Speaker 1: Pushkin Hay Slight Changers, It's Maya. Before we get to
Speaker 1: this week's episode, I wanted to let you know that
Speaker 1: I'm launching a newsletter. It's a place where I can
Speaker 1: update you about the podcast, my life, and other exciting news.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to sign up, you can visit the
Speaker 1: link in our show description or go to Maya Shunker
Speaker 1: dot com. That's m A y A s h A
Speaker 1: n k a r dot com.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 3: So much of learning requires us to put ourselves in
Speaker 3: uncomfortable situations because that's where the challenge lies. But the
Speaker 3: fear of embarrassment holds us back, and so we end
Speaker 3: up making these tiny little adjustments instead of big leaps.
Speaker 1: Author and podcaster at A Grant is back on a
Speaker 1: slight change of plans, and he's got a new book
Speaker 1: full of ideas for how we can unlock our hidden potential.
Speaker 1: One of his tips is to think differently about how
Speaker 1: we learn from others.
Speaker 3: A lot of people think being a sponge is about
Speaker 3: just absorbing as much information as you can seek infinite
Speaker 3: amounts of feedback. Engage all of your critics, not so much.
Speaker 3: Not all critics are thinking critically, and I think a
Speaker 3: huge part of being an effective sponge is being proactive,
Speaker 3: not just about what you take in, but also what
Speaker 3: you expel out.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, how to Unlock Your Hidden Potential, I'm
Speaker 1: maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans,
Speaker 1: a show about who we are and who we become
Speaker 1: in the face of a big change. Adam is an
Speaker 1: organizational psychologist and a professor at the Wharton School at
Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania. He's also the author of a
Speaker 1: bunch of bestsellers and a repeat visitor to the Ted stage.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure after one more Ted talk he can
Speaker 1: turn in his punch card for free sandwich. Adam's new
Speaker 1: book is called Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving Greater Things,
Speaker 1: and as you'll hear, this is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: topics to discuss and spar with him about. I started
Speaker 1: our conversation by asking Adam why he's so interested in
Speaker 1: the topic of hidden potential.
Speaker 3: I think there are so many reasons to be interested
Speaker 3: in it. I mean, how many times have you met
Speaker 3: somebody who didn't live up to the potential you saw
Speaker 3: in them because they didn't see it in themselves, or
Speaker 3: because they weren't lucky enough to have a coach or
Speaker 3: a mentor, or a teacher or a parent who saw
Speaker 3: it in them. And I think the fundamental mistake we
Speaker 3: make can we make this mistake when we're judging other
Speaker 3: people and when we're evaluating ourselves, is that we assess
Speaker 3: potential by where we start, and if something's easy for us,
Speaker 3: if we have a natural talent for it, then we
Speaker 3: assume there's a very highest ceiling on our potential. And
Speaker 3: if we struggle early or if we fail, we think
Speaker 3: this is not for me. And what we overlook is
Speaker 3: that growth is not determined by where you start. It's
Speaker 3: about the distance you can travel. But we can't see
Speaker 3: that distance yet, right. We don't have a crystal law
Speaker 3: to look into the future, and so we end up
Speaker 3: missing out on a great deal of possibility that I
Speaker 3: think goes unrecognized.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and one thing I loved reading about in your book,
Speaker 1: as you say, the things that you're most proud of
Speaker 1: aren't the domains where you've gotten to the highest heights.
Speaker 1: It's actually where you started off at the lowest point
Speaker 1: but made a ton of progress along the way. So
Speaker 1: can you share a little bit more about that.
Speaker 3: I really loved sports growing up, and after failing to
Speaker 3: make the middle school basketball team and the high school
Speaker 3: soccer team, I turned my attention to springboard diving, which
Speaker 3: I had sort of caught the bug for late as
Speaker 3: a teenager. And it was abundantly clear that I did
Speaker 3: not have the physical talent to be a great diver.
Speaker 3: My teammates called me Frankenstein because I didn't bend my
Speaker 3: knees when I walked, which was ironic because in order
Speaker 3: to touch my toes I had to bend my knees.
Speaker 3: I wasn't flexible, I didn't have the grace or explosive power,
Speaker 3: and I was also afraid of heights, so not exactly
Speaker 3: set up for success. And I had an extraordinary coach,
Speaker 3: Eric Best, who said on day one of practice, I
Speaker 3: will never cut anyone who wants to be here, and
Speaker 3: if you know, if you focus your energy on this,
Speaker 3: I believe you can be a state finalist by the
Speaker 3: time you're a senior in high school. And thanks to
Speaker 3: Eric's coaching, I made the state finals as a junior
Speaker 3: in high school, and I got nowhere near the Olympics.
Speaker 3: Let's be clear, I could not have qualified for Olympic
Speaker 3: trials if my life depended on it. But I got
Speaker 3: a lot better than I ever expected. I ended up
Speaker 3: qualified for the Junior Olympic Nationals twice, and I made
Speaker 3: the All American list and ended up getting recruited a
Speaker 3: diving college. And it was such a pivotal experience for
Speaker 3: me to realize just because I start with a lack
Speaker 3: of talent doesn't mean I can't overcome many of the
Speaker 3: obstacles on my path.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I resonate with your story. I truly think
Speaker 1: there's nothing that I enjoy more in life than witnessing progress.
