Want Your Team to Start Fresh in the New Year? Adam Grant Shares Advice.

24:12Like, tell me about your favorite project you've ever worked on. Who's the worst boss you've ever had? And how do I avoid being that person? What are those skills and strengths that you want to use or master in the next three to five years. And I think now we're facing an opportunity to do something a little bit different, which is to run re-entry interviews. And we could go back to the teams we work with and say, okay, we've all been running experiments. We've tested out different ways of collaborating. We've tried out different technologies. Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema.

24:44So I get how it can steal your time. But why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about EBCLIS. EBCLIS, Lubrikizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to EBCLIS.

25:16Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EpGliss. Before starting EpGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about EpGliss and visit epgliss.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. night. We've probably adjusted our schedules and work routines quite a bit. Let's talk about what's working and what's not. And then we can pool all those ideas in the team and begin to figure out how do we want to work together differently moving forward.

25:52And I think that's a discussion that many teams are having, but we can put a little more structure around it, right? To say, okay, what's the best experiment you've run? What's the most surprising lesson you've learned about how you can be productive working from home or sleeping at work, however you frame it? and what would you like to see reinvented in our daily norms and patterns of collaboration? And that, for me, is a pretty good starting point. So, Adam, I want to go back to something you talked earlier with Adi about kind of thinking about how you want to come out of this pandemic. And this is sort of for folks who are leading organizations, companies, what have you.

26:31I think my question is there's a sort of a timing thing. I think you can talk a lot about that, but I wonder if we risk it also becoming a bit demoralizing because we're never, you know, we just, okay, we're talking about the future, but it's not happening. Is there some risk there or some way to mitigate that? Yeah, I think there's some risk there. I think the reality is, though, that people are grappling with that anyway, right? So I don't think you're suddenly going to surface this and people say, whoa, I wasn't worried at all about the future and thinking ahead at all, right? What you're trying to do is give them a little bit more structure and clarity around what that future might look like whenever it comes.

27:10But I think part of what you have to do is actually something that psychologists have taught parents to do for years. Julie Lifcott-Hames, I think, has a great way of describing it. She talks about normalizing struggle and saying, look, part of what you want to do when people are facing hardship is make that an OK thing to experience. Help people reappraise it not as a threat, but actually as a challenge to be overcome. And so I think the first thing that leaders ought to do during this time is to say, you know what, here's what I'm struggling with right now. And it drives me crazy that if you rewind back to March, I thought we were all going to be back to work by now in a pretty regular flow.

27:46And we are nowhere near there yet. And that makes it a lot easier for other people to, you know, to open up about their struggles and then for us to try to get on the same page. So I think that kind of opened door, and Amy Edmondson would talk about it in terms of psychological safety, that comfort that you create as a leader for people to take risks and be a little bit vulnerable, knowing they're not going to be penalized or punished for it, that seems to be the most important step you can take for getting people to talk about some of those frustrations that are getting surfaced. And then maybe figuring out as a group, okay, how much are we going to look forward to the future versus do we want to stay in the present?

28:21And I'll tell you, Josh, my preferences, I still would say right now the present is not that exciting for a lot of people. And so having something to look forward to is probably better than not. Well, I like that because you're mixing in the whole notion of empathy. And we talk a lot about the empathetic leader. And that seems to be a very current trend right now. It's like, you've really got to show that I kind of get where you're coming from. And it would make a difference in all the things you're talking about, basically. Yeah, there was a Ginkga Toggle study a few years ago, which I think is especially relevant now.

28:55The basic question was, what do employees expect to their managers from an empathy standpoint? And then what are managers responsible for in their own minds? And if you surveyed managers, basically what they said was, if I care about my employees' lives outside of work and I know what they're feeling and I have a sense of their well-being and life satisfaction, I am going above and beyond. When you talk to those managers' direct reports, they said, no, that's actually part of my manager's job. I expect them at bare minimum to care about me as a human being and have a sense of how I'm doing. And I think the pandemic has maybe closed that gap a little bit.

