Speaker 1: We go to the dentist for a checkup once a year,
Speaker 1: and we have an annual performance review at work each year.
Speaker 1: But yet how often do we stop to do a
Speaker 1: life checkup? Have you ever done an audit where you
Speaker 1: consider if you're in the right role and if the
Speaker 1: organization you work for is still the right fit. Organizational
Speaker 1: psychologist Warton professor and best selling author Adam Grant says
Speaker 1: we should all be scheduling life checkups. He spent years
Speaker 1: hearing from his past students who'd graduated from business school
Speaker 1: and walked into great jobs, yet they were miserably unhappy.
Speaker 1: They'd been promoted and were making lots of money, but
Speaker 1: they hated their jobs and they felt trapped. Adam's schedules
Speaker 1: a life checkup twice a year to ask himself, have
Speaker 1: I reached a learning plateau? What do I want to research?
Speaker 1: Do I need to rethink my approach to teaching. A
Speaker 1: life checkup is just like scheduling an appointment with the doctor,
Speaker 1: even if you don't suspect anything is wrong. My name
Speaker 1: is doctor Amantha Im. I'm an organizational psychologist and the
Speaker 1: founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how
Speaker 1: I work a show about how to help you do
Speaker 1: your best work. So let's hear about how Adam first
Speaker 1: came up with the idea to do a life checkup
Speaker 1: and what his own process for doing them looks like.
Speaker 2: The genesis of it is.
Speaker 3: I kept having these students who would graduate from Wharton,
Speaker 3: and then they'd contact me a couple of years later
Speaker 3: and say, you know, I really hate my investment banking job.
Speaker 3: But I've already spent a couple of years, and I'm
Speaker 3: about to get promoted, and he'll be my third promotion,
Speaker 3: and I'm making all this money, and I think I.
Speaker 2: Could have walked away a year or two ago, but
Speaker 2: now I can't.
Speaker 3: And then I started getting calls from students who said, actually,
Speaker 3: I'm miserable in my job, and I should have walked
Speaker 3: away a couple of years ago, but I didn't, and
Speaker 3: now I feel trapped and I don't want to I
Speaker 3: don't want to undo the few years that I've already invested,
Speaker 3: and I feel like I would have to start over.
Speaker 3: And I had enough of these conversations that finally I said, well,
Speaker 3: why don't you put a reminder in your calendar twice
Speaker 3: a year to do a checkup, and they're like, what
Speaker 3: is it a checkup? The same way that you go
Speaker 3: to the doctor even when it seems like nothing is wrong.
Speaker 3: Why don't you do the same thing with your career
Speaker 3: to ask yourself? Is this still the job that I want?
Speaker 3: Have I reached a learning.
Speaker 2: Plateau or a lifestyle plateau? Is this culture toxic?
Speaker 3: And I don't want you to do that every day
Speaker 3: because then you're just gonna be stuck in analysis paralysis
Speaker 3: and you'll never give the place a chance. But if
Speaker 3: you do it a couple of times a year, maybe
Speaker 3: it'll save you from getting trapped in.
Speaker 2: A place that you don't want to be.
Speaker 3: And they've reported back that it's helpful, and a lot
Speaker 3: of them still do it a decade later. So the
Speaker 3: question is do I take my own advice? What do
Speaker 3: you think?
Speaker 1: I think you should take your own advice. It sounds
Speaker 1: very sensible, do you think so? I think?
Speaker 2: Sorry?
Speaker 1: And you know what it reminds me of actually, before
Speaker 1: you go into how you've taken your own advice, it
Speaker 1: reminds me of what Chip and down Heath wrote about
Speaker 1: indecisive around setting tripwires for decisions.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know it's funny that I think the tripware
Speaker 3: principle is useful whenever I think about it as a tripwayer,
Speaker 3: I don't want to trip on a wire that sounds
Speaker 3: really unpleasant. Whereas a checkup, yeah, you know what, I
Speaker 3: need to do that in order to stay healthy. So
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe it's just a question of framing
Speaker 3: or semantics, but I found the checkup idea appealing in
Speaker 3: a way that a trip waiter sounded a little bit dangerous.
Speaker 2: So what did I do?
Speaker 3: I would say, you want to know about my most
Speaker 3: recent career checkup, right, I'd love to Okay, so I
Speaker 3: think my most recent one actually can I'm I'm just
Speaker 3: going to look at my calendar here, So.
Speaker 1: You're booking meetings with yourself in your calendar, so you
Speaker 1: remember for the life checkup.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I have a reminder of my calendar to pop up
Speaker 3: twice a year for a checkup. Cool and one is
Speaker 3: one is usually in It pops up in July to
Speaker 3: do a rethinking of my teaching approach and what content
Speaker 3: I'm going to cover that semester. And then I have
Speaker 3: another one that pops up in January, which is, okay,
Speaker 3: what do I want to be working on in terms
Speaker 3: of research and writing and podcasting. So I don't know
Speaker 3: if there's a recent one that's that good of a story.
Speaker 3: So can I tell you about a pivotal.
Speaker 1: One, of course?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So I can actually give you two if you want,
Speaker 3: and you can choose. One is the checkup that led
Speaker 3: me into podcasting, and the other is the checkup that
Speaker 3: led me to right think.
Speaker 1: Again amazing, Tell me about both.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So twenty seventeen, I published my third book, and I
Speaker 3: was doing a lot of speaking and a lot of interviews,
Speaker 3: and I felt like I'd become a human jukebox.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 3: They knew what songs I could play. They would tell
Speaker 3: me which one to play. I would give my performance
Speaker 3: and I would learn nothing because I was basically covering
Speaker 3: the same material as last time, and a lot of
Speaker 3: the same questions would come up from different audiences, and
Speaker 3: I felt like I was stagnating. You know, I don't
Speaker 3: think the audience saw it, because each performance felt fresh
Speaker 3: to them. But like, how many times am I going
Speaker 3: to do the same talk? And at first I said, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do the same thing on stage that
Speaker 3: I do in the classroom, which is I'm going to
Speaker 3: throw out twenty percent of the talk each time, and
Speaker 3: that way it'll stay new. But it was still the
Speaker 3: same topic and I was still stuck to the topics
Speaker 3: that the audience was asking for, which was largely typecast
Speaker 3: based on what work I'd put out there. And then
Speaker 3: I had a checkup come up. It was I think
Speaker 3: this summer of twenty seventeen, if I remember correctly, and
Speaker 3: I said, okay, I need to start learning again. How
Speaker 3: am I going to make that happen? And I had
Speaker 3: just launched into some conversations with the TED team about
Speaker 3: ways that we might be able to collaborate on something
Speaker 3: that's more dialogue than monologue, and we sort of stumbled
Speaker 3: into this idea of doing a podcast and I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: this would be such a fun thing to do. I
Speaker 3: can go to the most interesting workplaces on Earth and
Speaker 3: talk to some of the most fascinating people, and my
Speaker 3: goal is to learn, and then I could share what
Speaker 3: I've learned on the back end. And that's why I
Speaker 3: host work Life, and it's probably a big part of
Speaker 3: why we're having this conversation.
Speaker 1: Now, Wow, that's so cool, And tell me about the
Speaker 1: one that led to think again. Because I'm always so
Speaker 1: fascinated in terms of the choice for the next book,
Speaker 1: because essentially it's like committing to at least a three
Speaker 1: year plus relationship in terms of research and writing and
Speaker 1: editing and pr and hey, you know it's off the
Speaker 1: back of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's no checkup that can rescue from it.
Speaker 3: You're stuck with it, whether you like it or not.
