Rethinking the Workplace

Annie: I’m so excited to welcome my guest, Adam Grant. Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist and bestselling author who explores the science of motivation, generosity, original thinking, and rethinking. He is the number one New York Times bestselling author of five books that have sold millions of copies, including Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, and Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know.

His latest book, due to be released this month, is Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. Adam hosts the TED podcasts Re:Thinking and WorkLife. And his TED talks have over 30 million views. Adam is currently at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and has been their top-rated professor for seven straight years. I’m so excited to have you here.

Adam: Thanks, Annie.

Annie: So I’d like to just start off with two facts that I didn’t know before researching for this podcast. The first is that you were a former magician, and I want to talk to you about that a little bit actually. And the second, which we should start with, is Junior Olympic springboard diver. So can you tell me about that one first?

Adam: What do you want to know?

Annie: I don’t know. Like, when did you start diving? You were obviously very good at it.

Adam: Not at first. I started way too late. I started as a teenager, and I took lessons at our local pool for, I think, a summer and a half, and then tried to walk on to my high school team. And I was the worst diver on the team, but my coach said, “I will never cut anyone who wants to be here.” And he said, “Listen, if you work really hard at this, I think you could be a state finalist by the time you’re a senior.”

And it just lit a fire under me. I became obsessed. And I never made the Olympics, never got anywhere close. I certainly exceeded my own expectations and the expectations of the teammates who made fun of me for walking like Frankenstein and not being able to touch my toes without bending my knees.

Annie: Oh my gosh. But what made you want to dive in the first place? That’s so funny that you just decided to take lessons.

Adam: You know, I remember my mom dragging me to—she dragged me to the pool one summer because I was playing video games and she thought I needed some fresh air. And there happened to be a lifeguard, and on his break he got on the board and I still remember it vividly. He did a front two-and-a-half, and it just looked like he disappeared into the water.

Annie: Like no splash.

Adam: Yeah, no splash. And, you know, he was a blur as he was spinning. I just, I thought the precision and control and power was mesmerizing and I’d never seen it up close before and kind of failed at all the other sports I was trying to be good at and decided to give diving a shot.

Annie: Oh my gosh, that is so cool. So that was a nice grit on your part, right?

Adam: I guess. I mean, the thing that was interesting about it was—I didn’t see it this way at the time, but—there was such a strong relationship between effort and performance in diving. Every single time I got on the board, I could make a little correction. And so I had a real sense of progress. Even though I was terrible, I was getting less bad every dive.

Annie: So it was like a really good feedback loop, right?

Adam: Exactly. Yes.

Annie: Yeah, I love that.

Adam: It was a kind learning environment.

Annie: Yes. Exactly. All right. So now let’s go back to the other thing that I know about you, which is you’re a former magician. Because I actually do want to explore that more because I know a lot of magicians, and it informs . . .

Adam: Of course you do. Because they’re not allowed to play poker with you.

Annie: And it’s very interesting—like the really good magicians actually think very deeply about psychology and cognition. And, in particular, they’re thinking about theory of mind, belief formation, perception. So I’d love to hear a little bit about you as a former magician, and then did that influence the way that you think about human behavior and human perception?

Adam: A little bit. I think, where magic helped me was much less on the cognitive psychology sort of side of things and much more on the behavioral side. I think magic really taught me the power of misdirection. And it was less about studying the details of, like, how do I get your eyes to look in one place as opposed to another? And more about realizing that if I told you I was going to make a card disappear, you’re a lot less excited about that than if I did it by surprise.

So I think that fed into my thinking about psychology pretty early on, and it dawned on me as I was—even before I was doing research, just as I was learning about the field, that the best researchers were a little bit like magicians, in that they would use sleight of hand. They would start by setting up your expectations—that one result was going to emerge—and then they would wow you by showing you another. And if they had just led with their finding, in a lot of cases, it would have been sort of intuitive and obvious. And so I think that that was a tool that I found really useful.

Annie: Just so that I make sure I understand, you’re talking about the narrative arc of a paper laying out its findings in a way that is similar to how you thought about magic, right? That if I lead with the finding, you sort of lose the surprise element, which isn’t as fun. But I can lead you in a certain way where it becomes really surprising and interesting.

Adam: Exactly. So let me give you an example. So when I was sitting down to write my first book, if I had said to people, “Hey, guess what? Generous people are more likely to succeed at work.” A lot of people would have said, “Duh.” Like, of course! If you’re looking out for other people’s interests as opposed to just your own, you’re trying to be helpful, you’re seen as a team player, you’re valued—that’s going to lead to career advancement.

So instead, saying, “Well, actually, there are three different styles of interaction that get studied over and over again. There are generous givers, there are selfish takers, and then there are matchers who live by the rule of reciprocity. Which group do you think is least successful?” A lot of people said givers. And empirically, that was true in a number of the studies. And then it was much more surprising to say, “All right, well, who do you think are the best performers?” Guess what? It’s not the takers or the matchers. It’s also the givers. And now we have a surprise that’s worth unpacking as opposed to an obvious result that I don’t really need to pay attention to.