Speaker 1: Well maybe a really good Indian meal cooked by my mother,
Speaker 1: but second to that, I love witnessing progress. And so
Speaker 1: I think my version of Adam as the diver is
Speaker 1: I began learning Mandarin about six years ago or so
Speaker 1: because my husband's Chinese and none of his relatives speak English,
Speaker 1: and so I thought, oh, this would be a really
Speaker 1: nice way to connect with his family and you know,
Speaker 1: try to show them that I, you know, really love
Speaker 1: Jimmy and I really you know want to fit into
Speaker 1: the family. And talk about a low starting point, Adam,
Speaker 1: I took the cake there, I promise, But the joy
Speaker 1: of improving at a language that I found so challenging
Speaker 1: has been intoxicating, like truly. So I remember there was
Speaker 1: this one day where I got into a lift and
Speaker 1: it was clear that driver was a little bit uneasy
Speaker 1: because he didn't speak English. And then I looked at
Speaker 1: his phone and I saw Chinese characters, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is my moment, and so I filt of all
Speaker 1: this courage and I spoke to him in broken Mandarin
Speaker 1: and he understood what I was saying. And after I
Speaker 1: got out of that lift, I called Jimmy and I
Speaker 1: was squealing. It was literally like the best day of
Speaker 1: my year. And so yeah, and that starting point again
Speaker 1: was so low that when you witness the potential that
Speaker 1: you had in a space where you really underestimated yourself,
Speaker 1: it's just so satisfying.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. I had no idea that you learned Mandarin.
Speaker 3: Where have you been hiding this secret?
Speaker 1: Well, learning I inng It is a works in progress.
Speaker 1: So this is what's really interesting because this, I think
Speaker 1: hits on another theme in your book, which is my
Speaker 1: decision to pick up a new language of all things
Speaker 1: in adulthood was never something that I thought would happen.
Speaker 1: And that's because I historically just sucked at learning foreign languages.
Speaker 1: So in high school I took Spanish. In college I
Speaker 1: took Hi the terrible at both of them, and so
Speaker 1: I was pretty hesitant to give a foreign language a go,
Speaker 1: especially in my thirties.
Speaker 3: This is so fascinating. Okay, I have a bunch of reactions.
Speaker 3: So first of all, can we just pause to mark
Speaker 3: the moment when the world learned that there was something
Speaker 3: that Maya Shankar was not good at?
Speaker 1: Okay, Adam, that's.
Speaker 3: Because I mean, I think everyone admires what a natural
Speaker 3: you are at so many things you know, from your
Speaker 3: music virtuoso childhood to your mastery of cognitive science to
Speaker 3: your ability to have a conversation with anyone about anything
Speaker 3: and make their complex ideas understandable. I think it's reassuring
Speaker 3: to the rest of us that there are things that
Speaker 3: you two struggle with. Would be my first reaction. Secondly,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about I guess the common arc of saying, well,
Speaker 3: I'm not a foreign language person, I lack this skill,
Speaker 3: and then realizing that it was actually not skill that
Speaker 3: you lacked entirely. It sounds to me like you had
Speaker 3: a different kind of motivation.
Speaker 1: In your thirties, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: You were one excited intrinsically to learn, which maybe you
Speaker 3: were less so in high school. And two you also
Speaker 3: had a really strong pro social purpose here, which is
Speaker 3: you're trying to connect with Jimmy's family, and I think
Speaker 3: that probably made the language learning a lot more meaningful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the root of your motivation matters so much when
Speaker 1: it comes to learning. So when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: it was like, Okay, just got to get through that
Speaker 1: language requirement, try to get the A because I want
Speaker 1: to get into a good college, like blah blah blah. Right,
Speaker 1: And then similarly in college, I think Hindy was just
Speaker 1: a way of checking the box on the foreign language requirement.
Speaker 1: And what happened with Mandarin, like you said, is it
Speaker 1: took on this hugely emotional quality to it, right, which
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting. And on top of feeling like I
Speaker 1: was going to be able to connect with Jimmy's relatives,
Speaker 1: what I didn't realize is that so much of culture
Speaker 1: is baked into language, and so when I was learning it,
Speaker 1: I was learning about this fundamental humility that exists within
Speaker 1: Chinese culture, and like how much I love that? And
Speaker 1: so it's really it's been so charming to learn about
Speaker 1: those elements, and I would have ignored them entirely in
Speaker 1: the context of like a high school class right where
Speaker 1: I didn't understand how it's going to play out.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I wonder, okay. So the other thing is
Speaker 3: you talk about using it in the cab. So one
Speaker 3: of the things I learned while researching basically, how do
Speaker 3: you become better at getting better? So what's the science
Speaker 3: of improving at improving? One of the things that holds
Speaker 3: a lot of us back is we're reluctant to put
Speaker 3: ourselves in uncomfortable situations. And nowhere is this more clear
Speaker 3: than learning a foreign language. If you look at why
Speaker 3: so many people struggle in high school to learn a language,
Speaker 3: it's not necessarily that they lack the language gene or
Speaker 3: they missed the critical period, and if only they had
Speaker 3: learned it younger, they had an aptitude that's gone. It's
Speaker 3: that they're afraid to use it because you don't want
Speaker 3: to sound like an idiot. Absolutely, we don't want to
Speaker 3: embarrass ourselves, and that's totally reasonable. But the only way
Speaker 3: to learn to speak a language is to talk it
Speaker 3: out loud and to use it as you're acquiring it,
Speaker 3: whereas most people expect that they can master it, that
Speaker 3: they can commit the entire vocabulary and grammar to memory,
Speaker 3: and only then are they ready to speak it. I
Speaker 3: wonder if you were that person earlier.
Speaker 1: I was so anxious about speaking in a foreign language,
Speaker 1: especially Chinese, where you might say a tone with a
Speaker 1: slightly different inflection, and you've now set a completely different sentence,
Speaker 1: because it's like ma versus ma, right, those mean totally
Speaker 1: different things. And yet I think what happened in the
Speaker 1: car that day and where I found the courage was
Speaker 1: he doesn't speak English. He's clearly feeling anxious. I'm clearly
Speaker 1: feeling anxious that I can't communicate with him, and so
Speaker 1: that I like dig within myself. I have to like
Speaker 1: excavate courage, like it's so deep inside of my body,
Speaker 1: and I pull it out and I communicate with him.
