Adam Grant’s Best Advice

He's a very popular, warton professor and an author, and he's one of the most productive people that you'll ever meet, so productive it's annoying at times. He was still in his twenties when he got tenure at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and by the time he was thirty five, he had written three, yes, three best selling books and he's thirty six. By the way, now, talk about making

us I'll feel like terrible underachievers, right Brian. For sure? Listeners, you might also remember Adam Grant from our episode with Cheryl Sandberg, which is number twenty six. In case you want to hear it again, that's right. Adam and Cheryl co wrote the book Option B, which is about facing adversity and building resilience, and I highly recommend it for anyone who's had to deal with setbacks. And for this conversation, we chat with Adam about all kinds of things, the

different work styles of employers and employees. Are you a giver, a taker or a matcher? By the way, it'll be interesting for you to look at your own style what makes a good workplace, which is the subject of his new podcast called work Life. And also we asked Adam why he got into the field of organizational psychology and what the heck does that mean anyway. Yeah, I'm still trying to figure it out. But as far as I can tell, my job is to fix other people's jobs.

So I take all the cool insights that we pick up in social science about how we can, you know, improve motivation and make better decisions and fight group think, and I try to design workplaces that suck a little bit less. Well, when it comes to workplaces, at least the ones that I've experienced and certainly read about, it seems like you must be a very busy guy. Yeah, it's it's really convenient that there are so many bad leaders and managers out there, because it means I have

a lot of work to do. Convenient but also shocking. Why are there so few good leaders? What are we doing wrong? Well? I think the job has become less and less attractive, if you know, if you think about the public scrutiny, if you think about you know, most leaders are in a position where they might not get to stay for even a year, let alone a few years.

I think we we've done a very poor job designing leadership roles where people say, look, I'm gonna have a chance to to really take over and try to fix an organization for the long term, and you know, focus on vision and mission and innovation as opposed to just being accountable to a bunch of shareholders. And based on your research, what are the characteristics than make a good leader? It's easier to make a list of the characteristics of

a bad leader, Isn't that part of the problem. I think we could all make this actually, but you know, I think you can flip those and say, look, you know, when I when I look at leaders, there there are three basics that I always look for. One is that you know, I would think about them as givers, not takers right there. They're here to make the group and

the organization successful as opposed to enrich themselves too. They think about long term decision making as opposed to short term pressures, and the champion visions that are going to you know, serve a broader interest over decades as opposed to quarters and then three. They actually care about their people and put their people first as opposed to you know, you hear a lot of well, I put my customers first.

And the sad thing is that, you know, the way you treat your employees actually spills over to affect your customers. So it's pretty hard to run a customer friendly organization. Uh, if you don't care about your own employees first and foremost. Well and to that point, and your first one about givers and not takers, you know, your first book makes the case very powerfully that helping others without expecting anything

in return is actually the best way to advance your career. Um, which Hugh Kumbaya adam, I mean, that really cuts against conventional wisdom that actually one of the most selfish things you can do is to is to be generous um, can you tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so it's you know, it's not true for every person and every job, but on average, you know, when when I've studied givers versus takers, so you know, are you constantly asking what can you do for me? Or what

can I do for you? The givers tend to struggle more in the short term, so they make the least productive engineers, the medical students with the lowest grades, and the sales people with the lowest revenue. And it's not hard to figure out why that would be right, because you know, if you're constantly doing other people's jobs, you run out of time and energy to get your own work done. But in the long run, as quarter turn into years, what we see is that givers build more trust,

they have stronger relationships and reputations. But they also learn more because the time you spend solving other people's problems actually puts you in a better position to solve the organization's problems. It gives you extra knowledge and scale and expertise, and so you know, ultimately, the people who end up achieving the greatest success are the ones who are motivated

to help other people succeed. Isn't though, aren't most people are effective leaders a combo platter, Adam, I know that you say they're givers, takers, and matchers before we get to my combo pop platter question, what is a matcher? So most people don't want to be peer givers or peer takers. They're afraid of being too selfish and too generous. So they say, all right, I'm gonna play it safe and I'll become a matcher, which is, I'll do something for you if you do something for me. It's all

about fairness, quid pro quo. Is that good or bad? You make it sound bad, You know it's It's a great way to play it safe. The problem is, though, that you become too transactional, and when you help people it feels like you don't really care about them, You were just helping them to get something back. And then also you end up helping the wrong people, only the people who you think are strategic. But you both know

better than I do. We cannot predict who's going to end up where, and so if you only help the people that you think are going to serve your own interests, you're gonna miss out on a lot of rewarding long term relationships, so a match is really to machiavellian in a way, or to calculating. I mean, I I was reading about this, and of course I've read a lot about your work in the past, Adam, because this is not our first Rodeos, as we know in terms of