Annie: Right. So obviously that’s givers and takers. So let’s just start there. So now you have created the surprise result, right? Which is the way that you unpacked it in the book, which is—givers both do the worst and the best. So can you explain how those two things live together?

Adam: So I think what happens is there are basically two kinds of givers in, at least in the data that I’ve gathered, and that a number of other researchers have picked up too.

There are givers who are extremely selfless, which means they care about other people’s interests and they neglect their own. They end up helping all the people all the time with all the requests, and they get burned out. They also get burned by the takers who are very happy to find someone who’s willing to be exploited.

Successful givers have the same level of concern for others, but they put their own interests and goals basically on par with those concerns. So they’re simultaneously trying to succeed and help other people succeed. And that means they’re better at setting boundaries. They don’t indiscriminately help takers. They don’t drop everything whenever somebody needs something. They try to figure out—is this a place where I can add unique value? Is this somewhere that I actually have something to offer, and does the person really depend on me? And they try to help in, you know, ways that energize them as opposed to exhaust them. And so they end up becoming much more of the rising tide that lifts all boats as opposed to just letting the takers around them sink their careers.

Annie: So once we understand these three categories, can people shift?

Adam: Sure.

Annie: Can we coach people to shift?

Adam: No. I mean, this is completely hardwired. It’s hard coded into your DNA; you have no choice in the matter. [laughter]

Yeah, of course people can shift. So one of the things I really like about studying these styles of interaction is that there are choices we make every day. In every conversation we have. If you have a history of being more of a taker—instead of asking, “Well, what can this person do for me?” You could go into an interaction trying to figure out, okay, are there favors we could trade and be more of a matcher? Or if you wanted to be more of a giver, you could ask, “Well, what can I do for this person?” And I think the nice—well, maybe encouraging—news is that very few people are purely givers, takers, or matchers.

I think about your style as how you treat most of the people most of the time. And so what that means is, even if you’ve been a taker, you have moments of matching and giving. And the question I always want to ask is, well, what is it about particular roles or certain relationships that bring out those fair or generous tendencies in you? And then, how do you spread that to other interactions you have?

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“Successful givers have the same level of concern for others, but . . . they’re simultaneously trying to succeed and help other people succeed. And that means they’re better at setting boundaries . . . so they end up becoming much more of the rising tide that lifts all boats as opposed to just letting the takers around them sink their careers.” – Dr. Adam Grant

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Annie: So a question that I have here is, do you see with this that there are sex differences? So let me tell you where this comes to mind. So Jay Van Bavel, who’s a professor at NYU, was talking to me once and he said that he sort of realized that the female graduate students were getting a lot of recommendations like, “They will drop everything to fulfill a request,” or “They’re available even if I call them in the middle of the night, and they’re always willing to help.” And a lot of what the language was in the recommendations was very much about giving, but not necessarily in the good way. And then the male graduate students were much more like, you know, “Ambitious,” and “Really focused,” and “Dives deep into their own research,” and things like that.

So there seemed to be some differences in the recommendation letters that he was writing. He caught that for himself. I think he read some research that suggested that might be true and that the environment that he was creating was maybe exacerbating that. So he solved it by having a list of adjectives that could go into your recommendation and you would earn them as you went along.

So you would earn the adjectives as you went along. Just in terms of giving, taking, and matching, what have you found both in terms of maybe tendencies—and obviously these will be population differences, right—between men and women? And then how did the environments actually encourage different behavior?

Adam: So interesting. First of all, I should say, I have a similar solution, although it’s a little bit less transactional around, like, you’re going to earn this adjective! But in every recommendation letter, I try to list some intellectual strengths, some motivational strengths, and some interpersonal strengths.

And I think those are the three categories that people are usually curious about. So, in terms of the data on gender differences, I think the best work I’ve read in this area is Alice Eagly’s and then Madeline Heilman and Linda Babcock and their colleagues. So I think a few findings that are pretty robust: number one—unfortunately men get more credit for giving than women do. When a woman helps, they’re like, “Oh, she’s caring . . .”

Annie: It’s expected.

Adam: Yeah, exactly. It’s expected. It’s consistent with gender stereotypes. She’s caring and communal. She wants to help. Whereas if a man helps, it’s like, “Wow, I never would have expected him to care about another human. Now I have to shower him with praise and rewards.”

Annie: Oh, that’s interesting.

Adam: Sad. But interesting. And I think because of these expectations and stereotypes, the Babcock finding that just really shook me actually was women are more likely to be asked to do thankless tasks, non-promotable work, office housework, help that nobody’s going to get really any kind of reward for or even seen as skilled.

And they also face more pressure to say yes. And they get penalized more if they say no, and so you’re sort of damned if you do and damned if you don’t, because if you’re a woman who doesn’t help, you seem like you don’t care, and that’s a violation of expectations. If you do help, it’s taken for granted, and meanwhile men are perfectly tolerated for saying no and celebrated for saying yes, and I’m embarrassed that in 2023 this is still true.

Annie: So the penalty is going in both directions, because men aren’t expected to help. If they don’t help, people are like, “Eh . . . it’s a man.”

Adam: Exactly. He’s supposed to be ambitious and results-oriented.