Speaker 1: And I thought to myself, Wow, talk about a emotional
Speaker 1: return on investment, Like I communicated with a human that
Speaker 1: I would not have been able to communicate with had
Speaker 1: it not been for the skill building. And so sometimes
Speaker 1: it takes situations like that to allow yourself to engage
Speaker 1: with the thing you're not very good at before you
Speaker 1: achieve mastery.
Speaker 3: I literally could have written about you in chapter one
Speaker 3: of the book. You're embodying the very principle I was
Speaker 3: trying to unpack. And I feel like so much of
Speaker 3: learning requires us to put ourselves in uncomfortable situations, because
Speaker 3: that's where the challenge lies. Yes, but the fear of embarrassment,
Speaker 3: of feeling incompetent, of looking stupid holds us back, and
Speaker 3: so we end up making these tiny little adjustments instead
Speaker 3: of big leaps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean discomfort carries the illusion that we're
Speaker 1: not making progress, right, And I mean, from a neuroscientific perspective,
Speaker 1: the best way to boost brain plasticity is to fail
Speaker 1: at things, because when you fail, those errors signal to
Speaker 1: the brain that something's wrong. In turn, it triggers the
Speaker 1: release of this beautiful cocktail of neurochemicals that help reshape
Speaker 1: the brain. It's only when you tell your nervous system, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: the current setups not good enough that it starts making
Speaker 1: the relevant changes, right, And so maybe we can channel
Speaker 1: some of that when we get frustrated.
Speaker 3: Exactly. Yeah, that's a great way to describe it.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's now shift to the ingredients to the toolkit
Speaker 1: for unlocking our potential. You talk about the importance of
Speaker 1: character or what's otherwise known as soft skills, and can
Speaker 1: you please first share the origin story of the term
Speaker 1: soft skills because I absolutely loved it, and I feel
Speaker 1: like soft skills has gotten such a bad rep for
Speaker 1: so long, and I feel like you're redeeming it. So
Speaker 1: on behalf of all people who enjoy soft skills and
Speaker 1: enjoy cultivating them. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 3: Yes, anytime I think of character skills as learn capacity
Speaker 3: is to put your principles into practice.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: At some point I got curious about where the term
Speaker 3: came from, like, why do we call these vital behavioral skills?
Speaker 3: Why do we call them soft? That sounds weak. Well,
Speaker 3: if you trace the history, it turns out that the
Speaker 3: term originated from the US Army when they were trying
Speaker 3: to classify different skills for soldiers and basically measure competencies
Speaker 3: to go and defend national security. And they had a
Speaker 3: list of hard skills, which were literally the capabilities to
Speaker 3: work with machines. Machines were made out of metal that's hard,
Speaker 3: and so operating a tank or a gun was considered
Speaker 3: a hard skill, and so then everything else leadership collaboration
Speaker 3: was lumped in this soft skills bucket, which they didn't
Speaker 3: think was unimportant. They just meant you're not using a
Speaker 3: piece of almost unbreakable equipment. Yeah, exactly. So I think
Speaker 3: obviously that did a great disservice to this category of skills.
Speaker 3: And I actually really wonder if we had called those
Speaker 3: behavioral skills, if they had been called leadership skills, would
Speaker 3: they be branded differently today. The study that really blew
Speaker 3: my mind was a study that roz Chetti led where
Speaker 3: he found that we could predict your income in your twenties,
Speaker 3: how much money you make from the number of years
Speaker 3: of experience your kindergarten teacher had.
Speaker 1: Wow, unreal.
Speaker 3: I could not believe this when I read this research.
Speaker 1: And by the way, listeners, Rod Shetty is like a
Speaker 1: natural experiment genius, so he has controlled for all of
Speaker 1: the relevant variables, I assure you. Anyway, continue, Yeah.
Speaker 3: He's a world class economist and the finding is very robust.
Speaker 3: And the big question is, well, what are these experienced
Speaker 3: kindergarten teachers doing that sets kids up on a different trajectory.
Speaker 3: And my assumption was cognitive skills, like they're giving you
Speaker 3: an edge and reading and math, and then you get
Speaker 3: to carry that with you. It is true that the
Speaker 3: more experienced teachers are better at teaching math and reading,
Speaker 3: but that advantage dissipates over the next few years and
Speaker 3: other kids catch up. Where kids get a lasting advantage
Speaker 3: from an experienced kindergarten teacher is in character skills. In
Speaker 3: fourth and eighth grade, the kids who happen to have
Speaker 3: a more experienced kindergarten teacher randomly assigned ended up getting
Speaker 3: rated higher by their later teachers in being proactive, pro social, disciplined,
Speaker 3: and determent, and those skills are almost two and a
Speaker 3: half times more important for predicting future success than cognitive skills.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if we can explore some of the mechanisms
Speaker 1: by which character skills lead to better outcomes. So, as
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it now, it seems like, okay, determination
Speaker 1: kind of a clear one. It means you're practicing maybe
Speaker 1: more deliberately, you're practicing harder, etc. It's also possible that
Speaker 1: when you build character skills, you're more likable, and so
Speaker 1: you're more likely to draw in mentors and peers and
Speaker 1: teachers and to attract the attention of employers, And so
Speaker 1: there might be this virtuous cycle where character certainly is
Speaker 1: making you better at honing the craft, but having character
Speaker 1: skills makes other people in your orbit more likely to
Speaker 1: want to work with you and help make you better.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. I do wonder how much of
Speaker 3: growth is about character skills elevating your individual learning versus
Speaker 3: attracting people into your orbit who build the scaffolding to
Speaker 3: help you climb.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of character skills, I mean, you're just one
Speaker 1: of my favorite people to intellectually spar with. But we
Speaker 1: were chatting last week about the degree to which we
Speaker 1: think character skills are valuable. I tend to lean more
Speaker 1: nature versus nurture in that debate, and so, yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess my question here is do we have encouraging evidence
Speaker 1: that adults can improve their character skills in a persistent
Speaker 1: and meaningful way. And, by the way, I would love
Speaker 1: for you to be right here. I want to be
Speaker 1: wrong because I really do want these skills to be
Speaker 1: valuable and mutable, and so I have no pride around
Speaker 1: my current point of view.