29:33On the one hand, I think it's made managers much more aware of the importance of mental health, of thinking about employee well-being in life, not just engagement at work. And on the other hand, I think it's also made employees a little bit more comfortable saying, you know what, I would really love to be at this meeting, but I've got to homeschool my three kids right now on Zoom, and this is not an easy task. And I think my hope is that one of the silver linings of this pandemic is that managers really start to take it as their responsibility to care about the people they manage, not just the productivity that they end up yielding.

30:05That makes sense. Now, let me switch gears for one second before we go to because we have a lot of questions here from our viewers. But I am super curious. So you're incredibly productive and very prolific. So first off, are you still, have you maintained that? And if so, how? I never feel productive. So I think that's the first key to productivity is setting ridiculously ambitious goals that you never reach. Because if you always feel like you're behind, then you always have something to chase or something to work toward. Honestly, I don't track my productivity in any way, shape or form. And that's in large part because I don't think productivity is a goal, right?

30:49It's a means to a series of ends that I really care about. So I've never woken up in the morning and said, you know what? I'm really energized because I'm going to get a lot done today. I don't care about the quantity I produce. I care about the quality I produce and the impact it has. And so for me, what that's meant is I want to start each week with real clarity about what projects I care about and who I'm trying to help and what problems I want to solve. And then I try to think about that much more in terms of attention management than time management. So for years, when people have talked about time management, I've said, well, you can't really add more hours in the day.

31:25And the more time you spend trying to optimize your calendar, the more aware you become and frustrated you become about all the hours you waste. For me, attention management is a subtle but powerful shift to say, you know what? I'm going to prioritize in a very clear way the people and projects that matter to me. And once I've done that, it does not matter how long they take because those are the things that I care about working on. And so I'm trying then, I guess, to be much more clear about what I'm after ultimately than how much I'm producing. Sure. That's great. That's great. Okay, so I'm going to go to some questions from the folks who are viewing.

32:04And one comes from a really interesting question here, kind of in line with the work you're doing that you talked about with Steve Jobs from Olumyu Yua. I'm not getting that name exactly right. Apologies from Nigeria, who asks, in some conservative companies, leadership is still a bit uncomfortable having their workers adopt work from home. They tend to believe that people are more productive when physically present. I mean, we've kind of all experienced different managers like that. How can we convince them that productivity could actually increase with work from home? Well, I always like to start with the data there.

32:41So there was a meta-analysis by Gagendron and Harrison published 2007. So this is obviously way before the pandemic, accumulating every study that had ever looked at the relationship between working from home or telecommuting and a whole host of outcomes at work. And they found that as long as you're in the office, at least about two and a half days a week. There's no cost to performance or satisfaction or even to coworker collaborations and relationships. And then you start to wondering, but okay, a lot of us are not in the office at all, right? So we're not hitting that sweet spot of being together half the week.

33:14Is that bad news? Empirically, I think the data say probably not. There's a great experiment that Nick Bloom did that he led in China at a call center called Ctrip. And basically half of the employees in the study were randomly assigned to work from home. And they did that for over six months. They were 13.5 % more productive on average, in part because they were more able to focus on their work, in part because they seemed to experience a sense of loyalty from the flexibility and autonomy they were given. And they were also half as likely to quit over the next nine months. Now, I don't think that that means that working from home is something that everyone wants.

33:52Interestingly, after the experiment was over, half of those employees decided they wanted to come back to work. They missed the structure. They missed the community. Some of them even said, I kind of miss my boss, and I never thought I'd say that. And they also faced some disparities around promotions that despite being more productive, the people who work from home were less likely to get promoted because they lacked face time with managers. So there are obviously some kinks to work out in that system. But I think that evidence shows us, and there are a number of experiments now like it, that suggests that when people get to choose where they work and when they work, they actually tend to become a little bit more motivated.