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny. Actually, one of the reasons I
Speaker 3: was so excited about doing work Life and I guess
Speaker 3: the podcast enterprise more generally, was I felt like, after
Speaker 3: writing I published three books in four years, I felt
Speaker 3: a little bit constrained in the sense that I felt
Speaker 3: like I could only I can only write about or
Speaker 3: speak about topics that were bookworthy, And sometimes I just
Speaker 3: wanted to explore something that was a little smaller, interesting
Speaker 3: and important, but it wasn't necessarily one big idea that
Speaker 3: deserved the whole book. And so podcasting was a great
Speaker 3: way to shake things up a little bit and say,
Speaker 3: all right, you know, I'm really curious about whether we
Speaker 3: could eliminate hierarchy and create organizations.
Speaker 2: With no bosses.
Speaker 3: And I don't have a book's worth of questions in that.
Speaker 3: I think it's you know a narrower topic, but I
Speaker 3: think it's really funny, cool. I'm going to do a
Speaker 3: podcast episode about it, and I did. I had a
Speaker 3: blast doing that for a few seasons, still having a
Speaker 3: blast doing it now. But I also started to feel
Speaker 3: an itch that I was not taking on really grand questions.
Speaker 3: That forced me to do a lot of rethinking in
Speaker 3: a big way, which is something that a book requires.
Speaker 2: And again I had a check up come up.
Speaker 3: I think it was January twenty eighteen, and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: I've been doing a lot of learning.
Speaker 2: When am I going to do my thinking? And that
Speaker 2: led me to say.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think it's time to write another book. And
Speaker 3: then I actually analyzed the patterns in the tweets that
Speaker 3: I had done that were getting the most interest, and
Speaker 3: I noticed that a lot of them were about being
Speaker 3: open minded and questioning our opinions and assumptions and even
Speaker 3: letting go of some of our expertise. And that led
Speaker 3: into Think Again.
Speaker 1: So here we are, and on the topic of rethinking
Speaker 1: things and learning. You talk about in Think Again, setting
Speaker 1: a weekly time for rethinking and unlearning, and I'd love
Speaker 1: you to take me through an example of what you
Speaker 1: do during this time. How structured is it? Are there
Speaker 1: questions that you ask yourself, like, what would I observe
Speaker 1: if I was a fly on the wall?
Speaker 2: You'd be really bored? Ammthha.
Speaker 1: I doubt that.
Speaker 3: I'd just be sitting there, you know, occasionally typing things.
Speaker 3: And sometimes I'll do it on the elliptical or when
Speaker 3: I'm taking out the garbage, but most of the time
Speaker 3: it's in front of my computer. And they have a
Speaker 3: couple of different routines that I've tried so far, though
Speaker 3: this is still a pretty new practice for me. I've
Speaker 3: been doing it less than a year. So one version
Speaker 3: of it is I go through old ideas that I've produced.
Speaker 3: It might be an academic paper I wrote, It could
Speaker 3: be a chapter from a book. It might be a
Speaker 3: social media post, it could be a podcast episode, might
Speaker 3: be a TED talk, And I ask myself, Okay, is
Speaker 3: there something here worth rethinking? And I cringe a little
Speaker 3: bit when I do that, because I think a lot
Speaker 3: of my work is at least mildly embarrassing. I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: I guess it was the best I could have done
Speaker 3: at the time, but it was so it was so
Speaker 3: pedestrian and oversimplified and I have a much richer view
Speaker 3: of the topic. Now, I'm like, Okay, I can either
Speaker 3: be embarrassed by that, or I can say maybe I've
Speaker 3: grown and that. That's one routine that I've come to appreciate,
Speaker 3: if not enjoy, just to say, all right, let me
Speaker 3: let me revisit my old work and see if there's
Speaker 3: something I've already rethought or something I should rethink when
Speaker 3: I look at it with the fresh eye of somebody
Speaker 3: who hasn't seen it in a while and kind of
Speaker 3: forgot that I produced it.
Speaker 1: So that's one What else are you doing in that
Speaker 1: time to provoke rethinking and unlearning?
Speaker 3: So another thing that I've done is I've reached out
Speaker 3: to people in my challenge network and said, Okay, this
Speaker 3: shouldn't always be an independent activity.
Speaker 2: It doesn't. We don't do all of our rethinking in
Speaker 2: a vacuum.
Speaker 3: I think we do most of it in dialogue or
Speaker 3: at least in interaction with other people. And so I've
Speaker 3: picked the people who are my most thoughtful critic, and
Speaker 3: sometimes I'll just shoot them a note and say, hey,
Speaker 3: what do you think I should rethink?
Speaker 1: I've heard you talk about your challenge network a few
Speaker 1: times and I'd love it if you could explain how
Speaker 1: it came about, like how you set one up and
Speaker 1: the logistics of how do you utilize it and how
Speaker 1: can other people set one up?
Speaker 3: So I think of my challenge network as the It's
Speaker 3: the perfect compliment to a support network. Everybody has a
Speaker 3: support network, right, group of cheerleaders who encourage you and
Speaker 3: build you up. And I think obviously we need them,
Speaker 3: especially when we're discouraged or down. But I guess I
Speaker 3: benefited more from a challenge network those thoughtful critics who
Speaker 3: have very high expectations of me and see a lot
Speaker 3: of potential in me, but also are fearless about telling
Speaker 3: me when I've fallen short of it. And we'll highlight
Speaker 3: the gap between where I am and where I want
Speaker 3: to be. So I'll give you, I guess, a taste
Speaker 3: of how I've done this. This is very how I
Speaker 3: work talking about how I work.
Speaker 1: Look at that correct aligns with the name of the show,
Speaker 1: so I think that works.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry to be so literal, Amantha, But how
Speaker 3: I work my challenge network is When I was writing
Speaker 3: Think Again, I had a couple of different practices for it.
Speaker 3: So one was I have a research lab called the
Speaker 3: Impact Lab that I've been, i guess, running since two
Speaker 3: thousand and three. And I told them we were going
Speaker 3: to meet probably every other week, and I'd have a
Speaker 3: chapter draft for them to read and eviscerate, just tear
Speaker 3: it apart, tell me everything that's wrong with it, and
Speaker 3: we would meet and I'd ask them, if you have
Speaker 3: comments in advance, send them so I can digest them
Speaker 3: up front.
Speaker 2: If not, just tell me.
Speaker 3: What you think is wrong with each draft once we
Speaker 3: sit down, and my favorite practice with the group is
Speaker 3: to say, let's just start out. We're going to go
Speaker 3: around the room and give the draft a zero to
Speaker 3: ten rating. No one ever gives a ten, and that
Speaker 3: has two effects. Number one, it motivates them to coach me.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: They might be pretty shy about criticizing my work coming in,
Speaker 3: but when they say four and a half, great, tell
Speaker 3: me how it could be better. I'm aiming for a
Speaker 3: ten here, And then they're not worried that they're hurting
Speaker 3: my feelings. They realize this is going to help me.
Speaker 3: And the other effect that has is it motivates me
Speaker 3: to be coachable. If you just told me, here are
Speaker 3: the three things that I thought were terrible in your draft,
Speaker 3: I'm sure, and I've done this many times. I would
Speaker 3: have some defensive impulses like, wow, I made that choice
Speaker 3: for the following reasons, and I don't think you've really
Speaker 3: thought this through when you tell me this draft is
Speaker 3: a six. All of a sudden, I don't care what
Speaker 3: I disagree with you on. I want to know how
Speaker 3: I can make it a ten in your eyes. And
Speaker 3: so I become much more coachable and open to feedback
Speaker 3: after that. So I did a bunch of that with
Speaker 3: my students, which was invaluable, and just rewrote multiple chapters
Speaker 3: from scrap multiple times.
