The Leadership Mistake Almost Everyone Makes (Adam Grant)

0:09Hello and welcome to Doing It Anyway, the show where we rethink challenges, build our confidence, and learn how to do it anyway. Today I'm talking with Professor Adam Grant. He's one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of success, leadership, and human potential. We had a broad conversation and touched on many areas of both being a boss and being an employee. We talked about the hippo effect. I'd never heard of that, which is a syndrome where the highest paid person in any meeting can quietly kill good ideas and get their opinion across before everybody else does. We talked about how to give feedback that is actually useful.

0:48We talked about why people-pleasing might stop you from getting promoted and how self-doubt could actually be a useful tool for success. And here's a counterintuitive one. We discussed why procrastination, something I am very guilty of, might actually boost creativity. Here's Adam Grant. This episode is presented by Vanguard. When it comes to investing, many of us feel totally out of our depth and we just don't know where to start. And we can't be blamed for that. A lot of us simply don't have the time or the confidence to take the first steps. And that's where Vanguard can help. With their managed ISA, Vanguard's experts do the hard work for you.

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3:28You've obviously spent decades studying what makes a good leader. And for people who've gone through the toil of slaving away at the pit face of things and now have the rewards of leadership, describe the best characteristics of a boss. Who are the people who manage to get the best out of the people that they are managing? What does it take? Oh, well, how many hours do you have, Katty? Oh, a few. Okay, good. Well, I'm going to say I'm looking for basically two things. I'm looking for character and competence. And I think the competence part is talked about all the time. We need someone who can exercise good judgment and make smart decisions.

4:11We need somebody who can do vision and strategy, somebody who can resolve conflict and align people. I don't think we talk enough about the character aspects. I don't think we talk enough about the importance of leaders embodying generosity, humility, and integrity. And when I think about those character strengths, those are the qualities that allow leaders to say, my mission is more important than my ego, which is sadly more rare than I would like to admit in leadership. How do you balance the idea in that character component of looking for people who are cheerleaders of their group, who kind of encourage people, who praise people, who tell people they're doing well and give them a kind of sense of promise, and somebody who is also prepared to say the tough stuff, who is prepared to be your critic?

5:00Like, does one person need to embody both of those? Do you need leaders in an organization, some of whom are critics and some of whom are more on the praising cheerleader side of things? How do you see that? This is a conversation I have with my own teams when I have to lead, which I try not to do whenever I can avoid it. You're a very good leader. I've seen you do it. No self-deprecating. No, it's much easier to study it than it is to live it. So I think that what I've learned to say to my teams is, look, there are moments when when our natural impulse is to be a cheerleader or a critic. And when you're cheerleading, you're basically applauding the best version of someone.

5:38When you're criticizing, you're attacking the worst version of someone. But what I've always benefited the most from and what I want to be for you is a coach. I think a coach is somebody who sees a better version of you and helps you realize your potential. And in order to do that, sometimes I'm going to have to tell you things that don't feel good today, but allow you to grow tomorrow. And I think too often leaders get stuck in one or the other. They think they need to either fix you today or they need to prop you up today. And I think both of those instincts are short-sighted. I think that what effective leadership is about is saying, look, I have very high expectations of you.

6:12I'm confident you can reach them. And here's what I know about how to help you get from where you are today to where both of us would like you to be tomorrow. Is that another way of saying, find ways to give your criticism that are constructive? It is, but - Or is it a little different? Is the coaching element of this a little different? Well, I think it depends on how you look at it. I think what most leaders do is they give feedback. They tell you what you did right and wrong yesterday. There's a growing body of evidence suggesting that advice is often more helpful to people. If I start to give you tips on what you can change today, that's more likely to put you in an action-focused frame of mind and less likely to have you wallowing in the past saying, either, you know, I'm already doing really great because I'm stuck on all the positive feedback I got, or beating yourself up and saying, you know what, I'm terrible.

7:06I'm never going to be any good. Why try? Can we take this into the realm of kind of specifics of some of the things that happen in workplaces that I think often trip people up that I've heard in the decades of kind of studying the field, particularly looking at women, but I think it also applies to many young men as well, that there are areas around work that they find particularly hard to navigate. And one of those is so basic, it's meetings, that how meetings are run really makes an enormous difference in terms of whether everybody around the table feels they are getting heard. But perhaps more importantly, from the organization's point of view and the boss's point of view, and we're looking at kind of this from the boss's point of view at the moment.

7:52How do you maximize the chances that the talent that is around your table at your meeting or on your Zoom calls or wherever it is, is actually being utilized to the best of your organization's needs? I mean, how do you get the best out of everybody around the table? Because there's so much research that shows that people who talk the most somehow just seem to have the most status in a meeting type or group type situation. How do you mitigate for that if you are an effective boss? Yeah, I think what you're describing is called the babble effect. I knew it would have a name. I knew it had to have a term.

