never
afraid if i really feel that something
is the right way i'm gonna do it and if
i'm unsure i'll admit that i'm unsure
and i'll try to get feedback from people
to try to orient myself
that's such a helpful edit because as a
social scientist when when people say
you know trust your intuition or follow
your gut
i generally don't trust things that i
don't know where they came from and i
want to know why why you're so confident
in your intuition well let's actually
talk about what intuition is it's just
subconscious pattern recognition
right you've you've detected some kind
of connection that you're not fully able
to articulate and don't you want to find
out what that is right make the the
pattern conscious so then you can test
whether the pattern that you're seeing
now is actually relevant to the choice
that you're about to make um you know
steve jobs with the segway example is
such a fun one for me because
he spent all those years in you know in
the software worlds building up his
intuition so that he could very quickly
know whether design made sense or not he
didn't have the subconscious pattern
recognition calibrated for
transportation and so you know he
quickly got bowled over just by how
brilliant the technology was
and seemed to miss some of the user
applications of it and how difficult it
would be to write a segue down sidewalks
um and i think a lot of people do this
right they build up their intuition in
one domain and then they just find they
follow it blindly in another domain not
realizing that the patterns that held in
one world don't apply to the next one
yeah no question
dude i have thoroughly thoroughly
thoroughly enjoyed this conversation i
really enjoyed your works they are
incredible um i highly encourage people
to get after it um and man in this time
where i think that
new leaders coming to the surface is
going to be so critical for us
navigating our way to
a positive beautiful end i'm eternally
grateful for everything that you write
on the subject and helping people
develop self-awareness and the skills um
that they need to lead well uh amongst
all the other amazing topics that you've
covered so dude thank you for the way
that you walk through the world where
can people find out more about you
um well first of all tom thank you i've
heard many many rave reviews of your
passion for self-improvement and i i
think i underestimated just how curious
you were even even having heard that
from loss of mutual friends so it's it's
really cool to see it in action and soak
it up a little bit
um on your question i would say i guess
adamgrant.net is the place to start
i host a ted podcast called work life
where i try to figure out how we can
make work suck a little bit less and i
do a monthly newsletter called granted
where i cover some of my favorite new
insights about work in psychology and
would love to see people in either those
places or hear them or have them hear me
if they're interested
i love it man all right everybody if you
haven't already dive into this world you
will be richly rewarded and speaking of
rich rewards if you haven't already
subscribed be sure to do so and until
next time my friends be legendary take
care
the great irony is the way you build
great companies
is with an infinite mindset the way you
build great companies is by prioritizing
people before profit the way you build
great companies is will before resources
both things important but there has to
be this general leaning