Here's Where It Gets Interesting - How to Stop Being Wrong with Adam Grant

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

In this episode, Sharon is joined by organizational psychologist and top-rated Wharton professor Adam Grant. Adam is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of five books, most recently Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Sharon and Adam talk about human behavior, the differences between principles and policies, how to humanize those with whom you disagree, why you shouldn’t agree to disagree...and they do, of course, solve all the world’s problems. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yay, you're here. Makes me smile to think about it. I am excited to share with you a conversation with my friend Adam Grant today. You probably already know who he is. He probably doesn't need an introduction. He's written several New York Times bestsellers, including Think Again. He always makes me think and he always makes me laugh. And that is the best combination of a human, in my opinion. So without further ado, let's save as much time for the episode as possible. Enjoy my conversation with Adam Grant. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Thank you so much for coming. So excited to chat today. I have a lot of big questions and I'm hoping you can get them all answered in the next, I'm not wearing a watch, but in the next

20 minutes, fix the world, please. Good luck with that, Sharon. I think, honestly, I'm going to have more questions for you than I have answers. You know, we were talking before and I'm like, just tell me why are humans the way that they are? We could answer that question. We could fix a lot of the world's ills. What do you view as the primary drivers of human behavior? Like what makes us make the decisions that we do?

Because that affects all things. It affects politics. It affects our public policies. What do you view as primary drivers of human behavior? Wow. It's such a big and interesting question. And it also makes me wonder what question you're really asking here. Because what I hear behind the scenes when you say, why are humans the way they are, is why aren't they the way that I want them to be? Why aren't they better? What do you mean by better? Why aren't we better? Why are we so selfish and self-motivated, right?

Like, why can't we look at other humans and be like, you know what? I shouldn't do that. I shouldn't act that way. Do you think we are? Of course. Probably preservation, right? Self-preservation? I don't know.

I think that's half the picture. Okay. What's the other half of the picture? Well, the other half of the picture goes back to Darwin, who wrote that a tribe of altruists would outlive a tribe of selfish people because the selfish people would all be taking each other down and then just get destroyed by the tribe that was putting the common good first. The nice people are going to outlive the mean people. I mean, Darwin was right about a lot of things.

And there's a whole stream of research now on what people? I mean, Darwin was right about a lot of things. And there's a whole stream of research now on what's called group selection, which is on how groups actually will favor and promote people who put the group first. And I'm not going to say that any of us should be altruistic or self-sacrificing, but there is a case to be made for being unselfish, right? Or even in my language, being more of a giver than a taker. To say that if you're somebody who enjoys helping other people, who does it regularly with no strings attached, there are surprising benefits that come from that. And I think if we talk about people as fundamentally selfish, we miss out on that conversation.

There's a wide spectrum here, right? So when you talk about people being selfish, I would say, yeah, there are, in my data, about 19% of people around the world and across industries would self-identify as takers, saying that my goal, at least at work, is to get more than I give and come out ahead. And it's all about me. And then more people, right? I think it's about a quarter in my data are identifying as givers and saying, my primary goal is to contribute more than I receive.

And we can raise all kinds of questions about whether we trust those self-reports or not. And I don't. But what I do trust is the behavior patterns showing that most people don't want to be that selfish to be a taker. They also are afraid, though, of being too generous and getting taken advantage of. There's this third style called matching, which is I'll do something for you. If you do something for me, that default to fairness or reciprocity, I think is the dominant instinct for most people in most cultures when it comes to interaction.

I think the problem is that that fairness instinct gets applied to our in-group only. The people that we see as part of our our in-group only, the people that we see as part of our tribe. And maybe that's the beginning of where my worldview aligns with yours. Maybe I'll rethink my worldview. I mean, rethinking could be overrated. I've become convinced recently that it's not, but I'm very open to changing my mind on that. And then of course I would just be proving my own point. But, you know, I always think about the great social scientist, Emily Dickinson. She said the soul selects her own society and then shuts the door.