doing an interview together. But I was thinking that I'm a taker and it made me feel bad. What do you think I do? I actually do I do? Because I don't know. No taker ever says that. Really. Well, then maybe I'm just a highly self critical, perfectionistic weirdo, because that that could be true too. But as I read about it, I thought, I don't give enough, and I don't know. It seems to me you have to. You can't always be a giver, and there are times

where you have to be a taker, right. I don't think that's I mean, I think I'm like exhibit A of how you're not a taker, by the way, because you've been extraordinarily generous to me over the course of my career in many ways, and I'm not the only one. So I think to Adam's point, if you were really a taker, you you wouldn't be self aware enough introspective enough to even raise that criticism. Do you think you're

too transactional. I'm not transactional, but I do think I sometimes am demanding, and I do tend to blame other people. I tend to feel like other people's inadequacy or kind of laziness or whatever that I get mad about that. But you know, I think this is something I need to discuss. I think I don't think those things are contradictory, though, I mean, I think you could be. You could set high expectations for your colleagues while at the same time

being a generous boss. Totally agree, So that's hard to balance, though, I think Adam, isn't it Well, I don't know. Look, I'm not a therapist, but that ahead I'm lying down. Please continue perfect. So the first thing is everything you said, Katie,

I would say, you're not a taker, You're a woman. Uh. You know, we we know that women tend to be much more self critical than men, and that, you know, both personally and societally, tend to be held to much higher expectations on you know, on how much giving they're supposed to do. So you know that that fits the pattern pretty clearly. But Secondly, I think what you just said is that you hold people accountable for giving, and you don't allow people to, you know, to get away

with being takers. There's nothing wrong with being a giver who has very highest standards and expectations. And in fact, that's what we see differentiate successful givers from failed givers is you know, they have their own goals and they're ambitious, and they say, look, I want to help other people, but I'm not going to do that at my own expense. All right, Well that'll be five dollars and the check is in the mail, Adam. So let me ask you, sort of for our listeners, for kind of how this

can be applied. You give one example in your one of your books about putting two different signs up at hand washing stations in a hospital. One says hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases. Another reads hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases. You measured the amount of soap used at each station, and doctors and nurses at the station where the sign referred to the patients use more soap or hand sanitizer. Are you saying that sort of

altruism is motivating? Maybe so What's what's interesting about this experiment is the medical safety experts were convinced that the other sign would work. That you know, ultimately, if you want to get doctors and nurses to wash their hands, you have to remind them that it will prevent them from getting sick. And you know, you could say, okay, you know, maybe maybe then that didn't work, because you know,

ultimately these people are really altruistic. But our data tell a slightly more complicated story, which is that nobody believes that they're going to get sick. You know, we found doctors who said things like, well, I'm a doctor, so I'm protected, Like that makes any sense. I don't even know what that means. But I think what what they were getting at was, you know, either I had a superior immune system to begin with, or I've developed one over years in a hospital and you know, I'm exposed

all the time and I rarely get sick. And you know, most of us tend to be over confident about our own immunity. We don't want to believe that we're vulnerable, whereas with patients, we know they're vulnerable by definition, and we also know it's part of our job to keep them healthy, and so it was a lot easier for you know, doctors and nurses. I should say doctors, because it was mostly doctors who weren't watching enough, you know, who took that sign and said, all right, you know,

this is my responsibility. Even if I don't think that I'm in need of, you know, extra hand hygiene, I really wouldn't want to know that I got a patient six, so I'll step up. You did another study that I've I've referenced many times over the last couple of days, as as I've sort of read up on you. Um in a call center where you worked, you were twenty two year old to a student, and you arranged for call center workers to meet with a scholarship student who

benefited from their fundraising calls. And after meeting that student, the average call center employee raised a hundred and forty two percent more money. And so what are the conclusions that you draw from that study and the others you've done, and and how can our listeners apply them in their own lives. You know, I went in expecting to do something much more dramatic, you know, I thought, Okay, here are these callers who you know, they raise all this

money and they have no idea where it goes. And so I wanted to have, you know, a bunch of different scholarship students come in and tell their stories. Have the you know, the sports teams. This is at the University of Michigan. I thought the football and basketball players could come in and you know, talk about how that revenue is so useful for uh, you know, for helping their teams succeed, and have some faculty and staff talk about salary benefits. And the manager said, I'll give you

five minutes. You can bring in one person. And I thought, there's no way five minutes, you know, could could influence anybody's motivation, But it really mattered, and after replicating it eight different times, what happens is when most people walk into a situation like fundraising, but any job, right, you don't always know who benefits from your products or services,