Annie: If they do help, you’re like, “Oh my God, you’re an incredible human.” Whereas women, because they’re expected to help, if they help, they don’t get credit for it. And if they don’t help, you’re like, “What are you, a psychopath?”

Adam: Bingo.

Annie: Oh, okay. That’s depressing.

Adam: It is depressing. It’s really depressing. So I think, certainly, workplaces can do a lot about this, right? The first thing is—we should be allocating requests and tasks based on factors that don’t have anything to do with your gender or your demography. Ideally, we have a system for rotating requests and balancing the load equally across people. I think a second thing we need to do is we actually need to account for acts of generosity in performance evaluations. We need to be looking at not just what are the results that you achieve, but also how much are you elevating the people around you? And if we start to measure that behavior more explicitly, we’re going to see a lot more women rise. And also, probably, a lot of men who aren’t doing nearly as much as they should be for other people.

Annie: And, you know, what this is creating obviously is that the inputs into the person who’s ultimately on the receiving end of these recommendations or the receiving end of these promotion decisions—the one who’s getting this information and then deciding about it—the input ends up getting distorted. So even if they’re running a reasonable decision process over there about should I promote this person? Should I hire this person? The input is so distorted because they’re not getting a full picture of the person or how they behave. It’s biased that they’re going to now make bad decisions. So now that’s going to compound over time.

Adam: That’s exactly right.

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“We should be allocating requests and tasks based on factors that don’t have anything to do with your gender or your demography . . . we actually need to account for acts of generosity in performance evaluations. We need to be looking at not just what are the results that you achieve, but also how much are you elevating the people around you? And if we start to measure that behavior more explicitly, we’re going to see a lot more women rise.” – Dr. Adam Grant

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Annie: Fun.

Adam: Yeah, no, I mean, this is really depressing on one level. I think, at the same time, I feel, as a social scientist, it’s my responsibility to put these data out there and say, we have to do better. And this is not just a problem for women. It’s, generally speaking, a problem for underrepresented groups, who we know have to do that much more often to get the same amount of attention and credit. So I think if we’re oblivious to these kinds of disparities, we’re never going to do anything about them.

I think obviously we need organizations to change, right? It shouldn’t be up to individuals to try to solve this problem. But a lot of us are stuck working in places that have not made real headway. And so the question is, what do you do? And I think the answer is you have to become really thoughtful about who, when, and how you help. And you’ve got to make sure that you’re not just saying yes to whatever people throw at you, you’re saying, “You know what, that’s actually not my expertise, but if I can help you in this way—which, by the way, is going to make more of a difference and is aligned with the mission and is going to be not only seen as strategic, but actually valuable—I’m happy to do that.”

Annie: I think it’s very hard for people to actually make those changes, particularly if you’re sort of handling request by request. So one of the things that I’ve been thinking about pretty deeply recently is the idea of personal policies.

Adam: I love these. I have far too many of them now, but I think they’re really important.

Annie: So I actually wanted to ask you about this as it relates to givers, takers, matchers, and other behaviors, because I think that people don’t appreciate how hard it is to make good decisions when you’re treating every decision individually as a one-off as opposed to creating a personal policy.

So could you, first of all, just sort of define what a personal policy is? Maybe you could talk about a personal policy that you have for yourself. And then how could we start to resolve these issues of how am I dealing as an individual if my organization isn’t going to support me with fielding these requests to get into a better place on the spectrum?

Adam: This is one of the things I love about your thinking, Annie, is you always take a problem like this and approach it systemically and say, “Do I have a decision rule or heuristic that I can use effectively as opposed to allowing it to be used against me?” Yes. So I think about a personal policy as a list of things that I do and don’t do.

And that allows me to have sort of a rule whenever a one-off request comes in so that I’m not systematically saying yes to things that seem doable in isolation, but in tandem wreak havoc on my life. So, a good example for me is I get a lot of requests to write an endorsement for people’s books on the jacket, and the number of requests has gone up seemingly exponentially over time. I think I get more per year than there are days in the year now, and I’m not going to write recommending someone’s book unless I’ve read it cover to cover. And for a while I was like, “This person’s asking for help. I felt so grateful that people were willing to recommend my book when I first wrote it. I want to pay it forward. Also, I think their ideas are really good and I want to be supportive.” And then there’s this little voice also saying, “And I don’t want them to dislike me if I say no. And also I wrote Give and Take. I aspire to be a giver. I should help here. I don’t want to be a hypocrite.” Anyway—all these factors pushing me toward yes.

And pretty soon all of my reading is books that people are asking me to endorse. Like my entire nightstand is blurbs, and that means I don’t choose what I learn. It means what I’m reading is really narrow. Because it’s only people who thought to contact me and I don’t even know if it’s really making a difference. If I don’t write this blurb, is it truly going to affect their book? Not clear.

So, I ended up setting actually a bunch of personal policies. The first one was, I will only blurb if I’ve read cover to cover. Second was, I need at least two months’ notice. And so all these, “Can you blurb my book? By the way, deadline’s in six days” requests immediately fly out the window.