Speaker 3: Well, there's no one easier to persuade than somebody who's
Speaker 3: already invested in believing.
Speaker 1: The case hereabouts exactly.
Speaker 3: Well, no, honestly, I'm not here to make an argument.
Speaker 3: I don't want to persuade you. What I want to
Speaker 3: do is share with you some of the evidence that's
Speaker 3: really shaped my thinking on this and see if you
Speaker 3: find it compelling. So let's start with the evidence in
Speaker 3: the book. I was quite taken with the experiment that
Speaker 3: Francisco Campus and colleagues did on entrepreneurs in West Africa.
Speaker 3: So you take in this experiment, you take fifteen hundred
Speaker 3: small business owners, You randomly assign them to a control group,
Speaker 3: a cognitive skills training group or a character skills training group,
Speaker 3: and the character skills training group sees their businesses grow
Speaker 3: almost three times as much over the next two years
Speaker 3: as the cognitive skills training group. Now, these founders are
Speaker 3: mostly in their forties and fifties, so it's quite late
Speaker 3: to be learning character skills.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not in any kind of critical period, you know. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: And the training program is not rocket science. It's a
Speaker 3: week of practicing being proactive and disciplined and determined, and
Speaker 3: then thinking about how those skills apply to your business.
Speaker 3: The fact that randomly assigning people to just practice honing
Speaker 3: those skills for a week at midlife, mid career, then
Speaker 3: you know, dramatically increases their revenue you looking at both
Speaker 3: sales and profits. That to me is pretty persuasive. So
Speaker 3: tell me why that didn't persuade you or why it
Speaker 3: wasn't enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So let me tell you what I think
Speaker 1: would persuade me. Just conceptually and embarras me, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about this out loud. What I hear in the study
Speaker 1: you mentioned from Africa might be explained by the following.
Speaker 1: There are capacities that lay dormant in many of us,
Speaker 1: and we simply don't know that they're useful to recruit
Speaker 1: in any given setting. And so what you've done in
Speaker 1: this intervention is you've simply made salient to these entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: that things like proactivity and determination, whatever the other soft
Speaker 1: skills are are going to be helpful to them in
Speaker 1: their business pursuits. So it's less about them growing and
Speaker 1: seeing improvement in their character skills as much as knowing
Speaker 1: to access them in the first place. Fascinating, fascinating, and
Speaker 1: because it's week long, I'm kind of like that could
Speaker 1: be an alternative explanation, and that's still valuable right to
Speaker 1: alert people in certain disciplines that that matters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, that's very interesting. Yeah, I find that totally plausible.
Speaker 3: I would still say that, you know, what's happening is
Speaker 3: they're activating a set of dormant capacities and turning them
Speaker 3: into useful skills, and so in that sense, they're still learning.
Speaker 1: I agree with that. But if say these things exist
Speaker 1: in their dormant and you unlock them over the course
Speaker 1: of a week, you might go from like zero to
Speaker 1: four in terms of like how much you know. And
Speaker 1: what I'm arguing is, in the absence of a longitudinal
Speaker 1: study that shows that a person can go on the
Speaker 1: Proactivity scale, for example, go from zero to seventy five,
Speaker 1: I'm not certain about how much room for growth there
Speaker 1: is within that particular character trait, and so I'm unclear
Speaker 1: as to how again malleable it is. So we know
Speaker 1: they can unlock it in the first place, we know
Speaker 1: they can maybe inch a little forward over the course
Speaker 1: of the week, But how possible is it for two
Speaker 1: people pull out of a random sample to both get
Speaker 1: to seventy five with the right tools.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a very good question. I think it's an
Speaker 3: empirical question that I have not seen a good answer to.
Speaker 1: After the break the case for imperfectionism from a fellow
Speaker 1: recovering perfectionist, and we'll hear about a technique to unlock
Speaker 1: our hidden potential. It comes from a sea creature that's
Speaker 1: up next. On a slight change of plans, I want
Speaker 1: to start with your suggestion that we try and be
Speaker 1: more like a sponge, and like a literal, living sea sponge.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about like a kitchen dish sponge situation.
Speaker 1: So can you tell me a little bit more about
Speaker 1: this metaphor, and then I will tell you why I'm
Speaker 1: obsessed with it.
Speaker 3: So when I was interested in proactivity, I was interested
Speaker 3: in being proactive to absorb information that helps you grow.
Speaker 3: And we've known for a long time that this is
Speaker 3: an important driver of reaching potential. I was looking for
Speaker 3: insight about that, and people kept saying as I talked
Speaker 3: to people who had achieved extraordinary growth or coach others
Speaker 3: to do the same, they kept saying I was like
Speaker 3: a sponge, she was a sponge. He was a human sponge.
Speaker 3: And eventually it hit me that this might be more
Speaker 3: than a metaphor. So I started reading about sea sponges
Speaker 3: and I learned that the yeah, I mean, that's in
Speaker 3: the job description. Obviously, any self respecting social scientists has
Speaker 3: to take the sea sponge.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's the sea sponge part of the textbook.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, du Never. I didn't know a thing about them.