Speaker 1: I love that idea of scoring things out of ten,
Speaker 1: and I feel like it all also takes it away
Speaker 1: from it being a personal critique. It's more like, well,
Speaker 1: let's focus on the number and how we can get
Speaker 1: that closer to ten. It's interesting. So I got onto
Speaker 1: the book humor seriously from your amazing reading recommendations that
Speaker 1: you do. I think once a quarter you do them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've started doing them quarterly, and I hope you
Speaker 3: haven't regretted read the books that I've put on them.
Speaker 1: They're all brilliant, and I must say I loved Humor Seriously.
Speaker 1: It was one of my favorite reads over the summer
Speaker 1: down here, which I guess is your winter and.
Speaker 3: I, oh, I'm so glad have you had Jennifer and
Speaker 3: Naomi on the podcast yet.
Speaker 1: I actually interviewed Naomi yesterday and she was amazing, and
Speaker 1: I was asking her just how does she make her
Speaker 1: writing so funny? I mean, Humor Seriously is probably the
Speaker 1: funniest business book that I've ever read. And she described
Speaker 1: what I kind of likened a human network, kind of
Speaker 1: like your challenge network, but essentially she will give the
Speaker 1: draft to a bunch of comedy writers and ask them
Speaker 1: to find and markup opportunities for humor, which I thought,
Speaker 1: that's that's so fascinating. For making your work funny out
Speaker 1: such a novel approach.
Speaker 2: I think it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3: And when you gather a group like that for feedback,
Speaker 3: right in Hollywood, they call it notes like I'm going
Speaker 3: to give you notes, and I love how non threatening
Speaker 3: that is because there's no judgment there. These are just
Speaker 3: my notes, and they might have been margin notes. They
Speaker 3: might be little notes from me to you on what
Speaker 3: I thought you could improve or where you missed an opportunity.
Speaker 3: But they're just notes, take them or leave them. And
Speaker 3: so my student group is one place I think that
Speaker 3: ends up being just an incredible source of new ideas
Speaker 3: and constructive criticism. The other thing that I did was
Speaker 3: I reached out to a bunch of the people who
Speaker 3: have given me the best challenging feedback over my career
Speaker 3: and I said, Hey, you may not know this, but
Speaker 3: I consider you a founding member of my Challenge network.
Speaker 3: And then I had to blain what a challenge network was,
Speaker 3: but I said, listen, if you ever hesitate to give
Speaker 3: me real feedback because you're afraid you're going to damage
Speaker 3: the relationship, don't. The only way you can damage the
Speaker 3: relationship is by not telling me the truth.
Speaker 2: And I've gotten much better feedback after that.
Speaker 3: And so I just recorded a new TED talk around
Speaker 3: think Again, and I went back to the Challenge Network
Speaker 3: and I said, Okay, here's my draft. Tear it apart,
Speaker 3: give me the zero to ten rating, tell me what
Speaker 3: you do you would do differently. And I think the
Speaker 3: version I recorded was the thirtieth draft, after throwing three
Speaker 3: complete drafts away and starting over entirely.
Speaker 1: Wow, I actually wanted to ask you about designing keynote
Speaker 1: presentations because in Think Again, there are so many different
Speaker 1: great strategies for helping people think again, and I was
Speaker 1: curious as to how you apply those strategies when you
Speaker 1: are constructing a keynote presentation, and particularly one that's off
Speaker 1: the back of Think Again. So can you talk about
Speaker 1: some of the strategies that you use to help think
Speaker 1: Again with the design of a presentation?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: So, I don't recommend doing a typical talk like a
Speaker 3: TED talk, because the challenge of doing a TED talk
Speaker 3: is you have a constrained window of time and so
Speaker 3: you want to make every second count and it's much
Speaker 3: shorter than a keynote you would normally give. Right, So,
Speaker 3: I guess I think about a typical keynote speech is
Speaker 3: probably in the thirty to forty five minute range.
Speaker 2: I would say, is this sweet spot at most events.
Speaker 3: And my vision for that is to start out by asking,
Speaker 3: what's the core insight that I want to convey. There
Speaker 3: needs to be a big idea that you take away,
Speaker 3: ideally one that intrigues you or surprises you or makes
Speaker 3: you think again. And then something that I was resistant
Speaker 3: to doing for a long time, but I'm regretting having
Speaker 3: not done it sooner now that I've finally embraced it
Speaker 3: is not just to ask what I want the audience
Speaker 3: to rethink, but also what I want them to feel.
Speaker 3: That was something I learned from my TED coaches, who said, look,
Speaker 3: I understand that you want to shift people's understanding, but.
Speaker 2: People are moved through emotion.
Speaker 3: Well, long story short, I realized that's the way that
Speaker 3: I've done a lot of my rethinking is through emotion.
Speaker 3: And so I decided that I wanted to surprise people
Speaker 3: and entertain people and fascinate people, and let me think
Speaker 3: about the best ways to do that. And then once
Speaker 3: I'm clear on the big insight and the key emotions
Speaker 3: that I want to create from there, it's just a
Speaker 3: matter of saying, Okay, what are the major studies that
Speaker 3: I want to highlight or pieces of evidence, and what
Speaker 3: are the stories that I think would best illuminate those,
Speaker 3: and now let me sequence those. So there's a nice
Speaker 3: mix of stories and studies and then some audience interaction
Speaker 3: to get people thinking and participating and not just sitting
Speaker 3: there passively listening, but actually processing the material and applying
Speaker 3: it and experiencing it. And then I basically get on stage,
Speaker 3: and I have a bunch of slides that are images,
Speaker 3: and I talk, and I have my points, and I
Speaker 3: hope that the studies and stories end up about the
Speaker 3: right length of time.
Speaker 2: That's my process, what is yours?
Speaker 1: I think I start with the question, with the time
Speaker 1: that I've given, how can I be most useful to
Speaker 1: the audience, Like how can I serve them best? And
Speaker 1: then like, presumably I've got a theme that I'm working
Speaker 1: with or a particular topic, and then I think, okay,
Speaker 1: to serve them best, like what are the let's say,
Speaker 1: for a standard length keynote, what are the five best
Speaker 1: things I know about this that I think can really
Speaker 1: have a significant impact in the people's lives that I'm
Speaker 1: talking to. And then from there I'd get more into
Speaker 1: the mechanics of going, okay, well, each point needs some
Speaker 1: kind of a story or some sort of interactive activity.
Speaker 1: And now, obviously for the last year I've just been
Speaker 1: doing virtual keynotes. I haven't seen a live audience since
Speaker 1: February twenty twenty, So I think that's my process and
Speaker 1: trying to go, oh, what's the best story I can
Speaker 1: tell here to really land this point and connect with
Speaker 1: people emotionally and then the other thing I think about,
Speaker 1: and I was actually talking about this with Naomi yesterday
Speaker 1: in the interview, is that one of my really early
Speaker 1: coaches around giving presentations would always say, Okay, make it funnier,
Speaker 1: make it funnier, insert a joke here. You need more
Speaker 1: laughs here. And so I also think about laughs per minute,
Speaker 1: Like I'll go back over a presentation that I've given
Speaker 1: and I'll look at how many laughs I'm getting per minuted,
Speaker 1: and where there's maybe a flat period of two minutes,
Speaker 1: I'll be like, oh, I need to inject some humor there.
Speaker 1: So I think that's my process loosely.
Speaker 3: That's fascinating. Okay, I have a couple of questions for
Speaker 3: you on this. Yes, let's start with the last point.