I ended up actually writing an FAQ document for anyone who asked me for a blurb now, clarifying I’m only able to get to about five percent of them, and the ones I prioritize are evidence-based around psychology and human behavior and work. I’m probably not going to endorse your novel or your children’s book. I’m really sorry! But what I find so helpful about that personal policy is I’m no longer tempted to say yes in situations where it will not serve my larger mission and values. Instead of me feeling like a jerk and saying, “Annie, I’m really sorry, but I won’t do that for you.” It’s a lot easier for me to say, “Annie, I’m really sorry. I don’t do that for anyone under these conditions.”

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“I think about a personal policy as a list of things that I do and don’t do. And that allows me to have sort of a rule whenever a one-off request comes in so that I’m not systematically saying yes to things that seem doable in isolation, but in tandem wreak havoc on my life . . . I’m no longer tempted to say yes in situations where it will not serve my larger mission and values.” – Dr. Adam Grant

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Annie: By the way, I’m very thankful because you said yes to mine.

Adam: That was an easy decision.

Annie: But I give lots of notice. I usually give about six months’ notice. So an example of a personal policy for me is that if someone asks me to speak, I have a personal policy that if you want me in person, it has to be on the Acela line. And that just has to do with my understanding, from accepting too many things that were really far away, about what my happiness was with having to travel and be away from home. So what I do is I’ll say I’ll do it virtually. I’m perfectly happy if you can do a virtual setup to speak to your group or if it’s on the Acela line. But if it’s not, I just have a personal policy about that.

So first of all, it’s helped me because for many of the same reasons, I feel guilty if I say no. Who am I to say no to this group? It’s so nice that they’re asking me to come talk. I don’t want to disappoint them. I feel like, you know, am I too big for my britches? Like, all of those things go through my head. And then, you know, I’m just much more likely to say yes. But I think that you hit on something in there that I think is so helpful, and maybe really helpful when we think about giving, taking, matching, is that the reception on the other end is better because the people don’t perceive it as saying no to them.

Adam: It’s not about you. This is me. This is my policy.

Annie: This is me. It’s my policy. This is the policy that I apply to every single request that comes in.

Adam: It’s fair.

Annie: It’s fair. Right, exactly. So I feel like it gets received a lot better as well, including helping you to actually stick to things where you’ve decided these are my values. Right? I can’t blurb every single book that comes my way. I would be reading 365 books a year, not necessarily of my choosing. So once I figured out that value, how do I actually make sure that I stick to it?

Adam: Yeah. And this is so interesting because I think I probably have a few dozen personal policies for—essentially every kind of request that repeats needs a policy. I think the challenge is that it’s a lot easier to have these and maintain them if you have power or status.

Annie: That’s true.

Adam: So I think about people who are junior in an organization. I think about people who are just starting their writing or speaking career. I think about people who belong to non-dominant groups—so much harder! Can you imagine saying to your boss, who asks you to do a task, “I’m sorry, I don’t do that.”

Annie: Right. “I have a personal policy.”

Adam: Yeah. Or, I mean, how many times have people wished they could say, like, when they’re asked to work a night or a weekend, “Yeah, it’s against my policy to work past 5 pm.” And I can imagine a boss saying, “Well, it’s against my policy to continue employing you then. You’re fired!” How do you think about navigating these when you don’t have discretion?

Annie: I think what I would say is that here it’s like a best practice. So I think that you can start with personal policies really early, and then what the personal policies are would change over time depending on as you’re moving through an organization or status.

So you can set personal policies around who do you go out to dinner with or how many dinner requests do you accept or what types of food you eat? You can have personal policies around that. I think, within work, I think one of the things that came to mind, even if you’re junior, is that you can have a personal policy for yourself that you will help in certain ways but not others, where you don’t believe that you would be helpful, right?

So yes, it’s true that sometimes your boss is asking you and you just kind of have to do it. And even though you offer the exchange—I can’t do this, but I’m happy to help you in this way—sometimes it will be rebuffed by your boss and there’s not too much you can do about it. The fact that you’ve set the policy in place is going to mean that you’re going to offer the exchange more, so it’s creating a muscle that’s going to increase the probability. And I think that the way that you just put it is—there are ways to make it not a no also, right?

So I love what you said about—don’t just say no, but say, “I don’t think my help would be very helpful for the request that you asked, but I’m perfectly happy to help you in this other way.” So now I think that that’s going to be received a lot better. And you can set a personal policy for yourself that you always offer the exchange.

Adam: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense and that’s much more doable with peers than it might be with somebody above you in the hierarchy. I think that the other dynamic that I’ve seen people really grapple with, and I’ve struggled with personally on this as well, when it comes to making decisions, is I always want to weigh the urgency and importance. And I think, well, I don’t want to be rigid about my policies. And maybe this one deserves an exception. One day it hit me. I should have a policy about when I make exceptions to my policy. Is it just me? Is this too meta? Or do you also do this?

Annie: No, no. I also have exceptions. And I know what those exceptions are. And the other thing that I would suggest, and I’m hoping that you do this as well, is sometimes things are in a gray area. Right? Does this sit in my personal policy? Does this qualify for one of the things that I’ve, in advance, decided on as an exception, and so then I go get advice.