Speaker 3: I learned a lot, and one of the things that
Speaker 3: I learned was that they're not just adept at taking
Speaker 3: in nutrients, they also have finely tuned filters to expel
Speaker 3: harmful particles. And I think why this resonated with me
Speaker 3: is a lot of people think being a sponge is
Speaker 3: about just absorbing as much information as you can seek
Speaker 3: infinite amounts of feedback, engage all of your critics. Not
Speaker 3: so much. Not all critics are thinking critically, not all
Speaker 3: critics are speaking constructively, And I think a huge part
Speaker 3: of being an effective sponge is being proactive, not just
Speaker 3: about what you take in, but also what you expel out.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean, I love this concept about filtration because
Speaker 1: I think it's so crucial and it's interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: you talk in the book about the perils of having
Speaker 1: an ego based filtration system, So that's where you're pushing
Speaker 1: out a lot of the bad stuff that you hear
Speaker 1: and you're just kind of absorbing all the like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're great, and this speech is great, and there's no
Speaker 1: room for improvement, right. I have the underfiltration problem that
Speaker 1: you described, and it's been a journey over time. So
Speaker 1: if I rewind the clock a bit, I mean, starting
Speaker 1: from the time that I was a little kid playing
Speaker 1: the violin, I was always someone who sought out an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of feedback. But the problem that I have
Speaker 1: is I've let too much feedback in and at times
Speaker 1: assigned equal importance to all of it than would have
Speaker 1: been helpful. And the way that I rationalize this, that
Speaker 1: I've justified this is, Okay, I'm a person with a
Speaker 1: lot of blind spots. There's a lot of people out
Speaker 1: there who know a lot more than I do about
Speaker 1: any given thing, and I want to improve as much
Speaker 1: as possible, and I don't want to be prideful in
Speaker 1: these pursuits. But it's taken me a lot of time
Speaker 1: and a lot of confidence building to recognize what feedback
Speaker 1: better serves the thing I'm working on and what doesn't.
Speaker 1: And that's a really hard it's really hard to fine
Speaker 1: tune this filtration system.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not easy, and I think probably I would
Speaker 3: guess that most people are on one extreme or another
Speaker 3: on this. Either they pay attention to all the criticism
Speaker 3: because they're so obsessed with learning and they think that's
Speaker 3: part of having a growth mindset, or their egos are
Speaker 3: fragile and being in secure means that nothing gets in. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they don't really learn from criticism, and I obviously
Speaker 3: want to find the sweet spot there. So I think
Speaker 3: for me, the key questions looking at the research on
Speaker 3: what makes for useful input are one expertise is this
Speaker 3: person credible in the domain? Two familiarity does this person
Speaker 3: know you? And three care? Are they actually trying to
Speaker 3: help you get better?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes, And I think it's very common to have a
Speaker 3: critic who checks the first two boxes but not the third,
Speaker 3: which means they don't necessarily have your best interest at heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think a good coach is not just attacking your
Speaker 3: worse self, but actually recognizing your hidden potential and trying
Speaker 3: to help you become a better version of yourself.
Speaker 1: And I think to add to that, it's okay to
Speaker 1: not assign equal weight to every piece of feedback given
Speaker 1: to you by someone that you admire. So there's a
Speaker 1: difference between admiring a person and then accepting all of
Speaker 1: their feedback, and we shouldn't confuse the two. And I
Speaker 1: have a personal example with you on this topic, right,
Speaker 1: So you generously gave me a bunch of feedback on
Speaker 1: my TED talk. You really helped elevate it. But crucially
Speaker 1: I didn't accept all your feedback. And I remember thinking,
Speaker 1: wait a second, I'm rejecting Adam Grant's feedback. And this
Speaker 1: man literally holds the world record for like the most
Speaker 1: TED talks given by like any human. But then I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, what would Adam tell me about whether
Speaker 1: or not to reject this feedback? And I heard you
Speaker 1: in my head. I heard you telling me on the phone, Leya,
Speaker 1: I'm just one person. It's one person's feedback. Just reject
Speaker 1: this feedback if this doesn't apply to you or feel
Speaker 1: constant with you and your personality type and the kind
Speaker 1: of TED talk you want to give who cares like.
Speaker 1: Don't accept feedback just because it's someone's feedback. Accept it
Speaker 1: because it resonates with you. And that was growth for
Speaker 1: me because I think back in the day right, Like
Speaker 1: ten years ago, I would have been like, accept it all,
Speaker 1: no filtration process. But I appreciate you being that voice
Speaker 1: in my head along the way.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm sorry that I didn't say it more explicitly
Speaker 3: right off the bat. If you get a comment just
Speaker 3: from one person, that may just be their idiosyncratic taste
Speaker 3: or their subjective reaction, and you don't have to pay
Speaker 3: attention to it just because someone that you like or
Speaker 3: respect said it.
Speaker 1: No, exactly. And I think actually the root cause of this,
Speaker 1: and I'm just I'm going to be working on the
Speaker 1: skill over the course of my whole life, is that
Speaker 1: it is very very easy for me to see another
Speaker 1: person's point of view. And I don't want to rid
Speaker 1: myself of this trait altogether, because I really do value
Speaker 1: my open mind and I think it makes me a
Speaker 1: better person overall. It's just that I see that there
Speaker 1: are some downsides.
Speaker 3: I agree, and I think this would be an example
Speaker 3: of what psychologists would call a strength overused.