Speaker 3: So I have done the same thing for a long.
Speaker 2: Time, have you.
Speaker 3: Yes, I've I had a target like, okay, at least
Speaker 3: one laugh per minute, otherwise this is not entertaining enough.
Speaker 1: I'm so reassured to know that you do this and
Speaker 1: I'm not some weird.
Speaker 2: Aerre Oh no, absolutely.
Speaker 3: And I've started to rethink it though, And I wonder
Speaker 3: what you think of the rethinking here. So what I
Speaker 3: realized was I mean part of the reason that I
Speaker 3: want to make the audience laugh is I just I
Speaker 3: love to be entertained, right, I love to laugh, and
Speaker 3: so I think we all enjoy giving the things that
Speaker 3: we love to receive. And that's fine. But I also
Speaker 3: realized at some point that I'm drawn to laughter because
Speaker 3: as a shy introvert who used to be terrified of
Speaker 3: public speaking, I still look at the audience for signals
Speaker 3: that they're with me, and laughter is really the only
Speaker 3: reliable cue that I'm having an impact in real time. Right,
Speaker 3: They're like, well, let's let's take some alternative emotions. So
Speaker 3: if you inspire people, they don't go ooh.
Speaker 1: I wish they I did, though, that would be great.
Speaker 3: I mean, if there was an involuntary human response, like
Speaker 3: a vocal burst for inspiration, that.
Speaker 2: Would be helpful, right, Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3: I mean occasionally people will, in very rare circumstances though applaud,
Speaker 3: but that's not a norm in most talks, and it
Speaker 3: would be sort of disruptive, I think if it happened regularly.
Speaker 3: I think when people have moments where they're surprised, right,
Speaker 3: they don't gasp out loud. And so I started to
Speaker 3: think that maybe I was over indexing on laughter, that
Speaker 3: I was using humor as a crutch to feel the
Speaker 3: audience's energy, as opposed to saying, okay, there's a range
Speaker 3: of emotions that I want to cultivate here, and yes,
Speaker 3: I want to make the audience laugh as often as possible,
Speaker 3: but I don't need to do that in every minute.
Speaker 3: There are moments of gravity that should be balanced out
Speaker 3: by the levity in different parts. But can you imagine
Speaker 3: if Martin Luther King Junior got on stage for his
Speaker 3: I have a Dream speech and say I want to
Speaker 3: have I want to have at least a laugh for
Speaker 3: a minute, A.
Speaker 2: Wrong term for.
Speaker 3: Trying to dismantle a racist set of institutions. So I
Speaker 3: wonder what you make of O this.
Speaker 1: I love that it's almost a sense of relief. I
Speaker 1: feel to go, oh, I don't have to be so
Speaker 1: had on myself to really push for humor, because sometimes
Speaker 1: it comes naturally, but other times it's a real struggle.
Speaker 1: And it's also, just, let's face it, like a bit
Speaker 1: of a hassle to go, well, you know, look, I've
Speaker 1: got all the points and these are solid points, and
Speaker 1: oh god, now I have to be funny. So I
Speaker 1: like that I feel like it takes the pressure off,
Speaker 1: but also it's going to lead to a better outcome
Speaker 1: in terms of going, Okay, what is the most I
Speaker 1: guess useful emotion for the audience to be feeling in
Speaker 1: order to really internalize the idea that I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get across to them. So I'm going to try that.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great way to capture it. And
Speaker 3: I think I guess it goes to one other thought
Speaker 3: on this before I ask my other question that you
Speaker 3: were listening for me. I think that sometimes in the
Speaker 3: best talks, the audience is so absorbed in the story
Speaker 3: that telling a joke would jolt them out of it.
Speaker 3: You're kind of ruining their flow experience. And there are
Speaker 3: times when you're telling a story that's powerful enough that
Speaker 3: they're transported into it right They're the protagonist. They're waiting
Speaker 3: for the complicating action or the resolution. And so I've
Speaker 3: sometimes found that when I'm telling, especially a personal story,
Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, I'm putting myself out here. I'm being
Speaker 3: a little vulnerable right now, let me make a joke
Speaker 3: to lighten the mood. Like no, I need to suspend
Speaker 3: that temptation, like I don't. I'm not going to eliminate
Speaker 3: it all together. I am going to make fun of
Speaker 3: myself at some point because I feel like that will,
Speaker 3: especially if I'm talking about something that went well for me,
Speaker 3: That'll prevent me from coming across as arrogant, and it'll
Speaker 3: be a way to project the humility that I aspire
Speaker 3: to live with. But I'm at least gonna postpone it.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to let myself go for the easy
Speaker 3: joke right away.
Speaker 1: Now tell me your second question before I take back
Speaker 1: the host role from you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, I prefer to be the one asking
Speaker 2: the questions here. After all, I want to keep learning.
Speaker 3: So I think it's interesting when you talked about what
Speaker 3: your goal is and your talks, you said that I
Speaker 3: want to be useful to the audience and I want
Speaker 3: to have impact. And I wonder how much of that
Speaker 3: is because you do so much speaking on innovation, which
Speaker 3: is around a set of practical challenges that the audience
Speaker 3: is grappling with. Because I guess just give a little
Speaker 3: context for why I was wondering. I was thinking, what's
Speaker 3: the alternative to useful and impact? And I think it's
Speaker 3: novel and interesting or at least that's one alternative. And
Speaker 3: so I wonder what's behind the desire to help as
Speaker 3: opposed to just to intrigue and spark curiosity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really interesting question. It's funny because for me,
Speaker 1: I think of novelty as that's just a hygiene factor.
Speaker 1: In terms of like marketing speak, it's just a cost
Speaker 1: of entry, like you have to be novel otherwise people
Speaker 1: can probably just find the information online somewhere and likewise
Speaker 1: being entertaining in some way. Again, it's like that's just
Speaker 1: a cost of entry to be a good speaker. And
Speaker 1: then in terms of being useful, I think it probably
Speaker 1: comes back to being quite similar to you in terms
Speaker 1: of growing up being very introverted and shy, and even
Speaker 1: just raising my hand in class to ask a question
Speaker 1: made me incredibly nervous. And I feel like if I'm useful,
Speaker 1: then that gives me permission to be there. It gives
Speaker 1: me permission to speak and for people to listen to me.
Speaker 1: So I think that's where that comes from.
Speaker 2: That resonates.
Speaker 3: It's very similar to how I felt in a lot
Speaker 3: of situations because when I heard you say useful and impact,
Speaker 3: I thought, well, okay, that's language that I often use to.
Speaker 2: Feel like I matter, right, Like what am I doing here? Well?
Speaker 3: Like I want to be helpful, okay, and I want
Speaker 3: to justify that my time was well spent and then
Speaker 3: it benefits other people. And then I started thinking one
Speaker 3: of my biggest frustrations as a speaker is you don't
Speaker 3: really know when you've been useful like that. Getting real
Speaker 3: feedback about your long term impact is challenging. I've thought
Speaker 3: about how do you measure it? This is a hard problem,
Speaker 3: and so I think I've shifted a little bit away
Speaker 3: from that just knowing how ambiguous it is to say,
Speaker 3: all right, if I can create a performance that people
Speaker 3: find to be a thought provoking experience, then I can
Speaker 3: know at the end that I sort of succeeded, as opposed.
Speaker 2: To wondering like was this useful? Did I have impact?
Speaker 3: And so I guess I'm giving myself a different out
Speaker 3: than the one you've chosen.