So I just won’t make the decision on my own. I’ll go say to somebody, “Somebody’s asking me to do this.” I do make exceptions when I feel like it’s very important or there are certain personal relationships or it’s someone who’s helped me in the past, for example. And so I have a variety of things that have to do with that, right? And I’ll go get advice if I’m not sure if it’s sitting in a gray area. So, I mean, the thing about a personal policy is that sometimes it’s not clear. It’s not clear if it sits in it or outside of it, and then I think getting outside advice can be really helpful.

Adam: I like that a lot. I think it makes me wonder if it also applies—I’ve been thinking about this mostly from the perspective of someone who’s receiving requests and sort of feeling torn between wanting to give, but also wanting to maintain your sanity and your balance in life and anything else you might care about personally.

I think this also applies to asking, though. I think you can have policies about what you ask for, who you ask, when you ask. I think this is the other side of the coin. I think a lot of people, empirically, a lot of people actually are reluctant to ask because they don’t want to be takers.

And I find myself constantly having to explain to people, “Listen, there’s actually a big difference between taking and receiving. Taking is using somebody else for personal gain. Receiving is accepting someone else’s generosity, allowing them to be a giver with gratitude, and maintaining a willingness to pay it back or pay it forward.”

And so you could say there are certain kinds of things that I’m not willing to ask of certain kinds of people because I think that would impose too much. The cost to them is too great; the benefit to me is too small. There are certain kinds of relationships that I don’t want to jeopardize by making them seem transactional.

And then here are the kinds of things that I’m willing to ask, depending on how close I am to people. And I think that could actually help to maybe allay some of the fear that we have about overstepping when we ask.

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“A lot of people actually are reluctant to ask because they don’t want to be takers. There’s actually a big difference between taking and receiving. Taking is using somebody else for personal gain. Receiving is accepting someone else’s generosity, allowing them to be a giver with gratitude, and maintaining a willingness to pay it back or pay it forward.” – Dr. Adam Grant

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Annie: Oh, so okay—that, I really love. So you just actually personally helped me. So I appreciate that.

Adam: No, I didn’t sign up to be helpful today, Annie. I quit. I’m out. You told me I should quit more. So I’m like, I’m done. See ya!

Annie: So this is actually something that I struggle with, but separate and apart from my own personal issues, I think that is actually really interesting. We’ve been talking about this in terms of being on the receiving end, right? And I love this idea of—you can ask for things and not be a taker, right? It’s about, are you asking somebody appropriately? Are you paying it forward? That kind of framing. But what I think is really interesting, and I assume this would be more true of givers, right, is that givers don’t want to ask for things, even though they give a lot of stuff, because they don’t want to be perceived as someone who’s taking advantage of what other people are taking.

Adam: Exactly. And you know, it’s not only a problem that if you’re unwilling to ask, you won’t get help. You’re also perpetuating a norm of people being afraid to ask. I think that’s a huge problem. There’s classic evidence suggesting that somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of all helping starts with a request. There just aren’t that many proactive givers out there who are like, “You know what, Annie? I’m kind of bored this year. Tell me what could I do to enrich your life.” Most helping starts with me saying, “Hey, you know, could I get your guidance?” Or, “I’m stuck on this problem. Can you solve it for me?” Or, “Would you be willing to do me a favor?” And if you don’t ask, there are a lot of frustrated givers in your life who would be happy to help you if only they knew what you needed.

Annie: Right. It’s so insightful to think about what goes along with giving is also not taking, right? Or not wanting to be perceived as taking, but the problem is that a lot of people would like to actually be givers. And that you’re denying them the opportunity . . .

Adam: Right. Don’t deprive them of that joy.

Annie: Okay, now we’ve had our therapy. This is very good. I appreciate the therapy. So you’re obviously incredibly prolific. We’ve talked a lot about givers and takers. I want to move on to the book before your most recent one, which is out this month. Before we get to Hidden Potential, which is the book that’s out this month, I want to talk a little bit about Think Again, which for me was such an eye opener. It was in a space that I was also thinking about a little bit myself. It was definitely adjacent to this idea of, if you think about quitting or stopping things, one of the things would be changing your beliefs, changing the way that you have always done things. So on and so forth. If you can just sort of give, first of all, the big idea behind Think Again.

Adam: Sure. So I think the big idea is that a lot of people think about intelligence as the ability to think and learn. But we live in a rapidly changing world, where I think, in order to make smart choices, we actually have to be just as quick to rethink and unlearn.

And a lot of people are terrible at that, remarkably terrible at that. And sometimes we even ridicule people who changed their minds. We call them flip-floppers. We accuse them of hypocrisy. What we don’t realize is that many of the opinions that people hold were actually formed in a world that doesn’t exist anymore.

And so we have to be quicker to update our views. So I guess the core framework for the book I borrowed from Phil Tetlock, of course, who taught me that too many people spend too much of their time thinking like preachers, prosecutors, and politicians.