34:28And of course, we need to figure out the coordination challenges. But there are actually ways to do that, which we could talk about. So I would just start and say, look, let's look at the data from careful, rigorous, controlled experiments. And then if we want to run our own internal experiments, let's actually see what the effect is. And then we can gather our own data and prove ourselves right or wrong. So this, I don't know, this occurs me as you're talking, you know, we've been doing this for so long now that we're starting to bring a lot of new people into our companies. And the culture that we're bringing them into isn't necessarily representative.

35:01So I'm curious, from your point of view, you know, it's because culture is something you experience. But now we're in the business of actually explaining it to people. This is who we are because you're not actually coming here. I mean, do you think that there are sort of tips and tricks for bringing new people into, you know, environments, which we're going to be doing more and more of over the next few months? Tricks? I hope not. Tips? Definitely. So there's a great experiment that Dan Cable, Brad Stotz, and Francesca Gino did where they had people go through different kinds of onboarding experiences.

35:38So there's a control group that goes through standard organizational onboarding. And then there are two experimental groups, one of which really gets sort of socialized into the culture. So you learn what the organization is all about. You're told stories. You get to understand the values in depth. And that doesn't seem to do a whole lot when it comes to people's performance or their retention. What does work is a different approach, which says, you know what? Instead of trying to bring the organization to you, let's bring you to the organization. And so employees in that condition are invited to basically share their personal highlight reel and talk about the times when they were at their best.

36:13And that opportunity to express themselves, their strengths, their values, their passions is enough to boost both their performance and their retention over the next six months. And I think this is especially important during this pandemic, right? Because it is, to your point, it's really hard to taste and touch and feel an organization when you haven't gotten to physically be present there. So one of the best things we can do is we can say, look, people want to express themselves, right? They want to make their values and their strengths apparent to their new colleagues. And if we give them the opportunity to do that, then they're going to feel a sense of connection to the organization.

36:44They're also going to then have a say in actually shaping what the culture is. And an interesting example of how to do that is an IDEO, where when you join, you're asked to give a talk to the organization. It could be about a passion of yours, or it could be a skill that you want to teach to everyone. But that way, all your new colleagues have a sense of who you are and what we do. And interestingly, I've been doing this in my classroom at Wharton for the past few years. It was a student-driven idea that students should volunteer to give passion talks so that we can all get to know each other outside of the content of the class.

37:14And the first year we did it, we had about a dozen students sign up, and it was remarkable. They taught us how to design buildings that were aligned with a natural environment as opposed to sticking out like a sore thumb. They also, we learned how to beatbox from one of the students. And it was such a powerful experience to get to know, I guess, every member of the class in a much more personal way who volunteered. And I said, you know what, moving forward, this is going to be a staple of the course. And I'm going to ask every student to give a passion talk and explain something that they really love to the class.

37:47I have never seen people bond so quickly or so meaningfully than just watching them give this one-minute talk about something they care deeply about. So I think it's a practice that any organization could try pretty easily in onboarding. I want to jump in and ask one question that's very much topical today. And that's about partisanship. I mean, we've sort of identified that as one of the issues that at HBR, we'd love to help make progress on. We're not exactly sure how, but we're trying to figure that out now. But it just, it's so pernicious, obviously, and stands in the way of making progress in a lot of areas.

38:24So I'd love, Adam, your thoughts. What can be done at the level of the corporation, the organization, teams, or something to address this issue at that level and maybe have an effect on a national level? Adam Chapnick, Ph.D.: Wow. Given that I have a book coming out next month about the power of knowing what you don't know, this is a good moment to say, I don't know. I think this is an incredibly complicated problem. There are lots of brilliant, knowledgeable people working on it. I'm not sure that anybody has a silver bullet. I will say of all the research I've read, there are probably two things that have piqued my interest the most in the past few months.