Speaker 1: Well, I like your questions to me, and it's really
Speaker 1: interesting hearing your process. I know that when I do
Speaker 1: the edit for this interview, I'm I'm going to rethink
Speaker 1: again when I can, you know, really focus and have
Speaker 1: the time to consider it.
Speaker 3: We think again, that sounds like a sequel that I
Speaker 3: will not be rating.
Speaker 1: Definitely.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: When I was preparing for this interview, I reached out
Speaker 1: to Rev, who is a collaborator of yours, Reb Rebel,
Speaker 1: and someone that introduced me to I think two and
Speaker 1: a half years ago, shortly after I first had you
Speaker 1: on the show.
Speaker 2: Was two and a half years ago, Yeah, two.
Speaker 1: And a half years ago, Yes, a long time ago.
Speaker 1: And Reb and I catch up every few months, and
Speaker 1: that's been wonderful. It's fantastic. And I said, what do
Speaker 1: you reckon? I should ask Adam about basically delegating my
Speaker 1: prep work to Rev, and he said, you should ask
Speaker 1: him about remote collaboration because pre COVID you were doing
Speaker 1: a lot of remote collaboration, and obviously now in the
Speaker 1: last twelve months, I'm imagining that you've done a hell
Speaker 1: of a lot more. And I'm wondering what one or
Speaker 1: two strategies that you find really help to elevate the
Speaker 1: effectiveness and the outputs from collaborating remotely.
Speaker 3: So Burstina is a place to start. This is researched
Speaker 3: by Chris Reedal and Anito Wooley, where they studied remote
Speaker 3: software teams and they found that there are two kinds
Speaker 3: of communication patterns in remote collaboration. One is high frequency,
Speaker 3: relatively low intensity, like we talk every day or we
Speaker 3: have emails kind of going every hour. The other is
Speaker 3: the opposite. It's low frequency, high intensity. We don't talk
Speaker 3: for a week, and then we have a two hour
Speaker 3: jam session. And they wanted to know which model is
Speaker 3: more productive and more creative. And whenever I present this,
Speaker 3: this is something I've been talking a lot with founders
Speaker 3: and CEOs about, whenever I present it, they say overwhelmingly,
Speaker 3: over eighty percent of the people I've asked have said,
Speaker 3: you want high frequency, you need to stay in touch,
Speaker 3: you need to be on the same page in order
Speaker 3: to work effectively with people. And the data showed the
Speaker 3: exact opposite, that the more productive and creative remote collaborations
Speaker 3: are low frequency, high intensity. And what seems to be
Speaker 3: going on there is a couple of things. One, when
Speaker 3: people are communicating only intermittently, they actually have time to
Speaker 3: get their own individual work done and to move ideas forward.
Speaker 3: And two, when they do then come together to collaborate,
Speaker 3: they're working with much better material and they're also more motivated.
Speaker 3: I thought that that meant, okay, they're going to be
Speaker 3: excited to build on each other's ideas. But the data
Speaker 3: tell a slightly different story, which is that it is
Speaker 3: energizing to know that other people are there waiting to
Speaker 3: respond to you. And the pattern of burstiness is the
Speaker 3: sense that the collaboration is literally bursting with energy and ideas.
Speaker 3: And the way you get that you don't need to
Speaker 3: be in the same physical space to get that. What helps, though,
Speaker 3: is being in the same temporal space right having your
Speaker 3: calendar synced so that there are at least some hours
Speaker 3: here and there where you're online at the same time
Speaker 3: and you can actually work together in real time. And
Speaker 3: that The part of the reason this resonated with me
Speaker 3: is it's how I've collaborated since gosh, at least fifteen
Speaker 3: years ago, when at a mentor Jane Dutton, who would
Speaker 3: work on papers with her former students. So Jane was
Speaker 3: at the University of Michigan where I was in grad school.
Speaker 3: Her former students would graduate and go across the country
Speaker 3: or to another continent, and they would stay in touch,
Speaker 3: or they'd have occasional phone calls and occasional emails, and
Speaker 3: then they would fly in and they would do a
Speaker 3: three day blitz where they just deep dive on a
Speaker 3: project and they sit side by side writing and they
Speaker 3: basically spend every waking hour together and then they go
Speaker 3: off and they don't interact that much for a month
Speaker 3: or two. And you're really getting the best of both
Speaker 3: worlds in that model of independent thinking and then collaborative contribution.
Speaker 3: And so that's a mon for how I structure my
Speaker 3: remote collaboration.
Speaker 1: Do we really need face to face collaboration to optimize
Speaker 1: problem solving and creative thinking? I mean, there's so many
Speaker 1: businesses here in Australia that are insisting that people go
Speaker 1: back to the office. We're not in lockdown here anymore.
Speaker 1: But do we need it? Like, is there something special
Speaker 1: that we get from face to face collaboration based on
Speaker 1: the research, that we just can't get from virtual collaboration.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's not the answer I was looking for, Adam.
Speaker 3: It's the only empirical answer I have right now. What
Speaker 3: I can tell you is this seems to be true
Speaker 3: in pairs and also in teams that trust builds faster
Speaker 3: and it also builds deeper when people are face to face.
Speaker 3: But what do we take away from that, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Does that mean we are evolutionarily wired to need to
Speaker 3: be in the same physical space as other people in
Speaker 3: order to trust them, that we need to be able
Speaker 3: to potentially touch them. Is that just how we've always
Speaker 3: done it and so we're most comfortable trusting under those circumstances.
Speaker 3: Or is it the case that up until now, and
Speaker 3: maybe not until three years from now, the technology just
Speaker 3: hasn't been there, and so virtual has been just an
Speaker 3: awful proxy for face to face. And when we get
Speaker 3: to the point where we're kind of lifelike holograms, maybe
Speaker 3: face to face becomes irrelevant. And maybe for some people
Speaker 3: touch is important and for others it's not. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but I don't think there's anything about human psychology that
Speaker 3: leaves me convinced that we have to be physically in
Speaker 3: the same room to trust each other and collaborate effectively.
Speaker 3: I think there are aspects of being physically colocated that
Speaker 3: maybe grease the wheels of trust a little bit and
Speaker 3: make it easier. But I think that gap is going
Speaker 3: to shrink as technology gets better, and also as we
Speaker 3: get more comfortable but really trusting people that we've never
Speaker 3: met face to face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that Jane Dutton was one of your mentors,
Speaker 1: and she's obviously very well known for writing and researching
Speaker 1: about high quality connections. I'm curious as to how you
Speaker 1: use her work when you're collaborating with new people in
Speaker 1: terms of I guess fast tracking human connection.
Speaker 3: Well, Jane does a rapid high quality connection exercise where
Speaker 3: I've been using this in class for years, ever since
Speaker 3: she had me do.
Speaker 2: It as a student.
Speaker 3: She says, just pair up with someone that you haven't
Speaker 3: met in class yet, or if you've met everyone, like
Speaker 3: somebody you don't know well, and then you each have
Speaker 3: a minute to try to build a high quality connection
Speaker 3: with the other person, and it's stunning to see how
Speaker 3: quick it happens. People are often amazed by their their
Speaker 3: intuitive social intelligence when it comes to finding strategies to
Speaker 3: do it, and I think the strategies that seem to
Speaker 3: work are backed up by decades of evidence in psychology.