and a huge part of what makes work meaningful. In fact, the biggest part of what makes work meaningful is knowing who benefits from your job and knowing that if your job didn't exist, other people would be worse off. And so you have a scholarship student come in and say, you know, here's how your work changed my life. I couldn't afford going to school, but because of the money you raise, I'm able to be here. That shows you that the time you spend it work really matters. That

your work is valued and appreciated. And that's especially important if you work in a job where you're constantly interrupting people's dinners and harassing them for money. Right to to be able to say, look that you know that really unpleasant process serves a higher purpose. I think we all know that's motivating, but it turns out to be much more powerful than we realize. That's interesting. I think it's helpful for people to kind of really look at the

over arch same reasons they do what they do. And sometimes it just means shifting your point of view about the worth of your job, right, I mean, you don't necessarily have to have a scholarship student come and talk to you. Sometimes it just means really thinking about why you do what you do and the potential impact it has, right Adam. You know, Katie wouldn't have believed that until

we ran some follow up experiments. But we we got that exact question, which over and over again, which was you know, what what if I don't get to meet my scholarship student. You know, I don't know my clients or customers or users, or you know what if I don't have those people, right? What if I have an internal job? And what we did was we had employees keep journals just reflecting on who benefited from their jobs every day and how they made a difference that day.

And we had them do it for four days, just a few minutes per day, and we found a significant increase in motivation after that. So just reflecting exactly as you've said on you know what, how does my job matter who benefits from it is enough to rejuvenate your motivation. And you're definitely praed is saying what you preach here and and this is featured in all of the articles about you. So just so our listeners get a sense, how many emails per week do you think you get

from people asking for a favor? And how many of those emails do you respond to? No, Uh, I'm afraid to count. I'd have to guess in the hundreds. At least, I was gonna say it's it's probably over a hundred a day, And uh, I respond to all of them except for the occasional ones that make me think that the person is is maybe not entirely mentally stable. So over a hundred requests for a favor every day and you respond to every single one, I feel like that's my job. It's I mean, it's a huge part of

why I became a professor. But also I'm just one of those people who can't stand leaving an email unanswered. Right, So somebody writes back and says you're welcome, and I say, oh, it's no problem, and then I just I can't let it go. And how is that not a massive distry action and also a massive hit to your productivity? Well there are days when it is, but I feel like it's you know, a lot of the emails I get are you know, questions about like my favorite emails are

have you ever seen a study on? And it makes me feel like all these hours I spend reading you know, evidence about work in psychology might actually be useful to someone. Uh, And so you know, it gives me a chance to sort of to translate a little bit of of what I'm reading into language that people might find relevant to their everyday work. And you know, it also just reminds me that the work I'm doing does have an impact

on others, right, so I get to live that. That's my version of the scholarship student often outside the classroom, And I think the other thing is that, you know, in some cases it's a it's a great sort of break.

When I'm working on a hard problem, or when I can't figure out sort of how to how to tell a story or analyze the data set, I go over in my email and I say, all right, if I can help a few people in the next few minutes, then maybe I'll come back with some fresh inside or at least a little bit of extra energy to, you know, to pour back into the work that I'm trying to do. Other than asking about studies, I mean, what other kinds

of questions do you get? Because I know there's a constant stream of students coming in and out of your office on a regular basis, what are they asking you? Often they're looking for advice. So sometimes it's you know, how do I run this club that I'm in charge of? Or you know, how do I do a better job you know, improving my interview skills or my job application cover letters. In a lot of cases, it's career advice

which I'm really reluctant to give. You know, I feel like it's it's hard to tell somebody what they should do with their life, and so often what I find myself doing is, you know, recommending a bunch of books and articles and then asking a bunch of questions that I hope will help them reflect on, you know, some of the directions they haven't considered before. You know, what

is the best way to really figure it out? Because I think career planning and placement offices that many of these colleges and universities are woefully inadequate, and with all due respect to the wonderful work that's being done at universities across the country, I do feel like this is

an area which has much room for improvement. Yeah, it's a look, it's a hard job, right As someone who gets asked for career advice a lot, it's incredibly difficult to figure out, you know, exactly where somebody should go and what steps they should take to plan their you know, their twenty or thirty or forty years ahead. But I think one of the one of the biggest mistakes that I see students make, which I think I'd love to

see career officers addressed more directly. Is it is something that I raised with Cheryl Sandberg last time she was in town. Uh. She was, she was speaking to our students, and you know, I teat up a bunch of questions for her, and one of them was, you know, what, what should my five your career plan look like or ten year career plan? And she said, you should never have a career plan this five or ten years ahead.