And when you’re in preacher mode, you’re basically proselytizing your own views. When you’re in prosecutor mode, you’re attacking someone else’s views. And when you’re in politician mode, you don’t even bother to listen to people unless they already agree with your views. And what scares me about all three of those mindsets is that you’ve already concluded that you’re right and other people are wrong, which means they need to think again. But you’ve already seen the light and found the truth.

And as I studied this, I found that the best alternative to preaching, prosecuting, and politicking was to think more like a scientist, which is to say, your opinions are hypotheses waiting to be tested. Your decisions are experiments. And if you live your life that way, it’s a lot easier to find out that you might be wrong, which increases your ability to get it right.

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“A lot of people think about intelligence as the ability to think and learn. But we live in a rapidly changing world, where I think, in order to make smart choices, we actually have to be just as quick to rethink and unlearn . . . sometimes we even ridicule people who changed their minds . . . what we don’t realize is that many of the opinions that people hold were actually formed in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. And so we have to be quicker to update our views.” – Dr. Adam Grant

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Annie: So, as we think about Think Again, if you can talk a little bit about cognitive dissonance, this need for consistency, how we define identity, those kinds of issues—what are those forces that are kind of sticking us in politician, prosecutor, and preacher mode, as opposed to this sort of more cognitive flexibility? Like, why are we bad at this?

Adam: Yeah. Why are we bad at this? I think we’re bad at it in part because we really dislike uncertainty and unpredictability. And if the belief I formed yesterday could be wrong, then how do I know what’s true? That can be extremely destabilizing for people.

I think then you move up a level and it’s not just psychologically uncomfortable. It’s also a huge social risk, right? You might be rejected by your tribe if you question the orthodoxy that everyone believes. And then I think there’s also an element of this that doesn’t get talked about enough, which is—I guess if the first story is a motivational one, and the second one is a social one, there’s also just a basic cognitive problem.

You know a lot of the research by Emily Pronin and colleagues on the bias blind spot. I’ve come to think of it as the “I’m not biased” bias. I think it’s the mother of all biases, because if you believe that you’re more rational, you’re more neutral, you’re more objective than other people, then you are unable to see the flaws in your own thinking.

What really scared me when I was researching Think Again was finding evidence that, actually, smart people—the higher your IQ is, the more likely you are to fall victim to this bias and believe that you are actually more accurate in your thinking than others. And so, I think that you build up a track record of other people thinking that you’re brilliant at reasoning and problem-solving. You get feedback that you’re right often. And that actually closes your mind to the possibility that you could be wrong.

Annie: All right. So that’s all kind of bad news, right? I mean, obviously, in news that I’ve also explored pretty deeply, we can think back to the cult of the seekers, right, where this is so strong—the inability to rethink—that you go all in on aliens coming to destroy the world, but save you. And then the aliens don’t show up and you still don’t give up the belief. So that feels like bad news.

We know there’s work, for example, from Katy Milkman and John Beshears on stock market traders who, even though they’re getting financially punished for sticking to their guns on certain ways that they’re thinking about earnings projections, they stick to their guns nonetheless, even when the world is screaming at them, you shouldn’t be believing this anymore.

Obviously we see this with flat-earthers. I mean, it feels like there’s a lot of bad news out there about our ability to rethink. So what do we do? How do we make this better? How do we fix it?

Adam: I don’t know. I just study this and write about it. Good luck! [laughter]

Well, I think, you know, we can all do a better job getting into scientist mode. And, you know, I think that’s probably easier said than done for a lot of people. It’s very hard to get other people to change their minds. You’re much better off trying to help them find their own motivations to change.

And that means that I would be much less effective bombarding you in prosecutor mode, as I’m inclined to do, and just hammer you with facts and studies—much less effective than saying, “You know, Annie, I’d love to understand a little bit what originally attracted you to the idea that the earth might not be spherical and that it might be a little bit more shaped like a Frisbee? And have there been moments when you felt more conviction about that? Have there been moments when you felt less conviction about that? How is being a flat-earther, how has that affected your relationships? You know, it seems like you might be closer to some people who share your beliefs. Has it alienated people who don’t share those beliefs? Like, help me understand that better.” Right?

I’m not trying to change your mind. I am genuinely trying to understand your motivation. Well, empirically, when I ask you those kinds of questions, you’re more likely to confront some of the contradictions between your beliefs. You’re more likely to see complexity where you once saw simplicity. You recognize more ambiguity. You feel a little bit more doubt. And then you’re more likely to talk yourself into changing your mind. Even if you don’t do that, I’ve at least learned something about what would motivate you to change. And if I am trying to have a persuasive argument with you, I can at least do it on terms that you find convincing as opposed to giving you the reasons that I think are compelling.

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“It’s very hard to get other people to change their minds. You’re much better off trying to help them find their own motivations to change. I’m not trying to change your mind. I am genuinely trying to understand your motivation . . . when I ask you those kinds of questions, you’re more likely to confront some of the contradictions between your beliefs. You’re more likely to see complexity where you once saw simplicity. You recognize more ambiguity.” – Dr. Adam Grant

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Annie: I think that’s really interesting, because I think that a lot of the frustration that people have on both sides is that they see people on the other side of the aisle who are holding beliefs that contradict each other. You know, when this person did this, you thought it was fine, but when this person did the exact same thing, you thought it was the end of the world. You know, that’s a contradiction. Instead, to just approach it with curiosity as opposed to, say, combat.