Speaker 3: One is self disclosure, where you know where people make
Speaker 3: themselves vulnerable and what that actually That helps the person
Speaker 3: who's sharing as much or more than the person who's listening,
Speaker 3: because when I tell you something personal about me, then
Speaker 3: I am signaling to myself, well, I must trust you otherwise,
Speaker 3: Why the hell did I just tell you that? What
Speaker 3: am I thinking? This is a dangerous decision here? I
Speaker 3: should probably rethink it. So that happens a lot. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of people searching for uncommon commonalities, you know,
Speaker 3: things they share that are rare, and people bond in
Speaker 3: those ways. I think though, for me, the key ingredient
Speaker 3: there is that the exercise is set up so that
Speaker 3: you just erase uncertainty that the other person wants to
Speaker 3: connect and knowing that I'm going to talk to you
Speaker 3: for a minute and we share a goal of having
Speaker 3: a high quality interaction, it dramatically lowers anxiety. And it
Speaker 3: also it leads people to do Oh, I guess the
Speaker 3: goatmans would call them like they're bids.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I make an offer, a gesture to say, hey, I'm
Speaker 3: seeking your friendship or your trust, and I know you're
Speaker 3: going to reciprocate, and you're eager to do that, and
Speaker 3: then it kind of spirals from there. It's like when
Speaker 3: the beginning of a first date goes really well and
Speaker 3: you stop questioning whether the other person likes you. So,
Speaker 3: I guess this is all to say, I've tried to
Speaker 3: think about these principles in some of my new virtual
Speaker 3: collaborations to like I've just tried to put it out there, like, Hey,
Speaker 3: we're going to be working together. It's important to me
Speaker 3: that we trust each other. And so I'm going to
Speaker 3: tell you something that I don't normally share. And then
Speaker 3: I'll try to come up with something that I normally
Speaker 3: would hesitate to share, but I think is something that
Speaker 3: if I am going to trust someone, they ought to
Speaker 3: know about me. So like I'll maybe start with a
Speaker 3: simple one, like I am chronically late.
Speaker 2: I apologize events for it.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get better at it, but not always
Speaker 3: making progress. And then I might go into something a
Speaker 3: little bit more personal, depending on what topic comes up,
Speaker 3: and say, like I've written whole book about rethinking, and
Speaker 3: I've noticed there are certain situations where I get really
Speaker 3: stubborn and strong willed to the point that I worry
Speaker 3: I'm close minded, and I'm trying to get better at
Speaker 3: flexing in those situations and delegating, and I hope you
Speaker 3: can help me do that.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that you ask someone that is often late
Speaker 1: because you get into flow and you don't want to
Speaker 1: break it. And I experience that. But what I do
Speaker 1: is I set the stopwatch on my Apple Watch so
Speaker 1: I don't lose track of time. And I'm a really
Speaker 1: punctual person. I'm often early. But I want to know,
Speaker 1: do you recommend that I be more selfish with my
Speaker 1: time and not do this and be late to things
Speaker 1: like you are.
Speaker 3: I don't know that I would wish my faults on anyone,
Speaker 3: but I do think there's a method to the madness here.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I want to lose track of time.
Speaker 3: If I'm in flow and I was late to something
Speaker 3: and it wasn't an emergency and I can make up
Speaker 3: for it, it's totally worth it to me. And I
Speaker 3: guess I don't see it as being selfish, because I'm
Speaker 3: usually working on something that's gonna reach somebody else or
Speaker 3: that's going to help someone else, and so I guess
Speaker 3: I see it not as selfishness, but more is refusing
Speaker 3: to be a slave to the social construction of clock
Speaker 3: time and not privileging the person that I thought was
Speaker 3: going to get my time at this one point over
Speaker 3: the other people who are priorities for me too. So
Speaker 3: I don't know, I reject the premise. I don't think
Speaker 3: it's selfishness, particularly if other people know that sometimes you're
Speaker 3: running late. And I'll tell you, I don't meant that
Speaker 3: I'm thrilled when people are late, like great, I have
Speaker 3: more time to work, thank you. At minimum, I can
Speaker 3: catch up on some emails or write a little post
Speaker 3: that I'm delinquent in doing. And so I've just never
Speaker 3: understood why people reify this fiction.
Speaker 2: Of a clock into something much bigger than it is.
Speaker 1: That's great, I'm going to see if I can reframe
Speaker 1: my thinking. I know that I'm going to struggle with it,
Speaker 1: but it maybe does require a rethink.
Speaker 2: I think. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think this is probably something that different
Speaker 3: people have different preferences on.
Speaker 2: But I am surprised.
Speaker 3: I remember when I wrote I must have tweeted about
Speaker 3: how being late is not necessarily disrespecting the person who's
Speaker 3: waiting for you. Sometimes it's respecting that person who's sitting
Speaker 3: in front of you. And I was surprised at how
Speaker 3: many people responded with some version of moral outrage, like
Speaker 3: being late is not a violation of an ethical principle,
Speaker 3: it's just you taking time more seriously than I do,
Speaker 3: Like I take my commitments to people and projects seriously,
Speaker 3: not to a clock or a calendar.
Speaker 1: Such a good way of looking at it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It makes some people frustrated, but like, okay, if it
Speaker 3: really frustrates you, you should not schedule appointments with me,
Speaker 3: and you will be happy.
Speaker 1: Hey, there, it's nearly time for a little ad break.
Speaker 1: But can I ask a favor of you? If you're
Speaker 1: enjoying how I work, I would be so grateful if
Speaker 1: you could hit pause on this episode and pop into
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this from and
Speaker 1: leave a review. You can do this through scrolling down
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the show notes and clicking on
Speaker 1: the stars, or running a comment. Aside from the warm,
Speaker 1: fuzzy feelings, this will give both you and me. It
Speaker 1: helps other people find out about how I work. So
Speaker 1: thank you in advance. Okay, Adam Grant will be back
Speaker 1: after this short break and we're going to be chatting
Speaker 1: about how being a magician, which Adam is, has influenced
Speaker 1: his work in psychology. Now, something I imagine, in terms
Speaker 1: of sharing things about you that a lot of listeners
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't know, is that you're a magician, and I
Speaker 1: think that's so cool.
Speaker 2: The nerdiest thing in my life. For sure. You think
Speaker 2: it's cool, gotta love it totally.
Speaker 1: Like my idea of a great night out is going
Speaker 1: to the Magic Castle in La Amazing.
Speaker 2: So I want to know how does.
Speaker 1: Magic influence the work that you do as an organizational psychologist.
Speaker 3: The biggest thing that magic did for me was it
Speaker 3: taught me to appreciate the element of surprise. When I
Speaker 3: was performing as a magician regularly, that I could do
Speaker 3: the same trick like, let's say, I'm going to have
Speaker 3: you pick a card. So one of my favorite tricks
Speaker 3: that I learned early on was I have the audience.
Speaker 2: Pick a card.
Speaker 3: I actually I put the cards on the table and
Speaker 3: I say, look, I don't want to influence your choice.
Speaker 3: You choose your own card, and I have you pick
Speaker 3: and I'm halfway across the room. I'm turning around so
Speaker 3: that I can't see anything. I'm staring into the wall,
Speaker 3: and you look at your card. You then shuffle it
Speaker 3: back into the deck. And when I first started performing,
Speaker 3: I would just grab the deck and I would find
Speaker 3: your card, and you were like, oh cool. And then
Speaker 3: I thought Okay, I'm going to add a little flourish
Speaker 3: to it. And I learned to throw the cards up
Speaker 3: and then as all the cards are falling from the
Speaker 3: sky or the ceiling, to catch one card and then
Speaker 3: I turn it around and it's your card. Ah, And
Speaker 3: there's a little more suspense built. But that version of
Speaker 3: the trick was nowhere near as satisfying in the reveal
Speaker 3: as when I went an extra step. And that This
Speaker 3: is a trick I do every year in class with
Speaker 3: my undergrads. Thanks to a student innovation, all my students
Speaker 3: get a chance to do a one minute passion talk
Speaker 3: about something they love or something that matters deeply to
Speaker 3: them to introduce themselves to their classmates, and we do
Speaker 3: six each class, so that by the end of the
Speaker 3: semester everyone is given one. And throughout the semester they
Speaker 3: asked me, when are you giving your passion talk, and
Speaker 3: I say, I'm going to do it on the last day.