And that to me seems like the fundamental problem of humanity right now. You're in my group and you're worthy of my compassion or you're an other. You're out there and I don't know what you're doing. It's not my concern. Which makes you either bad or wrong or possibly both. That's so interesting. I can really see what you're saying there. That like the people that I deem worthy of my compassion, my giving that are inside my little, like, I feel safe with you. Sure. I'll go ahead and give you a second chance. The rest of y'all, you're on your own out there. Yeah. Cause how many people do you know that are truly selfish in all of their relationships? I can think of three or four and they're called sociopaths, Right. Right. The rest of us are just much more selective

in who we extend kindness to. I think that's a problem. Have you identified how to move the ball down the field for people to widen their range of who we should be kind and empathetic towards? Have you identified any of those tools? Yeah. I've been studying this for about a decade. And one of the early projects I worked on with a couple of colleagues was about the idea that it's really hard to persuade other people to change their values or even expand their circles of concern, but it's much easier to persuade yourself. And so all we did in a few of these experiments was we said, okay, we want you to reflect on all the times when you've been generous toward other people

who weren't like you. And then write a little short persuasive essay to try to convince someone else that that's a good thing. And we found that over the next six weeks, they actually became kinder to the people who weren't immediately part of their in-groups. I think part of that is because they took ownership over the argument once they made it themselves. Part of it is because they felt like they would be hypocrites if they didn't then follow through on their own advice. But I think the biggest part is they generated reasons that they themselves found compelling as opposed to me coming up with a bunch of reasons that they might not at all resonate with. That's not true. So I love self-persuasion as one place to start. Yes. You know, I hear from people that it's hard to not be hopeless. I hear that almost every day.

Do people tell you that? Like, how do I have hope that we're not just going to all just die in some kind of civil war in the next year and a half? How do I have hope that, you know, like my giving somebody 10 bucks is going to change anything at all? I'll tell you what gives me hope is you. I open up your Instagram and I see you rallying your, I don't even want to call them an army because it sounds too violent, your community of governors. Yeah. They're incredible. And you've mobilized them to work on helping people and solving real problems in so many ways that I never would have thought of. And it's really, it's a Mr. Rogers thing, right? What was the advice he got from his mother when he was a child? You know, when scary things are happening, look for the helpers.

Look for the helpers. There are always people who are helping. I'm like, okay, well, I don't want us to just look for the helpers. I want us to be the helpers. Be the helpers. When you talk about giving being transformational, if you step up and give, it distracts you from your own problems. It gives you a sense that you can make a difference. It creates a feeling of mastery. And if you can find meaningful ways to add value, you are creating your own hope.

Creating your own hope. That's what you do for people in the world. You, Sharon, that's what you do for people in the world. I love it. It's very kind of you to say. No, it's just honest, actually. I love that anytime we chat, you're always like, actually, stop saying that.

No, it's just honest. Don't say that. You're terrible at accepting compliments. Stop being a Midwestern mom. And just be like, yes, I'm awesome. Or thank you. How about just thank you. That's very kind of you. Thank you. You don't even have to say it's kind. Just say thank you. See, I feel like I have to, I have to give you a compliment back. But then you're just being a matcher, right? You're just reciprocating out of politeness to try to settle your debt, right? And I would prefer you to go and just pay a compliment forward to someone you genuinely think is kind. Well, I do genuinely. We could have this conversation. Oh, see how you just said, thank you. By the way, I'm trying to learn from my own advice here

because I am terrible at this. And every time I hear you deflect a compliment and then try to sort of return it, I'm like, oh my, is that what I do to people? I don't know. That's a great question. Okay, what do you think are the biggest things that people struggle with when they are really

wrestling with this idea of how do I decide to change my mind about something? How do I leave behind my old identity as a person who believes X about the world? Like what are the biggest obstacles for human beings to make change themselves? Well, I actually think you just highlighted the biggest obstacle, which is making your beliefs your identity in the first place. Last time I checked, who you are is not your opinions. It's not what you think is true. It's the values you hold. Let's take a concrete example. I believed for a long time that hard work was the key to success. And anytime somebody challenged my work ethic as the sole driver of my success, I got defensive and I felt threatened by that. of my success, I got defensive and I felt threatened by that. And at some point I realized, you know what? It's a silly thing to make part of my identity. I had this stupid line in my email signature in college that said, I am a great believer in luck. And I believe that the harder