8:29Of course it has a name, the babble effect. There's evidence that the person who talks the most is most likely to get chosen as the leader because people mistake their confidence for competence, even though those qualities are not correlated positively and sometimes are even negatively correlated. So I think we need to create space for everybody to participate and contribute. And the first thing to do to make sure that happens is we actually need to talk about why we're meeting. Katya, I mean, life is just full of useless meetings. I think if we reduce the number of them, people are a lot more likely to fully engage in the ones that they do show up for because they're worthwhile.

9:06And so as far as I know, there are only four reasons to meet. We can meet because we need to decide. We want to bond. We're here to create or we're showing up to learn. If you are not meeting for one of those reasons, if you're not there to decide, bond, create or learn, you don't need to be meeting in the first place. And I think everything else falls in the category of this meeting should have been and could have been an email. So let's get clear on that. If we're here to decide the kind of contribution you're looking for in terms of people challenging assumptions and bringing options that we hadn't thought about before is very different than if we show up to bond, where we're going to be sharing personal stories and maybe talking a little bit about our collective values.

9:46So let's get the purpose clear. That would be my table stakes. Before we get into actually role-playing running the meeting, how many bosses do you speak to, Adam, who are going into meetings every day, multiple times possibly a day, without a clear sense of the reason that they're doing them. It's just because somebody's put a meeting on their calendar and they're going into that meeting and they feel they should show up for it. I've lost count. Too many. And it's extremely frustrating. And this is a solvable problem. Rebecca Hines has done some great demonstrations. She did this at Dropbox and then at Asana where she had people cancel all their recurring meetings.

10:29And then she said, okay, now let's do an audit. which ones are important, which ones are value added, which ones are unnecessary. And on average, when teams did this, they were able to save about 11 hours a month. So I would say clear the calendar, start over, is a good place to kick this off. And then when you're running the meeting, how do you run the meeting? Well, I think there are a couple options here, but let's assume we're here to make a decision, which is what a lot of group meetings are fundamentally about. I think there's a case to be made that Amazon has done something right here that the rest of us should pay a lot of attention to, which is the person who's driving the decision or framing the meeting has actually written a six page structured memo that is sent out in advance, but no one is expected to read it because we're all too busy.

11:18So we show up for the meeting and we will spend the first 15 or 20 minutes just reading the memo to make sure that we're all up to speed and we're on the same page about what the goals of the decision are, what the options on the table are. And then we're going to go around and make sure we hear from every single person. Ideally, we don't let the leader share their opinion until the end. So, yeah, I think sometimes people say the leader should speak last. I wouldn't go that far. I think the leader's job is to facilitate and to make sure that everybody's voice is heard. But as a leader, you are vulnerable to what's been called the HIPPO effect, which, Caddy, has become my favorite acronym.

11:54HIPPO stands for the highest paid person's opinion. As soon as that is known, people are going to start conforming to you. Goodbye, diversity of thought. Hello, groupthink. And so you actually want to withhold your opinion so that people don't know what your preference is, what direction you're most excited about, so that you can go around and say, okay, I'd love to hear everybody's views. And then let's make sure we're all challenging each other and questioning each other as opposed to looking for consensus and kumbaya. And at that point, we're a little bit more informed and then the leader can begin to weigh in.

12:26Okay, I love that. And I hope that anyone who is listening who is in a position of leadership and who's in a position of deciding whether meetings take place and how to run them takes that on board. Because I'm going to be honest, most of the meetings that I have been to in my 30 odd years in the workplace have not been run the way that you've just described. And I think I've wasted a ton of time and I've written about this often that just scrap half of the meetings you go to because I think they're a waste of time and the blowhards are the ones that come out getting heard. I want to touch on another area that you mentioned at the beginning, and that's the notion of feedback within the kind of realm of coaching.

13:04Because I do think this is another area where there's potential for misinterpretation and misalignment of objectives and how these things turn out. How do you make sure as a boss again, that you give feedback that an employee really takes on board and at the same time doesn't get overly discouraged by? I think a lot of people fixate on the message and we need to think about the messenger first. It is surprisingly easy to hear a hard truth from somebody who believes in your potential and cares about your success and well-being. And too often, managers are busy. They have a lot of other things on their plate.

13:45They show up to deliver the message, and they think it's abundantly clear that, of course, I'm trying to help you get better. But what the employee hears is, I'm judging you. I'm attacking you. I'm belittling you. And so I think time needs to be invested in making it abundantly clear and obvious. The only reason I would ever give you feedback is because I have high expectations of you. I see great things in your future, and that's why I'm investing time to try to figure out what you can do better. Ideally, what I do in those initial conversations is I'm getting to know you if I'm working with you.