She said, if I had had one of those and never would have ended up in tech because when I graduated from college, Mark Zuckerberg was in diapers. That's a lovely thought. It is right. It shows you how quickly the world changes. And I think that if you end up trying to chart too far ahead, then you lock yourself into, you know, a path that's either not going to exist or is going to radically change in the

next few years. What I like to see students do is to say, look, my first job, my whole objective should be to maximize my own learning. So choose the job that you think is going to teach you the most, or the group of people that you can learn the most from. I think that's the best way to begin planning your career and it will open lots of ideas

up about where to go next. At the same time, the wrap on millennials is that they're so parapatetic and they don't stay at one place for any length of time. They're flighty, they use t Yeah, they're entitled and and so is this just a new way of working, jumping from place to place to place that us old geezers have got to get used to. I think so. But I wouldn't. I wouldn't see it as a millennial problem.

I think, you know, it's it's actually, uh, it's it's a change societally, right as opposed of generationally, you know, whatever the statistic is that you've heard, you know often I read that people are going to have eleven or twelve, you know, different careers if you look at all the different jobs they'll take. I think that miss is the larger point, which is we see that the employment contract

has changed. It used to be the case that you could sign up with the company and know that you're going to stay there with it for thirty five years and they would have your back and without will employment and you know, with with so much more mobility, but also so much more volatility. You can't trust anymore that the workplace you start your career has any shot of even being around your career, let alone we'll want to

keep you around. I remember giving graduation addresses as far back as the nineties saying the era of working for one company getting a gold watch and a pension at the end of many years is gone. I think it's important to point out that companies are not loyal to employees either, so it's not as if it's just a one way street there on the disloyalty front. Yeah, I

think think that's so important. And you know, at some level I see that as employer driven, right, So you know that it started when when people stopped trusting that their employer would be loyal to them, and that activates a very basic matching response, right, whether you're a give her a taker and match her by default to say, all right, you know, if this company is not going to take care of me, I don't owe them the same commitment. Back, it's time to take a quick break

to hear from our sponsors. Will be back with Adam Grant right after this, and now let's get on with the show. Went back to Adam Grant, Shall we Brian, Yes, we shall, Kitty. So, Adam, I want to go back and give people a sense of how you got into all of this, and also just how weird and compulsive you are. And I say, this is a weird and compulsive person myself. So you you, You're welcome. You grew

up in the verbs of Detroit. The New York Times describe your childhood, and I think a very memorable way. He was an upbeat boy, though socially awkward and burdened by numerous food allergies and strong aversions two haircuts, to blue jeans, to chocolate. He felt things deeply. Those aversions were matched by equally consuming passions, which, anyway, I wish I had an aversion to chocolate. Is that? Do you think it's still a fair way to describe you? Oh?

I think some of it is fair. Looks. Sue Dominous is such a gifted writer. And you know, I had an editor who said, reading about yourself is a little bit like looking in a fun house mirror. But you know, I always thought of a fun house mirror is distorting you. But when I read this, I said, all right, there.

You know there's some things that I wouldn't agree with the characterization of of course, there are also some things that are way too glowing, and so you know, I don't I don't quite know where to come down on most of it. On that part, I hope I'm less socially awkward than I was then. You know, I was sort of the kid with like a curly frow and always wearing sweatpants. And you know, I remember very Napoleon Dynamite. Yeah, I was. I was definitely more enthusiastic than Napoleon Dynamite.

But you know, I think it took it took me a while to figure out that being liked it was sometimes more important than being right. And what drove you to really focus on this area of study, because clearly you're exceptional at it, Adam. I think you've been voted the best teacher at Wharton six years in a row. Your students adore you, your popular in the lecture circuit. You My sister couldn't get into your class, ad Him. I asked her about you because she got an MBA

at Wharton and she said, oh, his class. And it's almost like the Yogi barrel line that nobody goes to that restaurant anymore because it's too crowded, she said, nobody goes to his lectures because they're too full. So so what was it that drew you to this, because I think that's probably illustrative of following your bliss as they say, yeah, I think you know. I actually I was one of those college students who had no idea what I wanted to do, and that actually was was one of my

biggest frustrations growing up. Hated getting the question what do you want to be when you grow up? I really didn't know. I knew that there were lots of things that I enjoyed doing, but I couldn't think of one

thing that I wanted to be. And so, you know, I went through the first half of college just you know, kind of fascinated by a psychology and how there was so much knowledge collecting dust in journals that wasn't being shared with people that might actually make their lives better in some way, and so I wanted to do something with that. But it's not like there's a natural career track for that unless you want to be a therapist,

which I knew I didn't. I wanted to sort of figure out how he could improve everyday choices, and um, I went and took an organizational psychology class which was offered at eight thirty am. You know, everyone would sort of walk in like zombies, and we forgot how tired we were during the class. It was this incredible professor, Richard Hackman, who also didn't know what he wanted to do with his career, so he took all the jobs that he thought were interesting. He made a career out