39:04So I'll throw these out there on the table as things that other people have taught me that I've been thinking a lot about and put the ideas in your capable hands to figure out if there's something actionable here. The first one is an idea from consumer psychology, from marketing researchers, called solution aversion. And the basic premise is that when we hear a solution we don't like, we often will reject or dismiss the problem entirely. So you see this a lot in climate change, for example, when if you get a relatively conservative audience and you tell them they need to cut their emissions and they need to slash into their profits, a lot of people have a knee-jerk visceral reaction against it.

39:40And then their response is to say, well, I don't like that, so I don't want to deal with climate change. And the easiest way to get around that seems to be to bring multiple possible solutions onto the table so that they can start to see that there might be possibilities that are more palatable to them. And then they're willing to engage with the problem as opposed to kind of ignoring it. And then the other thing that I think has been interesting is some research by Rob Willer and his colleagues, which is about how oftentimes when we speak across political boundaries, we tend to speak in terms of the values that motivate us, as opposed to the values that motivate people that are different from us.

40:14And again, I think to continue with the climate change example, this is really clear. On the liberal side, it tends to be mostly about compassion and justice and saving the planet. And generally speaking, the evidence suggests that if you were to move more to a conservative perspective, the kinds of values that are more likely to appeal are preserving the purity of nature or saying, you know what, we want to maintain our longstanding tradition of keeping people healthy. And I don't think we've done a very good job translating the ideas that we find compelling into the values that other people might find palatable.

40:48And that goes on both sides of the spectrum, right? I think we need to talk in the language of common values as opposed to divisive values. And to me, when I think about this in America, the cross-cutting value that every American cares about is freedom, right? So if we can start to talk about some of these polarized topics through the lens of saying, how do we maintain our freedom as individuals? How do we maintain our freedom as Americans? How do we maintain freedom of people globally? That could be a much more productive conversation than talking about some of the values that tend to drive people apart.

41:21So, Adam, I'd like to ask you one more question from our audience, and it comes from Pankaj, who's in Mumbai. He'd love to know, how do you choose the topics for your books? How do I choose book topics? I don't think that I was very deliberate about this when I started. I basically said, I'm going to write what I know. And then over time, as I've had more ideas and run into different kinds of problems, I've tried to get a little bit more thoughtful about what's worth writing a book on, knowing that books are a little bit like being in a movie where you get typecast, and then people just want to ask you about that one role you played 10 years ago.

41:59So they never really leave you. And if you're going to write a whole book about a topic, you have to love it. So that for me is the first question, is am I so passionate about this topic and so endlessly riveted by it that I think about it when I go to bed at night? I will talk to random people who aren't in my field about it. I read about it for fun. And that's kind of the first test, because if I can't check that box, it's really not worth spending my energy on. The second question that I like to think about then is how important is this topic? So if everybody was able to understand it, would the world be a better place?

42:31And I think that that's one of the reasons why as an organizational psychologist, I've chosen topics that tend to really bridge character and success. To say, look, there are lots of books that tell people how to accomplish things. But my hope is that we all become better human beings in the course of pursuing our goals. And so if I can understand how in give and take generosity can go hand in hand with success or how we can be original thinkers and nonconformists, That to me is a great way to allow people to express core values, not just achieve conventional measures of success. So I think the importance of the problem is key.

43:08And then the third piece of this puzzle for me has become, how much do we already know about it? How well do we already understand it? And do I have something unique to say on the topic? I think it's very easy to say, look, this is a problem that's interesting to me, and I think it's important for the world. But I don't think we need another book on leadership. I think there have been a lot of good ones written. So I want to take on something that's a little bit more novel and something where my perspective, usually from a combination of evidence and experience, is different from if somebody else were going to write this book.

43:38And that's usually where I land. If I can cover those three bases and say interesting, important, and a unique contribution to make, that might be an article. And if I have more to say when the article's done, then the book thinking begins. Brilliant. So one last thing, one from our viewers, and there's a few people that sort of reference this, Claire from France, Matthew from Chicago. The question basically is how do we keep our teams and stakeholders optimistic and focused on a positive future as essentially we're going through what is the toughest of times here? I don't know that that's always the goal.