14:22I would say, okay, Caddy, talk to me a little bit about how you like to receive feedback. Have you ever had either a mentor or a boss or a coach who told you things you could do better, and you came out feeling fired up as opposed to deflated? What did that person do? I want to emulate as much of that as possible. Talk to me also about the worst feedback you've ever gotten in your career. Who just made you feel small, ashamed, depressed, discouraged? What did they do? I want to make sure I can avoid all those things. Oh my God, I'm feeling like I've got PTSD because I'm remembering the time I was fired and somebody came to me and said, it wasn't that I wasn't any good on my job.

15:03It was just that I had no personality on television and they needed to hire somebody else. And really it was a question of apples and oranges. And I, you know, Adam, I never figured out whether I was the apple or the orange, but I was clearly the wrong kind of fruit. And there was no disagreeing with that. But it was just, it was so somebody who did exactly the opposite. I mean, actually literally didn't even take the time to think what is the kind of feedback that would manage, you know, to get the best out of this. But then I burst into tears and realized my job was over. I'm so sorry that that happened, Katty.

15:36Can we, I feel like we need to spend the next half an hour just on that. Can we just do some therapy and maybe that person whose name I still remember is out there listening. No, but what did you do afterward? Because if I were in your shoes, I would be really tempted to give them some meta feedback on their feedback and say, you know, this is actually not only ineffective, it's actually counterproductive. And if this is how you're interacting with other people, you are not going to go on to great things in your future. Well, so of course, I mean, now, Adam, I wish that I had said that. At the time, I was 33 years old and relatively new still in the world of broadcasting and didn't have anything like the kind of perception or insight or confidence that you've just suggested to be able to say anything apart from kind of going to a cupboard and grab an ice cream and literally say it.

16:32burst into tears and then feel embarrassed and humiliated. Like you just said, it's so interesting that you used the word humiliation because that's exactly what I felt in that moment. In a way, this gets us to younger people listening to this because I think it is easier for you and I, with all of the work that we have done and all of the studying that we have done, to take the position that you did, which is, listen, can I give you some feedback on your feedback because you're not going to go very far in the world of feedback if that's the way you approach people. I think that is an almost impossible thing for somebody who is starting out and doesn't have the seniority and the years of experience that you and I have to say to a boss, right?

17:16I mean, I think, first of all, knowing what to say, and then having the confidence to say it are both things that I'm not sure that somebody who's young and more junior would be able to do. Agreed. And I wouldn't advise it either because it's a great way if you haven't already been fired to get fired. Because it's seen as, you know, you're serving your boss's authority. Especially if the boss is a jerk like my boss was. Yeah. I mean, you know, I was thinking about this as, okay, you have nothing else to lose. What's your parting shot? But, you know, if this is a relationship that matters to you, that you hope to maintain, and you respect the person especially, I think that it's not easy to get them to open the door if it seems to be closed.

18:01I think there is a conversation that I've coached some of my students to have that works, that's a version of this in a lot of cases, which is if you're a junior, you go to your boss and you say, hey, I want to deliver the best results I can for you. I want to be the most effective contributor possible. I've been thinking a little bit about the context in which I do my best work. And I realized there's no way you would know that because you, you know, you haven't gotten to see, you know, my highlights and lowlights. You know, if you're ever interested, let me know. I'm happy to share a little bit of that with you.

18:34And there's something really powerful about dangling information, but then not sharing it that leads the other person to get curious. And, you know, your manager is likely to say, oh, well, you know, I've got time right now. Or let's put that on the calendar because I'd really like to hear more about that. wondering what you know that they might be missing. And so I think just planting the seed and offering to have the conversation and then putting the ball in their court is one of the easiest ways to initiate it. Adam, I think your students are very lucky to have somebody like you who is so open to feedback.

19:07I wish all bosses were. We are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, I want to ask you something really interesting that I heard you say on the truth about people pleasing.

19:23Welcome back to Doing It Anyway. Now, Adam, let's stay on the employee side of things. You and I have talked a lot about some of the differences between men and women. And I think one of the differences that women are perhaps a little bit more prone to, and there is some data on this, than men is the idea of people pleasing. And I was really interested to watch the interview that you recently did with the actress Kristen Bell, where you talked about people pleasing and she described herself as a kind of as a people pleaser, as an addicted people pleaser. And you had a really interesting response to why people pleasing is not going to help you in the world of work, but is also just not a good trait to have from everybody else's point of view as well.

20:15And I thought it was kind of counterintuitive. Tell me what you said to Kristen. Well, I used to think that people pleasing was driven by concern for others. And the research I've read suggests that it's not. It's driven by concern for others' approval. Which means when I try to please you, I'm not doing what's best for you. I'm doing what's going to get you to like me. And I think that's problematic in the workplace because at the end of the day, it's more important to be respected than to be liked. If you have a reputation as a people pleaser. People see you as nice. They see you as warm, polite, friendly, welcoming.