I work, the more I have of it. And now I look at that and I'm like, who is the idiot who sent that out to people? Of course, a white man can believe that. When I live in a world that doesn't create barriers constantly to my success, that takes for granted that I'm competent, I think it would have been really easy to hold on to that belief if I had kept it as part of my identity. And instead, at some point, it dawned on me, no, what's really here is a value. I value excellence. And I have a theory about things that drive excellence. And my theory is massively incomplete and is missing a lot of other things that matter.

And so what I had to do is redefine my identity and say, okay, I see myself as somebody who values pursuing excellence. And I am going to be very open-minded in learning about the best ways to do that and not overgeneralizing from my own experience about the most effective and productive ways to do that. I guess that's the more general barrier and also a way around it is to say, you know what, who you are is not what you believe, it's what you value. That means you stand for principles, not policies. I love that too. Can you give us some examples of the differences between principles and policies? Well, you know, my favorite example on this is Lincoln, because who does not love a good Abraham Lincoln story? Of course. I'm going to ask you to elaborate on this, but my read of

Lincoln from a bunch of biographies is that he came into the White House against the policy of abolishing slavery because he was afraid it would permanently tear the union apart. And he changed his mind on that policy, right? We had an emancipation proclamation. He freed the slaves. This was an amazing step forward for our country. And his principles, I think, were pretty consistent there. He saw slavery as an important practice from the get-go. What he did was he said, okay, I've got to rethink what policy is going to work and how to advance it and when. And aren't we lucky that he did that? What do you make of that example? And what do you see in it?

I think sometimes people struggle with the difference between a principle and a policy. If somebody has a principle of, I want to be a pro-life person, and then you want to have policies that reflect that. To many people, those are one and the same. You can't have this principle of being, just to use this example, principle of being pro-life and then policies that don't align with that principle. Do you know what I'm saying? Yes. Oh, that's interesting. I think people have difficulty reconciling your example of Abraham Lincoln. I'm not saying you're wrong, but they have difficulty reconciling his stated principle

of finding slavery abhorrent and perhaps his initial policies of, we can't do what I want to do right now because it's going to tear the union apart. To them, there's an inconsistency between the policy and the principle. And so is this really your principle if your policies don't align? Awesome. Okay. This is welcome to adulthood. Guess what? People have multiple principles and sometimes they conflict. And we don't just have single values in a vacuum, right? We have a hierarchy of values and sometimes we have to make hard choices between right and right or wrong and wrong. So in Lincoln's case, I would argue that at least for a period of time, he had other values that he put above abolishing slavery or granting everybody, you know, this

equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right? Which was, you know, maintaining the union or which was peace or which might've been, I don't know, you could, you could fill in a bunch of values that might've superseded for the time being, uh, freeing the slaves. What's interesting about that though, is even if you take that principle and you say, okay, Lincoln does want to adopt this policy of abolishing slavery. Well, depending on the principle behind it, it might actually involve a whole bunch of different policies, right? If the principle is freedom, you obviously have to abolish. If the principle is equality, there's a world in which someone in Lincoln's shoes could have said, well, let's just enslave everyone. That way everyone is treated equally, right?

Yeah. It's all the same. Freedom? Eh, not important to me. So I think being clear on the principles is important before you get attached to the policy. And what most people do is backward. They start with saying, this is a policy that I think is right. And then they try to induce their own values from it. Okay. So let's talk about being pro-life as a really complicated example of this. I have two thoughts on this. The first one is, I don't think being pro-life is a principle. I think it's a very specific expression of a broader value. What is the broader value there? expression of a broader value. What is the broader value there? Well, it varies from person to person, right? A lot of it has to do with religious beliefs.