Speaker 3: And the last day, my passion talk is about learning
Speaker 3: to do magic and how it helped me come out
Speaker 3: of my shell.
Speaker 2: And then I do a trick or two.
Speaker 3: And so I do this same trick, except now the
Speaker 3: way I do it is I've had you shuffle your
Speaker 3: card back.
Speaker 2: Into the deck.
Speaker 3: Then I take the deck and I say, okay, Amantha.
Speaker 3: You may not know this, but when you were holding
Speaker 3: your card for a second, you actually transferred some body
Speaker 3: heat into it and you warmed it up. So I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna flip through eyes closed, I'm gonna find the
Speaker 3: hottest card in the deck. Boom, is that yours? And
Speaker 3: I deliberately show you the wrong card? Ah, And you're
Speaker 3: like no. And I think my acting is not always
Speaker 3: up to par, but every once in a while I
Speaker 3: get it right. And I look kind of like shocked,
Speaker 3: and then forlorn, and and I might I might curse,
Speaker 3: and then and then I just I throw the cards
Speaker 3: up as if I'm giving up, and then I.
Speaker 2: Catch your card.
Speaker 3: And now right now you're Wow, You're You're much more
Speaker 3: excited and surprised. And what that taught me this is
Speaker 3: a very long story, but what it taught me was
Speaker 3: that we can do the same thing with ideas, we
Speaker 3: can do the same thing with knowledge. And as an
Speaker 3: organizational psychologist, that meant that when I had a data
Speaker 3: point that I thought was interesting, I needed to work
Speaker 3: really hard to not only tell the audience what was
Speaker 3: surprising about it, but set them up to feel surprised.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I'm like in magic, I don't want to trick them.
Speaker 3: What I want to do is figure out what expectation
Speaker 3: they hold, what assumption they cling to that the evidence
Speaker 3: I'm going to share might question, And then I want
Speaker 3: to tell the story or reveal the results of the
Speaker 3: experiment in such a way that they feel the same
Speaker 3: surprise that they should, and that I don't think I
Speaker 3: would have appreciated that if I hadn't done magic.
Speaker 1: From a purely selfish point of view. I'm on an
Speaker 1: eight week mission where I'm trying to learn a magic
Speaker 1: trick awake and really, I mean yeah, yeah, and i
Speaker 1: mean wait why, Because someone asked me a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: what's something that you've always want wanted to learn but
Speaker 1: haven't And I'm like, I can't think of anything. I
Speaker 1: just like, I just do it if I want to
Speaker 1: learn it. But I'm like, no magic. Like every time
Speaker 1: I visit the Magic Castle, I'm like, oh, I want
Speaker 1: to learn something and I want to become a member,
Speaker 1: and I get really excited and I do nothing. And
Speaker 1: so I learned a trick last week and it didn't
Speaker 1: fool many people, but it filled a couple and that
Speaker 1: was okay. And then I learned another trick, but it
Speaker 1: involved a rubber band, and I can't find the right
Speaker 1: rubber band to do the trick with. So tell me
Speaker 1: what is the trick that I can learn that requires
Speaker 1: little skill but it's going to have a really big impact.
Speaker 3: So one trick that I think is low effort high
Speaker 3: impact is one where I guess we'll have to wait
Speaker 3: till COVID is over. But you're in Australia, You're going
Speaker 3: to be in a restaurant much sooner than I am.
Speaker 3: So next time you go to a restaurant, what you're
Speaker 3: going to do is you're going to cover assault shaker
Speaker 3: with a napkin or like a tablecloth, and you're going
Speaker 3: to to tell your friends at dinner that you're going
Speaker 3: to make a coin disappear that you're going to put
Speaker 3: under the salt shaker and the napkin, and then you
Speaker 3: put the coin down, you cover it, You say, okay,
Speaker 3: let me just make sure the coin is here. You
Speaker 3: hold up the salt shaker and the napkin, then you
Speaker 3: put it back down, You cover the coin, and then
Speaker 3: you say okay on the counter three one two three,
Speaker 3: the coin will disappear. Then you slam the table, you
Speaker 3: smash the salt shaker, only the salt shaker is gone
Speaker 3: and the coin.
Speaker 2: Is still there.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: And then if you want, you could have the salt
Speaker 3: shaker appear under the table, or it could just be gone.
Speaker 1: What how do I do this?
Speaker 2: After we stop recording, I'll tell you how to do it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, am I seeing it?
Speaker 2: I met that. I wanted to ask you. I wanted
Speaker 2: to rethink your question a little bit. Hmm.
Speaker 3: What if instead of learning a trick a week, you
Speaker 3: decided to learn a skill a week, a magic skill
Speaker 3: that a magician would use.
Speaker 1: Oh I like that, and I never would have thought
Speaker 1: of them because I don't know enough about magic to go. Ah,
Speaker 1: that's another way to categorize learning. So what would be
Speaker 1: say two or three skills that if I were to
Speaker 1: reframe the challenge that I should learn.
Speaker 2: Well, let's just say a word about why.
Speaker 3: I think that might be part of what I heard
Speaker 3: you saying was I love being in the audience for
Speaker 3: magic and I would like to be able to create it.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I think the if you just do a
Speaker 2: trick a week.
Speaker 3: At some point you're going to give up on that goal,
Speaker 3: and that's going to be the sum total of your abilities.
Speaker 3: So you'll be able to do six tricks right or
Speaker 3: eight tricks, and you won't really feel like you know
Speaker 3: how to do magic. It's like you're in the movie
Speaker 3: The Matrix and you've downloaded six programs and you can
Speaker 3: play those programs. Whereas if you learn six skills, you
Speaker 3: could potentially, over time, without having to ever learn a
Speaker 3: new skill, create one hundred or two hundred different tricks.
Speaker 3: And also then there's a learning curve where one skill
Speaker 3: could lead to another, as opposed to I'm just going
Speaker 3: to learn a bunch of screet performances and they're all standalone.
Speaker 3: So I guess it depends on your medium. What kinds
Speaker 3: of tricks do you love to watch the most? Are
Speaker 3: you a stage illusioned person? Are you close up coins
Speaker 3: or cards?
Speaker 1: Close up cards, I would say would be my favorite genre.
Speaker 2: Mine too.
Speaker 3: I'm better at cards than everything else combined, which is
Speaker 3: not a brag about my card skills, it's a.
Speaker 2: I am in every other domain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in cards, I would say, get a card
Speaker 3: magic book. I would say the classic is dive Vernon.
Speaker 3: There are lots of more recent ones, though, and you
Speaker 3: could say, Okay, one week, I'm going to learn a
Speaker 3: particular shuffle that gives me control over certain cards. The
Speaker 3: next week, I'm going to learn a cut, the next week,
Speaker 3: I'm going to learn a lift. And you know, each
Speaker 3: of these techniques then can be used in all these
Speaker 3: different card tricks, and sometimes, like my favorite card tricks,
Speaker 3: I use eight or nine different skills and it's a
Speaker 3: much more exciting revelation at the end. So I think
Speaker 3: you could create just a whole I guess it's a
Speaker 3: different way of saying it is.
Speaker 2: It's an investment in.
Speaker 3: Being able to keep producing dividends on the time you
Speaker 3: spent learning.