Speaker 1: Oh that's really nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So you don't want to eliminate the strength. You
Speaker 3: want to make sure you're not using it excessively or
Speaker 3: misusing it by applying it in the wrong situations.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. But I also think from a developmental perspective,
Speaker 1: is really natural and healthy when we're young to allow
Speaker 1: in a bunch of feedback and to test out because
Speaker 1: we're still figuring out who we are, like, what we
Speaker 1: care about, what we value, what we prize when it
Speaker 1: comes to giving a talk or writing a song or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. And it is through the process of
Speaker 1: receiving feedback and seeing how we respond that we sometimes
Speaker 1: even learn what our preferences are in the first place, right,
Speaker 1: and what we care about. And what's so interesting in
Speaker 1: my own evolution is that I assumed with age that
Speaker 1: this would become easier, right, Filtering would become easier, and
Speaker 1: it absolutely has overall. But I do feel like when
Speaker 1: I enter a new domain, so podcasting for example, or
Speaker 1: giving my first head talk, I go back into that
Speaker 1: developmental stage of mind where I open the floodgates and
Speaker 1: I let all this feedback in and I again have
Speaker 1: to fine tune those filtration skills to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: where I want to go. So it can be a process, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's better to err on the side
Speaker 3: of being too open than too closed, because it's much
Speaker 3: easier to turn on the filter than it is to
Speaker 3: suddenly absorb information that you don't have access to anymore
Speaker 3: because people have learned that you're not receptive to it.
Speaker 3: And I love the research showing that we're better off
Speaker 3: asking for advice than feedback.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me more about that, because when I read
Speaker 1: that in the book, I was like, aren't they kind
Speaker 1: of the same thing.
Speaker 3: So when you ask for feedback, the other person rewinds
Speaker 3: to the past and tells you what you did wrong
Speaker 3: or what you did right, and that can lead you
Speaker 3: to ruminate about all of your mistakes. Yeah, and then
Speaker 3: it's really hard to carry that forward to what am
Speaker 3: I going to do differently tomorrow. It can also if
Speaker 3: it's positive feedback, it can lead you to say, all right,
Speaker 3: I'm good, I don't need to change anything. And when
Speaker 3: you ask for advice, people actually look ahead and they say, well,
Speaker 3: here's the thing I might adjust next time, And then
Speaker 3: you can immediately think about, Okay, next time I'm in
Speaker 3: this situation, what do I want to try? And that's
Speaker 3: less threatening. You're not defensive. You don't have to claim
Speaker 3: that you actually were perfect last time. It's a little
Speaker 3: bit more optimistic because you have an opportunity to improve it.
Speaker 3: So I've actually stopped asking for feedback. I used to
Speaker 3: do every talk, I would get off stage and say,
Speaker 3: what feedback do you have? Now I say, what's the
Speaker 3: one thing I can do better?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So, on the topic of coaches, how is it that
Speaker 1: we find good coaches and mentors? And there's a somewhat
Speaker 1: counterintuitive finding in your book that I'd love you to
Speaker 1: talk about when it comes to searching for these people. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think what most of us assume is that you
Speaker 3: want to learn from the best, So find the most
Speaker 3: accomplished musician, the greatest athlete, the genius scientist, whatever your
Speaker 3: field is, you want to learn from the expert. The
Speaker 3: empirical evidence does not support that as the best idea.
Speaker 3: My favorite demonstration being that if you take an intro
Speaker 3: class with an adjunct professor or a lecturer as opposed
Speaker 3: to somebody who's tenured or tenure track in that field,
Speaker 3: you actually go on to get better grades in your
Speaker 3: next class than that subject. In other words, the person
Speaker 3: with less expertise is a better teacher. Why would that be?
Speaker 3: I think there's evidence for a couple of mechanisms. One
Speaker 3: is that sometimes experts are too far from where you
Speaker 3: are to actually remember what it's like to be in
Speaker 3: your shoes, so they can't teach the basics. Einstein was
Speaker 3: an awful intro physics teacher. The second challenge is that
Speaker 3: the process of gaining expertise can make people worse at
Speaker 3: communicating what they know. So it's not just that they forgot,
Speaker 3: it's that they've been doing a lot of it on autopilot,
Speaker 3: and they tend to take much of the knowledge they
Speaker 3: have for granted. I think oftentimes the best mentor is
Speaker 3: somebody who's just a couple of steps ahead of you,
Speaker 3: and maybe not somebody who was a natural, but somebody
Speaker 3: who struggled because they actually had to study how to improve.
Speaker 3: And I guess that has led me to say, instead
Speaker 3: of those who can't do teach, we should say those
Speaker 3: who can do often can't teach the basics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I love this message. And then also
Speaker 1: with that said, you know, I did have the amazing
Speaker 1: fortune of studying with It's a Pearlman, who's yeah, widely
Speaker 1: considered the greatest violinist in the world. And I will
Speaker 1: say that Pearlman had a very unusual way of teaching
Speaker 1: that led to really great outcomes, and this is what
Speaker 1: he did. So I would be playing some passage and
Speaker 1: rather than being prescriptive about what to do and like
Speaker 1: how I could play it better, he would interrogate me
Speaker 1: with a litany of questions around how it is that
Speaker 1: I thought I could make the passage better. So it
Speaker 1: was sort of like a maya, you're clearly unhappy with
Speaker 1: the way that phrase is being shaped. What do you
Speaker 1: think you can do about it? And at the time, Adam,
Speaker 1: I remember being like, dude, you're the freakin' expert. Why
Speaker 1: are you asking me? Right? My like thirteen year old
Speaker 1: brain didn't really understand the power the gift that he
Speaker 1: was giving me. But what he was training me to
Speaker 1: do was to be a critical thinker. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a lobbyist for the world experts. They don't
Speaker 1: actually need our help right now. They're doing just fine.
Speaker 1: But I want to argue that there's the potential for
Speaker 1: them to be great teachers too.