A lot of it has to do with wanting to see people make choices that align with their values. I mean, you could identify five or six different broader values that are behind that. Yes. And so when you do that, you could then start to say, well, what are the best policies that could advance those values, right? So if I ask somebody who's strongly pro-life, why are you pro-life? The kinds of answers that I typically hear are because I believe that all lives have value, because I believe that God's will should not be interfered with because I believe that it's, you know, it's wrong to deny a child the opportunity to exist. And then I would say, okay, so we've identified a value there. Then let's talk about your other values that you hold. And let's talk about how to best integrate those into policy. For example, I think most people

would agree that abortions at 38 weeks are probably not a good idea. And so there are other values that are part of this equation. Let's start the conversation by saying, what are your three or four or five top values? And then what do they mean for your policy preferences? And then we can have a more open-minded, more complex conversation, potentially. I think it's a challenging issue to build policies around because people have such strong feelings about it. It's not like, should we set the corporate tax rate at 26% or 27%? Let's argue. You know what I mean? Like people can be persuaded in either direction, you know, at the end of the day. Okay, great. Amazon's going to be 27% instead of 26. Great.

It's not truly people feel in their bodies. Like it is a matter of life and death when they are just having these discussions. And so it is a difficult thing to build policies around. It's a difficult thing to make any amount of headway on in terms of, well, what if we took this incremental step, those small incremental steps that we use in public policy to move us towards a stated goal? It's very difficult to make incremental steps on an issue that people have such strong feelings about. How do we make sense of that from like a psychological standpoint? Well, this is where we can scrap everything I just said and go right from Lincoln to this,

because this is where I think it gets productive. If you look at people's views on abortion, what most people have is what John Haidt would call a moral intuition, a deep-seated visceral gut reaction that either abortion at any stage is murder or that depriving women of the right to choose and the freedom to decide what happens to their bodies is morally wrong. And usually the feeling starts and then the rationalizations and explanations and justifications follow it.

Comes from a feeling, yes. So knowing that, we can then start to ask people to unpack, well, where does that intuition come from? It doesn't come from nowhere. It was probably rooted in some early experiences you had, maybe some conversations you had, maybe some values or beliefs that you were exposed to before you had a chance to question them, right? And think logically and rationally about them. And maybe we could get people to rethink that. So I literally just finished a new experiment with one of our doctoral students, Tim Kondro, where we took one of the principles that I wrote about in Think Again

and applied it to the abortion debate. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday.

Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. The basic idea is one of the reasons people have such a hard time talking with the other side on a morally charged issue like abortion is they dehumanize the other side. They see the other side on a morally charged issue like abortion is they dehumanize the other side. They see the other side as evil and wrong, and they can't even begin to consider that they might

have a valid point of view. They're baby killers, or they are just, you're just trying to control my body. You're absolutely right. Yeah. When the other side is either a murder or perpetuating the patriarchy, you're not going to have that much constructive dialogue. Correct. And part of what happens there is people get essentialized. You look at the other side and you think that person's hateful beliefs, that is the essence of who they are.

It defines them and it's completely immutable. They're stuck with it. It's always going to be that way. And we thought, well, what if you could get them to rethink that? So what we randomly assigned people to do when they identified as pro-life or pro-choice is we asked them to think about having been raised in a family with opposite beliefs. So if you were pro-choice, what if you grew up in a family that was strongly pro-life or vice versa? And we also said, hey, by the way, if you go back to the 1960s, before the era of Nixon, abortion was actually not divided on party lines. There were Democrats who were pro-life. There were Republicans who were pro-choice. And if you had grown up in a different era, you might have different beliefs on this. And if you had grown up in a different era, you might have different beliefs on this.