Adam: I mean, generally speaking, more pleasant and more persuasive, which is a win-win.

Annie: Yeah. So, thinking about that again, on the individual level, how are we supporting people changing their mind, which is so important, right? Because I can create an incredibly high-fidelity decision process, but if the beliefs that you’re inputting into the decision process, if those are inaccurate, it doesn’t matter how good the decision process is, right? You’re going to come out with a bad decision.

In general, when you see organizations, do you feel like they’re helping people to be better rethinkers? Or do you think that they’re—not intentionally necessarily—but really supporting stick to your guns, have high conviction, don’t change your mind. If you do, I’m going to punish you.

Adam: I see a lot of the latter. I see a lot of if you want to get promoted, you have to demonstrate your competence by exuding confidence, which is the exact opposite of what I want people to do. I want people to come to a meeting and say, “Hey, I have this idea. I’m not sure if it will work. What experiment do we need to run to pressure test it? Can somebody poke holes in my strategy so that I have a better understanding of the risks? And then I can manage those risks.”

And I think so many organizational incentives run in the opposite direction. They favor people sort of holding court and lording their expertise over others, as opposed to asking, “What are the gaps in my expertise? How might my knowledge be obsolete? Is it possible that some of our best practices actually are now going to be counterproductive and we might need to look for better practices?” And I think there are a lot of pressures against those kinds of changes, unfortunately.

Annie: And obviously what comes along with that is that you think, if I’ve got the confident people who are really convicted and are sure what they’re doing that I’m going to do better. But you actually put yourself at a competitive disadvantage, because you’re less flexible and you’re not incorporating new information and updating your beliefs in the same way and changing strategies when you need to. You’re not flexible. You’re not agile.

Adam: That’s exactly the paradox that drives me mad is for rewarding people who are making us more likely to fail.

Annie: Hidden Potential is coming out this month. Congratulations.

Adam: Thank you.

Annie: I have no doubt it’s going to be as big a hit as every other book that you’ve written. If you want to buy any of Adam’s books, you can find them in the show notes. But can you tell us a little bit about what this book is about that you’re launching, that you’re birthing this month?

Adam: Yeah, this is actually going to bring us full circle, because I think, after I retired from diving, I realized that I was prouder of my accomplishments as a diver than many of the things I was better at than diving. And this was such a puzzle for me. Why is this? And I realized it was because in diving I had traveled a greater distance. The things I succeeded at, that I was fairly natural at, they never meant that much to me. I didn’t feel like I earned them. Whereas in diving, I felt like my proudest moment actually was when my coach, Eric Best, said to me, “You got further with less talent than anyone I’ve ever coached.” Well, that’s a bad compliment if I’ve ever heard one. He’s coached a lot of more talented . . .

Annie: I’d have to take a pause. Like, wait, am I supposed to take this well?

Adam: I loved it. It made my day. I felt like, you know, every ounce of performance and growth that I had attained as a diver—that was earned. It wasn’t gifted to me. It wasn’t luck. And that mattered a lot.

And I realized that a lot of people in my situation—they don’t get there. Because they find out that they’re not naturally talented or they don’t initially have the opportunity that everyone else had, and they think, you know what? This is just not for me. I’m never going to make it. I’m not good enough. And they give up.

And I spent a lot of time reflecting on—why did I end up making as much progress as I did as a diver? And one of the many insights that came out of that reflection and discussion was I was lucky to have a coach who was not only brilliant and motivating but also who gave me notes every single time I did a dive. And I would pop out of the water. And Eric would give me a zero to 10. And it didn’t matter whether it was a seven or a three-and-a-half. We would discuss, how can I get closer to ten? And then I would make an adjustment. And when I left diving, I couldn’t get people to give me that feedback. As an extremely unnatural public speaker who was shy and introverted and shaking on stage, people would tell me, “Oh, that was good!”

And I would get these generic platitudes, and I was trying to get coached. And I couldn’t get them to coach me. And so one of the things I ended up doing that I guess brought out my hidden potential in speaking, just like it had in diving, was I started asking people, “Can you rate this talk zero to 10?” And then no matter what number they gave me, I would ask them, “How can I get closer to 10?” And I cannot tell you how much better the feedback was, how much more useful the suggestions were. Because when I asked for the zero to 10, people could tell I really wanted to know how well I did. They weren’t afraid of hurting my feelings. They would still sugar coat somewhat. I might have given a four speech, and they gave me a five-and-a-half.

Annie: But then when you follow it with, “What can I do to get better,” you’re getting the information that you actually want.

Adam: Exactly. And so a lot of Hidden Potential is exploring those kinds of insights, asking wherever you are, how can you travel a greater distance? And what does it take? We all know grit is necessary, but not sufficient. We know talent is necessary, but not sufficient. How do you improve at improving? What are the skills that allow you to actually elevate your knowledge and skills at a faster rate? And that’s what I sought out to try to investigate in Hidden Potential.