of studying those. So, you know, first he he had thought about being a basketball player because he was tall, and he studied what made a basketball team win or lose. And then he'd wanted wanted to be in music. He thought about maybe kind of symphony work, so he went and studied orchestra effectiveness. He thought about being a pilot, so he studied airline cockpit crews. And I saw that and thought, what a cool way to live vicariously through all these interesting jobs and try to figure out how

to make work better in the process. And I was hooked. Aren't those high class problems? I was thinking about that? You know, so many people can't afford to to explore these different areas and really figure out their place in the world. What would you say? To students who or people in general who don't have that luxury, Well, I don't think the problems are high class, right, So maybe the problem of not knowing what you wanted doh is and feeling like you have. So that's a high class solution.

Should say, yes, yeah, I think that's right. What you know, what I would say to two people in any position is that you know, so often we end up in a job where the job description wasn't written for us. It was written for you know, somebody else who had the job before us, or it was written for you know, some generic idea of here's you know, here's what we think a person is motivated by, and here's what we

think are you know, our people's strengths will be. Uh, you should do that because this is what we need you to do. And when you study how people do their jobs, very few people actually accept their job descriptions exactly as they were written. They tinker with them. They become sort of like many architects of their own jobs. When we study this, have colleagues who call it job crafting.

It's the idea that you can redesign your own work role to bring in some of your interests and your values and your skills that might be unused, And a lot of people miss out on that opportunity because they

just take their job description as a given. And you know, I think the first piece of advice would be to say, take a step back and figure out what are the strengths you have, what are the skills you want to master, what are the passions you have that you don't get to bring to work every day, and try to figure out how those could be relevant to your team's mission or your organization's goals, and then have a conversation with your boss about whether there's a way to use their

skills or develop them. I was thinking a little bit about your hundred emails plus a day that you answer, Um, how many hours a day do you work to get all the stuff done that you do? Well, it's different. It's different now that that my wife and I have kids. I think before that I probably averaged fifteen hour work days for quite a few years. Now, I basically tried to do all my work when our kids are at

school or asleep. So if you do the math, I don't know, I probably work uh seventy hour week roughly now, and and doesn't that lifestyle sort of cut against the kind of Ariana Huffington's self care ethos that's so in vogue now about digital detoxing and taking lots of time off and getting eight hours of sleep every night, etcetera, etcetera.

Absolutely not so I've I've had I've had some fun debase with Ariana about this, and I think the data support, at least for for people like me, the way that I've I've chosen to live my life, which is I have a colleague, Nancy Rothbard, who studied workaholics, and she

found that there are two kinds of workaholics. Uh. They're they're basically stressed out workaholics, where they're constantly feeling you know, these looming deadlines hanging over them and they feel obligated to work and it's bad for them, you know, both their physical health and their mental health. But there's another group of people that are called engaged workaholics, who are

just intrinsically motivated by their work. They might see it as a calling, uh, they might feel like it's deeply meaningful. They might just really really enjoy it. And I'm one of those people. And if you look at the data, working more doesn't make them less healthy. It actually seems to contribute to their health, or a minimum, it doesn't

you know, it doesn't cost them anything. Sound familiar. I feel like I'm a cross between the stressed out, looming deadline crazy be scared to sit back and not you know, be Idle, and somebody who's highly engaged in her work. I wonder if part of that is is just a function of being in the news and journalism world, that it's hard to be a purely engaged workaholic because so

much of your job is dictated by by external forces. Possibly, possibly we need to spend some more time together at Obviously I have a lot of problems, But I wanted to ask you about another book you wrote called Originals. You talk about nonconformists and what are the lessons we can learn from them? Yeah, so, you know, I I've not I've not admitted this publicly very often, but I was.

I was actually digging a while back into the founding of Harvard's first online social network, which, of course, you know, everyone feels like they know the story of but there's a backstory that most people don't know, which is this is almost two decades ago. Now there was a small group of college seniors who got into Harvard, and a couple of them were were worried that they wouldn't have any friends if they went, and so they started searching.

At the time, it was America Online. They searched all profiles to see if they could find, you know, future members of their class and get to know them so that they would arrive at college with some friends. And they found a few people, and they started a little email list, and every week they'd find a few more people and expand the list. By April, they had over a hundred entering freshmen on the list, and when they arrived at school in September, they had connected more than

an eighth of the freshman class online. And then those those freshmen shut down their online social network because they said, we already know each other face to face, like why do we need an online connection? And they've lived with deep regret ever since, because Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook five years later in a dorm right down the street. And um, I guess I know something about that regret, because I was one of the co founders of that first online

social network. Wow, done, gun Dune, Think what you'd be doing today? Adam. It was. It was. It was a terrible decision. But the funny thing is never occurred to any of us, you know that anyone would get any use out of it. You know, once once you were all on campus together. You know, I, look, I'm not a I'm not a computer scientist. I don't know how to code. I never would have had Mark's vision for Facebook or you know, Cheryl's business acumen and leadership skills.