Speaker 3: I think they have hidden potential. So many teachers and
Speaker 3: mentors think that they're supposed to be Yoda and they're
Speaker 3: just gonna they're gonna unfold their wisdom for you. And
Speaker 3: the reality is that people are much better positioned to
Speaker 3: learn if you guide them to come up with their
Speaker 3: own answers as opposed to just spoon feeding them your answers.
Speaker 3: It sounds like what it's like Proman was doing for
Speaker 3: you is activating the tutor effect and the coach effect.
Speaker 3: So the tutor effect is the finding that the best
Speaker 3: way to learn something is often to teach it that
Speaker 3: when you have to, in this case, sort of teach
Speaker 3: yourself and say, well, here's what I didn't like about
Speaker 3: this violin performance. That leads you to understand it better
Speaker 3: because you have to explain it. It leads you to
Speaker 3: remember it better because you have to retrieve it. And
Speaker 3: then in the process of coaching, normally it would be
Speaker 3: coaching someone else, but in this case coaching yourself out loud,
Speaker 3: you actually discover that you have some of the knowledge
Speaker 3: you already need, and that builds your confidence and your motivation.
Speaker 3: Is better to be uncomfortable today and better to maor
Speaker 3: than it is to avoid discomfort today and stagnate tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, there are limits though, right to our desire
Speaker 1: to get better. Talk about imperfectionism and how that can
Speaker 1: be an asset to us when it comes to unlocking
Speaker 1: our hidden potential.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is for me, being an imperfectionist is
Speaker 3: about It's not about lowering your standards at all. It's
Speaker 3: about learning to accept the right imperfections that are not
Speaker 3: essential to the excellence you're trying to achieve, or that
Speaker 3: are necessary for growth. So I'll give you my diving example,
Speaker 3: because this is where I first learned that this is
Speaker 3: a skill. And to be clear, I'm still in recovery
Speaker 3: from perfectionism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're both recovering perfectionists, so big time, big time.
Speaker 3: But I think in diving, I always was trying to
Speaker 3: aim for a perfect ten. And one day my coach,
Speaker 3: Eric Best sat me down and said, you know, there's
Speaker 3: no such thing as a perfect ten. It's a misnomer.
Speaker 3: In one rule book, a ten is for excellence. In
Speaker 3: the other, it's very good. And all of a sudden
Speaker 3: I realized that the time I was spent trying to
Speaker 3: perfect my dives was actually limiting my growth. In fact,
Speaker 3: I've come to believe that if perfectionism were medication, it
Speaker 3: would come with a warning label that says warning may
Speaker 3: cause stunted growth.
Speaker 1: You just got yourself a job at the FDA out
Speaker 1: of a nice job.
Speaker 3: I mean maybe, but what I lived was exactly what
Speaker 3: the research shows, which is you only work on the
Speaker 3: things you know you can do well. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 3: trying to be perfect, you avoid anything where you might fail.
Speaker 3: You end up missing the forest in the trees and
Speaker 3: trying to tinker with these tiny details instead of looking
Speaker 3: at the big picture, and you ruminate a lot and
Speaker 3: beat yourself up. And I guess the way that I've
Speaker 3: tried to put that into practice is I try to calibrate.
Speaker 3: I have, you know, a range of different priorities in
Speaker 3: my life. And when I write a book, I'm aiming
Speaker 3: for a nine because it's a huge investment of time
Speaker 3: and I hope there will be a decent number of
Speaker 3: people who read it and benefit from it. But I
Speaker 3: don't treat everything that way, you know, I'm very content
Speaker 3: with a seven when I give a speech, no, knowing
Speaker 3: that each audience is a little different and each performance
Speaker 3: is going to be a little different, and good enough
Speaker 3: is actually good enough in that situation. And I think
Speaker 3: this is something we can all do, is to pause
Speaker 3: to ask how high are the stakes here?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And we aim obviously higher when it's more important and
Speaker 3: we give ourselves a little bit more grace and permission
Speaker 3: to be imperfect on things that are less consequential. And look,
Speaker 3: no matter how good you get, there are always going
Speaker 3: to be people who don't like what you do, and
Speaker 3: there are always going to be aspects of your performance
Speaker 3: that are going to fall short of someone's standards. You
Speaker 3: cannot please everyone, so you might as well decide who
Speaker 3: you're willing to disappoint.
Speaker 1: Can you just say that one more time? I need
Speaker 1: to hear that.
Speaker 3: One you, in particular, you as a human cannot please everyone,
Speaker 3: and neither can anyone.
Speaker 1: Okay, and therapy right there.
Speaker 3: So you might as well decide who you're willing to
Speaker 3: disappoint and which standards are important to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm thinking about all the domains where this
Speaker 1: imperfectionism perfectionist mindset is relevant. And I'm thinking about all
Speaker 1: those parents out there that just brate themselves every day
Speaker 1: because they don't think they're the perfect parents. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: what if a nine is every day my kids knew
Speaker 1: I loved them? Like what if that was a nine?
Speaker 1: Like maybe that is good enough slash perfection in the
Speaker 1: domain of parenting versus oh, I know coach them through
Speaker 1: the remote. I mean, just so it is a huge
Speaker 1: manual now, right for how it is that we should
Speaker 1: raise our kids. But yeah, it's just making me think
Speaker 1: about how we define our north star. Yeah.