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“I started asking people, ‘Can you rate this talk zero to 10?’ And then no matter what number they gave me, I would ask them, ‘How can I get closer to 10?’ And I cannot tell you how much better the feedback was, how much more useful the suggestions were. Because when I asked for the zero to 10, people could tell I really wanted to know how well I did. They weren’t afraid of hurting my feelings.” – Dr. Adam Grant

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Annie: Well, I’m so excited. I cannot wait to read it. And one of the things that I love about what you said is, again—going back thematically through all of your work—there’s this idea of not just how are you helping those around you, but how do you as an individual help people to help you? Right? So if we think about Think Again, how do you find a group of people where you’re saying to them, tell me when I’m wrong, challenge me, what you call a challenge network, right? Help me poke holes in my beliefs. I’m really hungry for that. But then even if someone isn’t doing that, how can you speak to other people to help them to get there? In givers and takers, it’s the same thing. How do we set up systems? How do I as an individual think about what I’m asking? How do I apportion my requests across people? If I’m trying to help somebody develop and mentor them, how do I give them feedback that they can actually use so that they can create those feedback loops that are going to actually help them to help them to get better?

So I love the way that you think about that as these systems of how are individuals interacting with each other? It’s not just on you. It’s on you to help other people. It’s on you to try to unlock the potential of a mentor for you. It’s on you to try to be a good mentor to other people.

Adam: I love the tapestry you just weaved there. I’ve never looked at my own work and interest this way, but I think what I just took away from what you said, Annie, is that my career goal is to be Jerry Maguire. Like, help me help you! And also let me help you help me!

Annie: There you go. Exactly. But I do see that thematically through everything you do. I like that you’re not just putting it on—you have to fix yourself.

Adam: No, I think this is part of what’s distinctive about being an organizational psychologist is I’m interested in how what goes on in your head shapes your actions and your interactions, but also the larger social system that you create. And ultimately I think that if we get better at interacting and building groups, we can all probably harness potential that we didn’t know we had.

Annie: I love that. I’ve got one last question. If you could think about a decision-making tool or idea or strategy—something in that world—that you would pass down to the next generation of decision makers. What do you think would have the biggest impact on the next generation?

Adam: I think there’s a really simple one. I don’t know if this is the biggest impact, but it’s something that we all can use regardless of where we sit in a power structure. I think when people are stuck on decisions, they turn to others for advice. You described doing that, Annie, earlier in this conversation. And I think it’s often a very good strategy.

I think what we forget, though, is that seeking advice often leaves us feeling passive, and a little bit dependent on others, and maybe slightly incompetent. And one of the things I found early on in my research is that it’s more motivating to be a giver than a receiver. And there’s some newer work by Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and colleagues, which shows that you are actually often getting better advice and also more motivation and confidence when you give it than when you receive it. And so I would say the next time you’re stuck on a decision, find someone who grapples with a similar problem. Give them advice, and then remember that the advice you give to others is usually the advice that you need to take for yourself.

Annie: That’s awesome and also an incredibly unique answer to this question. So, I love that. You win the uniqueness award, but I think that you’re unique in many, many ways.

Adam: I wasn’t aiming for it, but I’ll take it, I guess.

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“I found early on in my research . . . that it’s more motivating to be a giver than a receiver . . . the next time you’re stuck on a decision, find someone who grapples with a similar problem. Give them advice, and then remember that the advice you give to others is usually the advice that you need to take for yourself.” – Dr. Adam Grant

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Annie: No, I mean, that’s a super unique answer. And I do think—I love that idea. Like, sometimes we’re very good at giving advice to other people but not necessarily good at hearing that advice for ourselves. So if we could figure out how to do that, we would be a lot better off.

Adam: I think so, too. I think one of the other reasons why I think advice giving is so powerful is we know that when you make decisions for yourself, you tend to get stuck in the weeds. Whereas when you give advice to other people, you’re much better at zooming out and focusing on the big picture and the key priorities. And so it’s kind of interesting that we’re actually better at making decisions for other people than we are for ourselves. And so I think we should probably just all delegate our own decisions as much as possible.

Annie: I think it goes back to what Daniel Kahneman says about being in it, right? Like we’re so in it, you know, where every little thing seems so important. It’s so hard when you’re in the middle of facing the decision down for us to be able to see the big picture, for us to be able to see the long term.

But when we’re helping somebody else with a decision, we’re not in it with them. So we’re able to zoom out and see a much more 10,000-foot view and understand what their values are, what their goals are, and how it’s going to affect them in the long run. So, I mean, I’m a big fan of go find yourself a lot of coaches also, but I love this idea of turning it on your head and, sort of incognito, become your own coach by actually coaching other people. And that’s one of the best ways to improve your own decision-making.

Adam: You heard it here first.

Annie: Lovely. Well, thank you. It’s always lovely to see you. Congratulations on the book. Enjoy the . . . I mean, I assume you’re about to go into promo mode?

Adam: We’re heading there. This is good practice.

Annie: Well, I’m sure that it’s going to be a huge hit. Your stuff is all so great. So thank you so much.

Adam: Thanks, Annie.

Published October 11, 2023