But I did walk away from that experience thinking that so many of us are in positions where we have ideas, you know, for things that could make the world around us a little bit better. You know, anytime you get frustrated, you know, in your job, or whether you know you're volunteering in any part of your life, and say, you know that that doesn't make sense or I wish this

was different, that's a moment to do something original. And a lot of times we just don't bother because either we're afraid or we just think it's futile and we don't see the potential in our ideas that we should. So that, to me was the reason why we all need to pursue our ideas with a little bit more enthusiasm than we do, but do not conformist rule the day.

Basically is that the thesis of your book Originals. Yeah, so you know, I I kind of looked up to the people who I thought of as the nonconformists, you know, the original thinkers who were willing to to go against the grain and challenge the status quo and you know, take big risks, and they are the people who drive a lot of the creativity and change in the world.

You know, if if you think about whether it's you know, tech entrepreneurs, you know a lot of people will say Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or you know, I think social change too. If you think about Gandhi or Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr. Or Abraham Lincoln. Right, these were all people who are willing to stand up for their ideas against a majority that that didn't really see it. And I think that you know, they do

sort of run the world. But a lot of people who operate this way get shot down because they don't know how to champion their ideas effectively. And so, you know, I guess I wrote Originals to say, look, we all have creative ideas, creativity is not the problem for most of us. Where we've struggle is what we do after we have an idea. How do we know if it's any good? How do we speak up so that other people really hear us and take a seriously exactly exactly, So,

I really wanted to write the sequel to creativity. You know, I'm a relatively new parent, and I know you have three congratulations thanks, no doubt you're parenting at him in a totally evidence based, you know, data driven, brilliant way. But hold on a second. I do not want to be one of those psychologists who screws up at kids. I know a few of them actually, But anyway, what what are some things I can do because obviously I'm

already screwing up my kid it's seventeen months old. To encourage her to, you know, not just achieve great things, but also to be a good and happy person. Well, I think when it comes to building resilience and kids, the first thing I would say is that I think of of everything that that I've learned and that that we read about and studied, the thing that kids often need most is to feel that they matter and mattering.

Is this this idea that so bologists study, which says, you know, you feel that you matter when you know that other people notice you, care about you, and rely on you. And I think most parents are pretty good at the first two right, paying attention to our kids as long as we're not distracted by digital devices, check you know, caring about our kids. We we go out of our way to show our kids that we love them and tell them regularly. Good on that front too.

But then to know that you matter, you also have to feel that other people rely on you. And this is where I think we screw up. We don't count on our kids enough, and we put them in a position where we solve problems for them, especially for helicopter parents. And so you know, one of the ways that you can show your kids that they matter and and help to build their resilience is to ask them for advice. I've actually found myself doing this with that with our

with our daughters. When I was preparing for a speech two years ago, I was I was asked to give a TED talk, and I was terrified. I had gotten more and more comfortable doing public speaking, but this is a whole different kind of stage, and I thought, this is a This is a per fick moment to you know, to show our kids that they matter. And so I went to our oldest daughter and I said, you know, I'm nervous about this speech. What advice would you give me?

And she gave me a few tips. She said, you know you should you should practice it a bunch of times, and uh, you know, maybe you should. Also, you know, you should think happy thoughts right before you give your talk. So long story short, you know, a couple of weeks later, she was in a school play and she was nervous, and instead of telling her what to do, I got to repeat her own advice back to her and say,

you know what, what advice did you give me? And then she was able to tackle the problem on her own. So that advice giving you know, sort of experience for her. It's signaled to her a few things. One, I trust her to handle her her own problems. Two, she has, you know, some of her own ideas instead of relying on mine, and that's a source of strength. And three I also get to hear her suggestions and maybe edit them a little bit so that I can teach her

some good strategies. That's really good advice. I've read so much parents advice and in my day, and I've never read that or heard anybody talk about helping kids understand that they matter. I've certainly read so many books and articles about overparenting and helicopter parenting and raising sort of these not only entitled Everybody Wins a Trophy Kids. But I want to ask you about your podcast called work Life. First of all, are you enjoying it at him? Oh?