Speaker 1: Yes, gosh, I feel like this has just re energized
Speaker 1: me towards this magic goal that I have. I'm totally
Speaker 1: going to adopt that. That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Thank you trying it at your own risk.
Speaker 1: Now, I know I've only got a few minutes left
Speaker 1: with you. I did want to ask you a question
Speaker 1: about parenting, because I know you do quite a bit
Speaker 1: of writing in this area, and you've written two children's
Speaker 1: books with your wife Alison, which myself and my seven
Speaker 1: year old daughter have.
Speaker 2: Loved and oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: That's so good. And I want to know what are
Speaker 1: like two or three questions that you think are really
Speaker 1: good questions to ask our children every day?
Speaker 2: What are you trying to teach them?
Speaker 1: I guess what I was thinking about is I read
Speaker 1: that article. I want to say it was in The
Speaker 1: Atlantic where you talked about the importance of raising people
Speaker 1: that are kind. And this is something that I think
Speaker 1: a lot about with my daughter Frankie, and so, for example,
Speaker 1: every day, and I think it was inspired by that
Speaker 1: article that you wrote. I asked her what's something kind
Speaker 1: that you did? And sometimes She'll say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: And other times I'll go, well, what's something kind that
Speaker 1: someone did for you? And how did that make you feel?
Speaker 1: And that's literally a daily conversation that we have. So
Speaker 1: that's what made me want to ask the question because
Speaker 1: I was curious, what are some other things that you're
Speaker 1: doing with your kids to praise them to be really good, decent,
Speaker 1: kind human beings.
Speaker 3: Well, one that I actually learned from our ten year
Speaker 3: old daughter, Elena is she taught our seven year old
Speaker 3: son Henry to every night ask us a question.
Speaker 2: M and vice versa.
Speaker 3: So we read a bad time story and then when
Speaker 3: it's time to turn the lights out, we each ask,
Speaker 3: what's your question? I think it's a beautiful way to
Speaker 3: encourage curiosity. But also teaching kids to ask questions is
Speaker 3: one of the most basic building blocks of nurturing kindness
Speaker 3: and a sincere interest in others. And so I think
Speaker 3: asking your kids what questions do you have? Or what
Speaker 3: question do you have today? What do you wonder about?
Speaker 3: What puzzled you, what intrigues you, what do you not understand?
Speaker 2: What do you not know?
Speaker 3: A great way to get them to take an interest
Speaker 3: in others and also an interest in learning.
Speaker 1: That is so cool. I'm picking my daughter up from
Speaker 1: school in three hours and I'm so going to be
Speaker 1: asking her.
Speaker 2: That it's fun.
Speaker 3: She might say nothing, and then you can ask her
Speaker 3: a question and model the behavior, and it becomes fun
Speaker 3: to say, Okay, who can.
Speaker 2: Think of a question we've never asked before.
Speaker 3: So it's almost it's become like a nightly challenge to say,
Speaker 3: all right, we've gone through you know who's your favorite superhero?
Speaker 3: And you know why is Pluto no longer a Planet's
Speaker 3: Let's come up with something really novel.
Speaker 1: Now, I've got three final questions for you, and let's
Speaker 1: treat them as rapid fire questions. So first, I want
Speaker 1: to know what, like the last time I had you
Speaker 1: on the show. I remember I asked for it was
Speaker 1: your favorite research study that you've read recently, and you
Speaker 1: gave me a great one around how meetings and not
Speaker 1: batching meetings wastes a great deal of time. And I
Speaker 1: want to know what's your favorite research from say, the
Speaker 1: last year, that's made you rethink something.
Speaker 3: For a long time, I've believed that the reason we
Speaker 3: get so many narcissists and leadership positions is organizations are
Speaker 3: designed to reward people who kiss up and kick down
Speaker 3: and who who project confidence as a false signal of confidence.
Speaker 2: And I've had to.
Speaker 3: Rethink that because there was a fascinating Dutch study that
Speaker 3: came out this year showing that narcissistic leaders are even
Speaker 3: popular in elementary school classrooms ages seven to fourteen that
Speaker 3: I think the original The data were hundreds of kids
Speaker 3: in twenty three different classrooms, and in twenty two of
Speaker 3: those classes rooms, then most narcissistic kids were more likely
Speaker 3: to be nominated as leaders, and they also rated themselves
Speaker 3: as better leaders even though they weren't any better at leadership.
Speaker 3: And I guess what I've rethought there is I thought
Speaker 3: this was a problem with our workplaces, and now I
Speaker 3: think it's a much more fundamental problem with the way
Speaker 3: that we teach, the way that we organize both kids
Speaker 3: and adults into hierarchies, the way that we put a
Speaker 3: premium on confidence instead of humility. And so I think
Speaker 3: that we need to counter the preference for narcissistic leaders
Speaker 3: much earlier than I thought before.
Speaker 1: That is fascinating. Tell me you read so many books.
Speaker 1: What is a book that you've read in the last
Speaker 1: year that made you rethink something and that you'd recommend
Speaker 1: that other people read as well.
Speaker 2: Oh, there are a lot of those.
Speaker 3: I think Untamed by Glennon Doyle is an easy one, though.
Speaker 3: Glennon is I think one of the most gifted writers
Speaker 3: on earth. And I shouldn't even say gifted because that
Speaker 3: suggests that it just came to her natural, when I
Speaker 3: know she's worked extraordinarily hard to have such a brilliant
Speaker 3: and poignant voice. And one thing that I rethought based
Speaker 3: on reading her book is my view of happiness.
Speaker 2: There's a line that stopped me in my tracks.
Speaker 3: I think the exact quote is being human is not
Speaker 3: about feeling happy, it's about feeling everything.
Speaker 1: What a great quote.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the book is full of observations like that,
Speaker 3: and it really made me pause to say, well, what
Speaker 3: am I doing here? Am I limiting my range of
Speaker 3: experience by pursuing happiness? And am I encouraging other people
Speaker 3: to make the same mistake.
Speaker 1: My final question for you, Adam, is a very easy
Speaker 1: one for people that want to consume more of what
Speaker 1: you are doing and also get their hands on a
Speaker 1: copy of Think Again. How should people do that?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's extremely kind of you to ask.
Speaker 3: I would say the easy way is to go to
Speaker 3: Adam grant dot net. There's a free quizy you can
Speaker 3: take to figure out your style of rethinking, and a
Speaker 3: discussion guide for the book, and a bunch of other
Speaker 3: information that may or may not be of interest.
Speaker 1: Amazing, And people can subscribe to your newsletter there as well,
Speaker 1: which is one of the newsletters that I get that
Speaker 1: I actually look forward to receiving. It's always just awesome. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, pleasure, Adam, Thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: on the show again. It's just such a highlight and
Speaker 1: privileged to chat to you, so thank you so much,
Speaker 1: my pleasure. That is it for today's show. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, why not share it with someone that you
Speaker 1: think would also enjoy it. And next week on How
Speaker 1: I Work, I am very excited to have Naomi Bagdonus
Speaker 1: on the show. Naomi teaches humor, yes, of course, on
Speaker 1: humor for Stanford Business School, and we get into the
Speaker 1: mechanics of how to telligence and how to just be funnier.
Speaker 1: So if you're keen to hear about that, hit subscribe
Speaker 1: or follow wherever you're listening to this podcast from and
Speaker 1: you'll be alerted when that episode drops. How I Work
Speaker 1: is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 1: The producer for this episode was the marvelous Jenna Coda,
Speaker 1: and thank you to Martin Nimba who did the audio
Speaker 1: mix and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 1: That's all for today and I'll see you next time.