Legendary Psychologist Adam Grant on Why Leadership is All About Humility, Integrity and Adaptation

[Music]

Tom Bilyeu: 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.

Adam Grant: Thanks for that Tom. I can assure you

it's all downhill from here.
Tom Bilyeu: That's hilarious.

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

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

interesting times, the tables being

overturned, we're in the middle of a lot

of protesting. There's going to be just

tremendous change, hopefully, 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?

Adam Grant: Oh where do we begin? How many hours do

you have Tom?

Tom Bilyeu: As many as you'll give me

to be honest.
Adam Grant: All right, I'm here. I

have not a lot else on my agenda today

so

um, you know 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 that 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.

So that would be the first value I'd put

on the table. The second-
Tom Bilyeu: So before we, before we move

off that one, just give people a quick
Adam Grant: Yea.

Tom Bilyeu: breakdown of givers versus takers, you

have a whole book on it. It's really

extraordinary. You talk about the

three types, I think it'd be useful for

people to understand that.

Adam Grant: 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.

Tom Bilyeu: Fair

Adam Grant: I think beyond that, I think a second

attribute I look for in leaders

value-wise is humility, to recognize

your shortcomings, but also be motivated

to overcome those shortcomings. It's

not that helpful if you can say yeah, 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 heavily

about striving for self-improvement.

And the third value I'd put on the table

is integrity. It's a consistency

between your words and your deeds

and a lot of people will say look you

know, 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.

Tom Bilyeu: 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.

Adam Grant: 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 from 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.

Tom Bilyeu: 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, but when I think

about trying to provide leadership in a

company context, 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 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 thoughtful in terms of the

long-term outcome that we want to have,

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
Adam Grant: Yea.

Tom Bilyeu: 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?

Adam Grant: I think that's such an important

question Tom and I love how 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 leaders were trying to

motivate them because this is hard work,

right? 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. 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 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 what, 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 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,

and 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.

Tom Bilyeu: 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. 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 that you should be deploying,

that you deploy it immediately.
Adam Grant: I love

the reference to Mandela because the

one thing that's always stuck with me

from his writing is the idea that a

leader is like a shepherd.

If you watch a shepherd with a flock,

the shepherd 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 such a fun-
Tom Bilyeu: How could it not?

Adam Grant: A fun detail, right?
Tom Bilyeu: How could it not?

Adam Grant: I would do that if that were my name, so

one of the things that Victor studied

for years was 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 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 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 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.

Some others were around getting buy in

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 give

them a say. If people are already bought

in, then you know, then I can kind

of lead.

And I think that when I think about

leaders who've done this really

effectively, 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 think problem.

I'd like to [inaudible] where the highest

paid person's opinion, the moment that's

known, everyone wants to jump on the

bandwagon.

Tom Bilyeu: Yeah. 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. it's such a interesting

concept. So 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?

Adam Grant: Yeah. So when I break down leadership

into skills, I think obviously

decision-making skills are critical, we

started talking about those already.

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. Uh so-
Tom Bilyeu: 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 at the foundation of the

human experience. So

why have you become so

dogged in your pursuit of

critical feedback.

Adam Grant: I mean from my perspective, it's the only

way you get better, right? 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

done, like great. How exciting is

it to just say okay, I peaked already

and I'm gonna just try to maintain that

level. What I want to do is I want to

keep getting better

and I think to me it's so much

better to be on an upward trajectory

than it is to you know to flatline at

some level or to stagnate. And so

I think that requires short-term

sacrifices and it's a little bit like

the you know, the professional version of

what you just 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

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 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-

Tom Bilyeu: I've seen footage of your springboard

diving, it's pretty impressive.

Adam Grant: 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 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. 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 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

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 say

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.
Tom Bilyeu: 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 ollie pretty

high, I was really proud of it. And then

the kids that I was skating with were

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 ollieing high.

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?
Adam Grant: I remember one

day 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 him, 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 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 live my life.

Tom Bilyeu: Oh my god, you have to talk about Shane.

Please tell us that story because it is so

crazy and so perfect for how I think

people should approach life.

Adam Grant: Yeah. So

I think anybody who hasn't heard of

Shane Battier, there's a reason for

that. If you know, if you don't follow

basketball closely, Shane was a

superstar for his whole career. 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 the few hundred

people in the world who can play

professional basketball. And so what

Shane did, this was first captured by

Michael Lewis in 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 fill.

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 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.

Tom Bilyeu: 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 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