44:15So I'm a big believer in the psychology of what Julie Norum calls defensive pessimism, which is the idea of saying sometimes imagining the worst is actually the best way to get to a good result. I think it's entirely reasonable right now to imagine all the horrible things that could happen. And then once you have that list, you one, plan for what you're going to do to prevent them. And two, you start to feel unexpected gratitude that some of those things don't happen, right? Instead of dealing with the FOMO, the fear of missing out that a lot of us have been grappling with over the past almost a year, you actually get to feel JOMO, the joy of missing out?

44:48How great is it that we actually have vaccines when we prepared a contingency plan for the possibility that there wouldn't be any ready in 2021? So I don't think there's anything wrong with creating the worst case scenario list. And I think the optimism then comes from the pleasant surprises and also from then being proactive about saying, look, some of these events we can actually influence, the ones we can't influence, at least we can be careful and strategic in our response. And to me, that's the conversation to have. That's great. All right. So we're out of time. I want to come back and thank you, Adam Grant, for being our guest today and for just throwing out a lot of interesting ideas for us all to think about.

45:28So thanks, Adam. Anytime. All right. And I want to thank our sponsor, Accenture, for being with us on this journey. Our guest next week will be Niran Chowdhury, who's the CEO of Panera Bread, who has been a real innovator during the pandemic. So we'll talk to him about what good leadership looks like in a crisis. So that will be next Tuesday. Until then, from me, from Octavia, from Josh, thank you for watching.

46:15We're back. And we're back. We're back. Hi, Adam. Hey, again. Long time no see. What did you guys think, Julie and Dave? You know what, Adam? I think you're a little out of focus. Can you just do this in front of your face? Just a little bit. No, it's fine. It was good. It was very interesting. Yeah. Lots of really great insights that were helpful for me. So thank you, Adam. I appreciate that. but that's not helpful for me at all. Tell me one thing I can do better. Well, focus. I couldn't get off the focus for like the last 10 minutes. I was like, focus. I wanted to come in and do that, but I didn't want to.

46:58I was like, Oh no, it's definitely like a new year's to do the eye doctor. And then I was like, Oh no, it's actually, it's my spring. Now if anybody, if any viewers are thinking, these silly people are still on the air. We know we're still in the air. This is the world's least exclusive after party. So here we are. I don't know. You know, I found it all to be really useful. I'm trying to rack my brain. Like, if I could give you one real piece of feedback, that's a tough one. Because the ideas are, you know, especially in this context right now, I mean, at least for me, it's like you're searching for, you know, ideas of how do we all kind of get through this hole.

47:44And I really like the thinking of kind of casting ahead. But, and also I think in your pieces, you've talked about looking back as well is also equally, which is good because I enjoy doing that too. I often feel like people struggle with the distinction between reflection and rumination, not realizing that looking back and having the same thoughts about your past experiences that you had before is not going to do any good for you. But actually saying, okay, wait, have I gained a new lens on this? Or have I interacted with somebody who maybe will help me reframe what insight should be taken away from that experience?

48:21That's a productive way to look back at the past. And I feel like I know a lot of ruminators and not nearly as many sort of thoughtful reflectors. Yeah, that's a really good point. It's so much easier to do the first thing. So I'd like to reflect for a moment as we look ahead. The Tokyo Olympics are less than 200 days away. But I read that you were a junior Olympic springboard diver. Can you tell us more about that? Well, I prefer to show you, but very difficult in this context. I've seen the videos. We're very happy to do it. Long retired. I think the most interesting thing probably that I've taken with me from springboard diving is a little bit about this idea of asking questions that we talked about earlier.