I'm having a blessed thank you for asking this? Is this is so much easier than writing well. It's also it's also fun just to talk to interesting people. I'm assuming, and I know you're focusing on businesses that are highly functional but often unconventional. So I'm curious. Can you give us a few examples of the businesses that you've explored on your podcast. Yeah. So the idea for for work Life was I would pick organizations that go to the extreme on something that I wish everyone got a chance

to experience. So I wanted to do an episode on creativity, and I got to go into the Daily Show writer's room and figure out how they they go from basically a blank slate at nine am to you know, hilarious show by Evening, which was just one of the coolest experiences I've ever had. I that I'm jealous me too. Actually I was half tempted to quit my job and try to get one there, but they were not hiring so and I don't think they would take me anyway.

Oh yeah, Dorothy, White Jewish guys are not who they hire ever, So probably I was gonna ask you was it very male dominated? Because I think comedy is sort of one of those fields where women do not get their just do in my personal opinion, what was it like? There's what I expected, And they have done a phenomenal job on diversity, so they have a really strong male female balance. They also have many many racial minority groups covered, as well as people from outside the US working as

writers and producers and on air talent. It's the most diverse writer's room I've ever seen, which is a huge priority for the show. It started in the John Stewart days. Trevor Noah has has continued it and expanded it and you know, dating back to that two has an eight, two hausand nine uh. They introduced a blind review system, kind of like the blind auditions that orchestras did, where they had, you know, people play from behind a curtain so you couldn't see if it was a manner of women.

And all of a sudden, people realize, whoa women are really good? We've been overlooking them right, and orc that the We actually went to the Boston Symphony and recorded a blind audition and it changed the It changed the complement of male female orchestra members dramatically. I think they're now of national symphonies or women. And I always said, well, you have to wear sneakers because no one can hear your high heels when you're walking across the stage, or

you have to put a carpet on there. But um, you know that's what I'm talking about when it comes to real policies that remove these biases. Yeah, I think I think that's so critical, and you know they're they're often wrinkles in doing that. So you know, you think, okay, we we do the blind submission, that's going to fix late night right rooms. But you you actually watched in the past few years a bunch of other writer's rooms follow the daily shows the lead they had blind submissions

and they still ended up with mostly white men. Because you know that the people in the room were a bunch of white men and that was their taste. And so you know that you need to make sure that your evaluators are as diverse as your applicants interest, which I think is often a missing part of the process. And that's I think part of where The Daily Show has nailed it. That's so interesting. I love that before

we go there's some unconventional adam grant advice. So we're going to do a quick lightning round and you could explain what the heck you mean by some of these things, because they're very counterintuitive, as they say. So one, don't be your authentic self, huh in one sentence or less. I think that too many people use authenticity as an

excuse for saying things that are hurtful or inappropriate. And instead of asking what's inside and how do I bring that to the outside world, we should go outside in and be sincere and say who's the person I claim to be? And then how do I make sure I follow up and actually live that. By the way, the most overused word in the English language right now, in my opinion, is authentic. But you're saying that that's not

necessarily a positive thing. Yeah, I think you know when when you look at the if you look at authenticity at work, the studies show that the more you value authenticity, the lower your performance evaluations and the lower your likelihood of getting promoted because you you end up sort of not concerned enough about what other people think. And I'm not saying anyone should be inauthentic. What I am saying is you need to find a balance between what's authentic

and what's effective. Okay, another piece of adom grant advice. It's okay for kids to fight, by what you mean, argue, not like beat each other up. Oh, I was so fascinated by the data on this. If you study highly creative adults, it turns out that they tend to be raised in families growing up where there were more arguments, you know, not fist fights, but real heated debates. And I think a reason for that is that it teaches kids not to just listen to whatever one adult or

two adults says. Right If if as if his parents you always present a united front, then kids just learn to follow authority figures, whereas if you watch your parents argue, you have to think for yourself. Now, a lot of parents are afraid of arguing in front of their kids. You don't want to, you know, terrify them that you're you're going to get divorced or anything. But what you want to do is you want to model a healthy disagreement because that teaches them how to do that themselves.

And the data show that if you look at how well adjusted kids are, it has nothing to do with how often their parents argue. It's about how respectfully their parents arguing. And it's really also debate right to have a difference of opinion I s spet. I think that's especially relevant in this day and age where people are getting information that affirms their point of view rather than learning how to be critical thinkers and express how they feel in conflict with a with an opposing point of view.