20:51In other words, the kind of person that they can dump a lot of thankless work on, which we know empirically is much more likely to be something that they do to women than men. So women who become people pleasers end up getting stuck with the office housework. They have to take notes in meetings. They have to plan parties. They have to organize meetings again and again and again and again. And it's not strategic work. All stuff, by the way, which is valuable in an organization and makes an organization run smoothly, but it's not going to get you promoted. Exactly. It needs to be done, but nobody gets credit for it.

21:25And so, you know, women are disproportionately asked to do that kind of work. They are also then given less credit if they do it because people assume based on gender stereotypes, well, you know, she's caring. She wants to help. And then they're more likely to get punished if they say no because she's violating that expectation. And I don't want to mansplain any more of this to you. You've seen it all, right? But I think Linda Babcock's research on this has been really clear in documenting that as a problem. And so I think the challenge here is that, especially for women, you need to make sure that you don't completely violate the expectation that you do care about other people.

22:03But you also have to show that you're highly capable and earn people's respect so that they think your time is valuable and they don't want to waste it on tasks that might not leverage your unique skills. So I think the way that you do that is you offer what Hannah Reilly Bowles and Linda Babcock would call a relational account, which is somebody brings you a task. Your impulse might be to please them or to say yes, because you want to get along. And instead you say, you know what, I've actually been bombarded with requests this week. I would love your advice on how to prioritize, because I want to make sure that I'm spending my time on the most important tasks and moving the others, lower down the priority list, or ideally delegating them to somebody who just has fewer things on their plate.

22:50And then what you've just done is you've gotten the person either lateral or above you who's imposing on you to see into your world a little bit and understand, hey, I've got a lot of demands on my time. And you're still showing some care and concern by asking for advice. when I say to you, hey, Katty, I'm not sure how to prioritize here. Offer me some guidance. I'm signaling that I value your judgment. And that is a relational account, right? I'm saying, hey, I care about you. I want to learn from you. I also am trying to help all these people. And so this is not a violation at all of my concern for others.

23:31But I can't help all the people all the time with all the requests. And setting those kinds of boundaries, I think, is one way to, I guess, to thread the needle. So you went even further in the interview with Kristen that I was interested in, and you described people pleasing as selfish. And I'm going to kind of lean on the psychologist in you. And maybe even this is something that is useful to people outside the world of work, even in their relationships. I'm super conflict averse. It's very hard for me to engage in conflict. and I am and always have been quite a people pleaser. But there was something that you said to me in the way of saying that people pleasing, you said to Kristen about people pleasing being selfish, which I thought was a very new and interesting way and helpful way, Adam, of framing it in my own head, that actually I'm not doing the people around me a favor.

24:26I'm not helping them. I'm being kind of selfish when I'm trying to please everybody. Can you unpack that a little bit more? Yeah, well, first of all, I think I have to put a little disclaimer on the table, which is that conversation with Kristen was for my Rethinking podcast. And I've done a little rethinking since we had the conversation. It would be ironic if I didn't. And I think some people reacted strongly to the word selfish. I don't mean selfish in that you're putting your needs above everyone else's. And in fact, when you try to please people, you're clearly addressing their needs or at least what you perceive as their needs too.

25:03I think what I should have said was it was self-centered. I think of people pleasing as a self-centered act. And part of that is because it's about me being liked and trying to curry favor with you. And so I'm putting the spotlight on myself and how you feel about me. But also, I think to the heart of question. I think that people-pleasing is self-focused because it actually does the other person a disservice. You know, when I, okay, let's take Kristen's example. She had a really hard time telling her flight attendant that she didn't make the coffee the way that she wanted it. And so she didn't tell her.

25:41She said it was great. Well, now the flight attendant can't make her a drink that she's going to like. And also she's probably going to keep serving the, you know, the, the, you know, what was it? It was coffee that was like 90 % milk. Didn't have cream or something or it had too much cream. Too much cream. It was just cream. And she's going to keep serving that to other passengers. And Kristen is sitting there thinking, I don't want to be uncomfortable telling the flight attendant the truth. And so I'm not going to disclose how I really feel. And that means other passengers are going to get stuck with a cup full of cream.

26:14And that's not fair to the flight attendant, it's also not right for the other passengers. And I think a little bit of honesty, this goes back to the point that it's more important to be kind than it is to be polite. I can be polite and say what's going to make you feel good right now. I can be kind and say what is going to help you in the future. And I would choose kindness over politeness, wouldn't you? Yeah. And I think, yes, yes, I would choose kindness over politeness in my work relationships and in my personal relationships every time. I agree with you. And I think there is also something about framing it in a way of giving somebody the opportunity to do the best they can.