49:08So I had this incredible coach, Eric Best, who had just endless patience with me. And when I started diving, I was afraid of heights. And I go from this kid who's literally afraid of doing more than a somersault to now I'm standing up on a three-meter springboard and I'm supposed to do three and a half somersaults and not get dizzy and not crash. And I just stand there on the board shaking. and I'm not willing to give it a shot. I'm picturing all the things that could go wrong and it's just paralyzing. And finally, Eric says to me, so Adam, are you going to try this dive one day or not? And I said, yeah, of course I'm going to try this.

49:47I know it's a big, it's a major goal for me. It's part of where I need to, you know, what I need to master in order to get to the next stage in my career. Oh, thank you for that. And once I realized that I was planning to do it, it became clear, why not today? I might as well get this out of the way. And I think years of that kind of conversation as a diver and then being in the coaching role and having the same kinds of discussions with divers, it just reinforced for me that so often when we're trying to reason with other people, the best thing we can do is actually let them reason with themselves and ask them questions that elicit their own ideas and their own motivations as opposed to trying to give them the answer, which is something I don't do often enough.

50:30But I think we should all have a coach like that in our lives. So I have a question. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Julie. Oh, I was just curious. Did you know that you were afraid of heights before you signed up to be a diver? Or did you get to the top of the ladder and go, uh-oh, this is going to be an extra wrinkle? Oh, no. I definitely knew. But when I signed up, I was on a little one-meter. Yeah. I was a little bored, and I didn't really think through the fact that if I got decent at that, I would have to go up higher. So this is a morning show type question. So I gleaned from your post that you're sort of a comic book nerd.

51:09So the morning show question is, Adam, what's your superpower? Oh, I think my superpower is knowing my kryptonite and then working to no longer be debilitated by it. So I feel like with the fear of heights and diving, then it was the fear of public speaking when I became a professor. I think probably the most valuable thing I've done in my career is face those fears head on and say, look, I'm not going to get anywhere by running away from them or ignoring them. I'm going to make progress by asking myself what I have to do every day in order to overcome them. And I'm not going to say that every single talk I give today is exhilarating, but I rarely feel nervous about them.

51:52And I mostly enjoy them. And I feel like that's a mark of progress. So, I don't know. There's a lot of debate about whether we should work on our strengths or we should try to overcome our weaknesses. For me, it's not an either or question. You have to do both. But when I look at the people I really admire, the leaders, the thought leaders, the creative people, the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the ones who have really made a mark on the world are the ones who are unwilling to let one of their weaknesses hold them back. And I think that most, sadly, most leaders and most people are very uncomfortable facing those head on.

52:25So I'd nominate that as a potential superpower, even though it's not really that super most of the time. What were you reading, by the way? What are your favorite comics? Oh, growing up, I basically read everything Marvel and DC. So I was I was especially into Superman, X-Men. I read a lot of Ghost Rider. Not sure why at this point, but for some reason it was appealing when I was 10. And now, of course, I'm desperately hoping that Disney will revive the Daredevil and Jessica Jones series that I sorely miss. I'm looking forward to organizational psychologist man. You would. He knows his kryptonite.

53:10It's the guy who comes into your workplace and tells you a bunch of stuff you already know. Exactly. The Avengers team dynamic needs an organizational psychologist, maybe. Yeah, I think we generally prefer not to assemble, though. We like working alone. Batman. All right, Engineer Dave, you get the last word. What is yours, Adi, as far as ace? Like your superhero strength. Yeah, your superpower. I didn't think of that. I eat really fast. That's fine. I eat excessively. Yeah. Let's go. And really fast. And Josh? Superpower? Yeah. I don't know. That's a great question. All right. Forget it. Octavia, what's your thoughts about?

54:04I'm a really good multitasker. Oh, let's leave it on that. All right. Can we take up enough of Adam's time? Should we let you go? All right. Well, thank you all. Happy New Year. Good to see you all. Happy New Year. Take care, Adam. Thank you.