Speaker 3: At first I was really reluctant to apply this to parenting,
Speaker 3: Like I don't want parents to be scored. Your parenting
Speaker 3: today was a three and a half. Yeah, but you
Speaker 3: just changed my mind because there's no reason why we
Speaker 3: can't clarify. Like, first of all, you should not expect
Speaker 3: to be a perfect parent. No one will ever achieve
Speaker 3: that standard. It's impossible. Yeh. Every parent makes mistakes. I
Speaker 3: think that's part of how we grow as parents. I
Speaker 3: think some of my best moments of growth as a
Speaker 3: parent actually have come when I've been really disappointed in
Speaker 3: myself for getting frustrated and impatient with our kids. But
Speaker 3: I don't think a lot of parents I think this
Speaker 3: is a big aha mooent for me. I don't think
Speaker 3: a lot of parents have sat down to say, Okay,
Speaker 3: I want to be a nine parent, not a ten parent,
Speaker 3: because that's going to be healthier for me and for
Speaker 3: my kid. What does a nine look like? What are
Speaker 3: the behaviors that really matter and what are the ones
Speaker 3: that are okay to be imperfect on.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great discussion that we could all
Speaker 3: have with our families. I'm going to force myself to
Speaker 3: have it this weekend.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the most hopeful message coming out of
Speaker 1: your book, and I love that you devote a sizeable
Speaker 1: chunk of the book to this topic, is how we
Speaker 1: can help unlock potential in others. It is a very
Speaker 1: other focused orientation, which I think is just going to
Speaker 1: make humanity better across the board, because you don't always
Speaker 1: see that represented in in psych books. And so can
Speaker 1: you just leave us with some reflections on how we
Speaker 1: can help unlock potential in those around us?
Speaker 3: This is my top pick for kicking myself that I
Speaker 3: didn't write this into the book, Like, how did this
Speaker 3: not make the cut? I don't know, all right. So,
Speaker 3: a group of my colleagues, led by Laura Morgan Roberts,
Speaker 3: created an exercise called the Reflected Best Self Portrait, and
Speaker 3: the idea is that a lot of people have hidden
Speaker 3: potential that's invisible to them. It's almost like the opposite
Speaker 3: of a blind spot, that you're not aware of some
Speaker 3: of your own strengths and so you need other people
Speaker 3: to hold up a mirror to help you identify the
Speaker 3: things that you're good at that maybe these are underutilized
Speaker 3: strengths as opposed to the overused ones that we talked
Speaker 3: about earlier. So the exercise, I've had students and leaders
Speaker 3: do it for about fifteen years now, and people often
Speaker 3: come back and say, this was a life changing experience.
Speaker 3: So all you do is you reach out to some
Speaker 3: people who know you well in different walks of life.
Speaker 3: You could do this with family, some friends, some colleagues,
Speaker 3: and you ask them to tell a story about you
Speaker 3: at a time when you were at your best. And
Speaker 3: then you collect all the stories, which is the most
Speaker 3: delightful set of emails you will ever get. And then
Speaker 3: your job is to recognize the patterns and compose a
Speaker 3: self portrait of who you are at your best. And
Speaker 3: very often when people do this like oh, I didn't
Speaker 3: even know that was the strength of mine, and now
Speaker 3: I see all these places I can use it. I
Speaker 3: also felt like this is a gift you can give
Speaker 3: to other people to help them see their hidden potential.
Speaker 3: So when I first learned about this exercise, I think
Speaker 3: it was gosh, it must have been twenty years ago.
Speaker 3: I remember the winter break starting and I was a
Speaker 3: first year grad student. I had nothing on my calendar.
Speaker 3: I was broke. What am I going to do with
Speaker 3: this week? I decided that I was going to invert
Speaker 3: the exercise, and I picked up a bunch of people who
Speaker 3: mattered to me, and I wrote them all a story
Speaker 3: about a time when they were at their best and
Speaker 3: just emailed it to them out of the blue. It
Speaker 3: is one of the most meaningful weeks I have ever spent,
Speaker 3: even though I was just sitting in a room writing emails,
Speaker 3: because really thinking about, well, what is other people's hidden
Speaker 3: potential and how can I make that more visible to
Speaker 3: them felt like a really meaningful act of friendship or
Speaker 3: you know, an investment in a relationship, and people seem
Speaker 3: to really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I love that example. That's something that everyone listening can
Speaker 1: actually do right now.
Speaker 3: I mean, just even pick one person and tell them
Speaker 3: who they are at their best.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed my
Speaker 1: conversation with Adam, you might want to check out the
Speaker 1: first time he was on the show. It's an episode
Speaker 1: called Adam Grant Thinks Again, and we'll link to it
Speaker 1: in the show notes. And that's a wrap on our season.
Speaker 1: I just want to thank you for spending this time
Speaker 1: with me and the remarkable guests we've had on the show.
Speaker 1: We'll be back early next year with new episodes. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, I'm wishing you a happy and healthy rest
Speaker 1: of your year and a bit more equanimity in the
Speaker 1: face of any Slight Changes of plan. A Slight Change
Speaker 1: of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me
Speaker 1: Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green,
Speaker 1: our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our producer Trisha Bovida,
Speaker 1: and our sound engineer Andrew Vestola. Louis Scara wrote our
Speaker 1: delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
Speaker 1: very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker. So,
Speaker 1: I remember when I flew to China after Jimmy and
Speaker 1: I got married, and we had this big wedding reception,
Speaker 1: and I was so jetlagged first of all, and I
Speaker 1: was in extremely elementary Chinese land. I'm still in elementary
Speaker 1: Chinese land, but I remember my in laws kind of
Speaker 1: looked at me and they're like, so archie to say something.
Speaker 1: And then on the spot, I had to come up
Speaker 1: with this like wedding speech, and it was so it
Speaker 1: was so basic, Adam. I was like, hello, I am Maya,
Speaker 1: I'm married Jimmy. Thank you so much for being here,
Speaker 1: you know, really poetic, like so much emotional residence. I'm
Speaker 1: sure this is great.
Speaker 3: You're like, see spot spot run exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I currently am in China. You are all
Speaker 1: currently here as well,