It's a huge corporate culture is more important to your happiness than salary, title or position. I would agree with that. Yeah, above obviously, you you need enough of a salary to to make ends meet, and you know, to to be able to support your family or your lifestyle outside work. But once once you clear that bar I think a

lot of people underestimate how much culture matters. If you look at the evidence on this one thing, you can do is you can say, look, you're trying to diagnose the culture of an organization, and the easiest question to ask people is not what's your culture like or what are your values, because you get a bunch of platitudes. Instead, what you want to do is you want to ask a passover question, which is, can you tell me the story of something that happened in your organization that would

not happen elsewhere? And then you ask a bunch of people that question and you start to hear the really core values of the culture come out in the stories. Brainstorming meetings are a waste of time, always not always been on an average, if you're going to bring eight people together in a room to rainstorm together, you would get more ideas and better ideas if you put them in separate rooms to brainstorm alone, interesting and just to

write down their ideas then get together and compare notes. Yeah, because when when you let people think independently, you get less group think. You don't have people censoring themselves, you know who are afraid of looking stupid, and you don't have people talking over each other, so you get more ideas and people are more likely to share their boldest ideas And finally one that really made me happy. Procrastination can be good because I am a master procrastinator. Oh well,

I guess I'll tell you about that one later. I've been I've been waiting for an opportunity. No, I you know, I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that, you know, procrastinations a spectrum. There are people who do it chronically, but they're also people like me who are procrastinators where you know, I'm constantly finishing things early. And there's a sweet spot where people who procrastinate sometimes seem to be more creative because they incubate more and they don't run

ahead with their their first idea. They actually have time to develop their best idea. Excellent. Well, that was a great lightning round. And for our final question, Brian Goldsmith, Well, I couldn't do a podcast and not talk about Donald Trump. So before we wrap, what have you learned about the organizational, psychology and culture of the Trump White House? Oh? Wow? Well, look, to me, the single biggest problem in in the White

House right now. Uh, you know, and I think there's no shortage of officies that are getting lots of attention, but I think the single biggest problem is that the Trump administration is repeating the mistakes in many past presents, which is if you look at the one of the big differences between presidents who made decisions that are regarded by historians and political scientists is great versus those who

had more stumbles. One of the biggest factors that distinguishes them is having an honest broker, someone in the White House who sits above all the heads of the different agencies and gives, you know, really candid feedback to the president,

and the president listens to that. You know, that doesn't That's not the only structure, of course, but I think it illustrates that, you know, we we have a pretty clear situation of of yes men, where we have you know, we have a president who, like many powerful people, is listening to the people who agree with him and dismissing his critics. Uh. And we know that's that's horrendous for decision processes. And so I would love to say that, you know, if I could do one thing differently in

the White House is that currently runs. I would say that we're going to find a bunch of people who genuinely hold different opinions, and we're gonna We're gonna listen to their challenges as opposed to dismissing them, shutting them down, or firing them. Excellent. Al right, well that's good advice. I'm sure it won will not be heated. But it's interesting to hear your perspective, Adam Grant, Adam so great to talk do you. We want to mention again your

new podcast is called work Life. Everyone should give it a listen because Adam at thirty six is wise beyond his years. Annoyingly so, I must say it's certain points, but um, love talking to you, Adam. Thank you so much that no, no, no, I'm teasing. This is a treat as always. Thank you so much for having me. Well that's the end of our show, Brian. I always feels so much smarter and calmer after talking to Adam Grant, even though he makes me feel like I just do

nothing every day. Yeah, it's a great combination of feeling like a terrible person but also like maybe my life's gonna go a little better thanks to our pot squad behind the scenes. That's our producer Gianna Palmer, our audio engineer Jared O'Connell, and our assistant producer Nora Richie. Also a big thank you to my assistant Beth Demas for keeping my life in order. Poor Beth, thank you, And of course thanks to Emily Bean at Katie Kirk Media Alison Bresnik, who does such a great job on our

social media front. Mark Phillips wrote our theme music. You can find Katie all over the social media's under actual media is the plural right, yes, under Katie Kirk. Meanwhile, I send a lot of stuff out into the void on Twitter, which my mother reads at. I read it to Brian and I are the show's executive producers. Don't forget to leave us a message with your thoughts and feedback on the podcast. Honestly, we we can take constructive

criticism as long as it's constructive people, that's right. I'm standing by seven at two to four four six three seven. You can also email us at comments at currect podcast dot com, or leave the show or view on Apple podcasts. We love hearing from you, and the Apple stuff, by the way, is how more people hear about the show, so that's really important and we would appreciate it. Lately a lot of people have been telling me that they

fall asleep listening to my podcast. I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted, but they said my voice is soothing, so it makes me think I should maybe release an album of lullabies I don't know, or poetry. And we know how much you love to sing, and actually, can you give us a few notes? I didn't sing anything in this episode. Twinkle twinkle maybe no, No, I'm kind of embarrassed Pharma's anxiety right now, Brian has to be kind of more spontaneous. Whatever, whatever floats your boat.

All right, we'll do a private record session or later. How about nine bottles of beer on the wall, that perfect one perfect anyway, As always, thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you soon