And all we did was we asked them to reflect on that. We said, write out your thoughts. How might you hold different beliefs if you'd grown up in a different family or in a different time in history? And 24 hours later, we asked them, would you date somebody with opposite beliefs? And we got a significant spike in the number of people who said yes, from about 59 to 71%. And then we also gave them an essay by people who held opposing views, and we asked them to critique it. And in the control group, when people hadn't reflected on, well, how might I have different thoughts if I was raised differently? People wrote things like, you are a devil

worshiper, and you are an oppressor to the other side. They were significantly more likely after reflecting on how they might have held different beliefs at a different time in their lives or in a different history or timeline to say things like, I don't agree with your views, but I respect your right to hold them. Or I think you might be wrong here, but I understand where you're coming from. And I'd love to explore our common ground and our overlaps. And what I love about this approach, Sharon, is it's not that helpful to ask people to take the other side's perspective because they just create a caricature of who that person is.

whereas when you ask them to think about their own lives and say, do you really think you would believe the same thing if you were raised in the 1800s or if you were raised in a family that was on the opposite extreme of politics? Once they realized that they could potentially hold different views, they suddenly realized that the other side is more than just that one view and might be less wrong, less hateful, and maybe even more reasonable than they thought. They're more human when they can foresee, like, if I was raised that way, I can see how I would think that. Because of course, you always view your own humanity. So if you can think about how, you know, I can see how I would have thought that if my parents had taught me X, Y, and Z things. Exactly. Yeah. That's such an interesting thing too, to say, what do you think you would believe if you had been raised in a family that taught you

X instead of what do you think the other side actually thinks? Because if your perception is, well, they are Satan worshipers, then your answer is going to be they worship Satan or, you know, like they're just part of the capitalistic patriarchy and all they care about is controlling, you know, whatever. It's such an interesting experiment, such an interesting methodology for asking people to think about things of instead of just saying, what do you think the other side believes? I love that idea. Well, I do too. And in psychology, it's called counterfactual thinking. And the idea is that if you can imagine history having played out differently, you can also imagine a different future. I might say it's empowering, uplifting, and maybe a little hopeful. And then of course,

the big question is, can you do this on other issues? And we got the same results with gun control and gun rights. We asked people who are strongly in favor of the second amendment, Hey, how do you think your views might've been shaped differently if you grew up in Columbine or in the neighborhood of Sandy hook? And we asked people on the opposite end of the spectrum, Hey, you know what? You're very into gun safety. What if you grew up in a hunting family and lo and behold, they didn't fundamentally change their views, but they became more open to You're very into gun safety. What if you grew up in a hunting family? And lo and behold, they didn't fundamentally change their views, but they became more open to and kinder to the other side. And I think that's the start of a conversation.

That ability to maybe just like kick a toe in the door of being willing to listen to understand of like, you know, I don't, I don't agree, but I get where you're coming from. And that right there is extraordinarily powerful to just say, listen, I, I don't agree with you, but I can, I can see why you think that. I remember Sharon, when I first came across your Instagram, like, okay, I think I told you I was called Mr. Facts as a kid. Mrs. Facts. Yes. I love this. She's correcting all these false conceptions and myths. And then I looked at your handle and it was Sharon says so. I wonder if people are going to be a little bit defensive, like they're being preached at or

prosecuted and you do the exact opposite. You come in and you show curiosity about other people. You are open to their points of view, and then they're much more receptive to yours. It's amazing to see it in action. You live the things that I've been trying to study. Oh, thank you. Yes. Wait, learning just happened. That was progress right there. I almost didn't know what to do. I'm like, what do I say? You were like, we're waiting for you to say something else. Wait, where's my compliment back? That was no fun. Now I'm offended. What are you trying to say? I'm offended. You didn't compliment me back.

It was really jarring. It was, you completely disrupted the rhythm you normally create. And I loved every second of it. Well, that's, I'm not going to say that's kind of you. You were so tempted though. It almost just came out. It really was. It almost just came out of my mouth. No self-control.

You did it and then you couldn't do it again. I just really wanted to say it. This is going to take a lot of practice. But it is so interesting to watch you do it. We've talked before about how many of these conversations about political issues are falling apart because people are too busy preaching that they're right and prosecuting other people for being wrong. You have basically, you've been lighting the way to show us what an alternative looks like, which is you are not just conceding your points. You're not creating moral equivalencies between things that you think are wrong and things that

you think are right, but you're also respecting people who don't share your views and coming in thinking there might be something you could learn from them. Absolutely. Because there is, this country is a, is an amalgamation of all of our best ideas. And it is incredibly narcissistic to think that you have all the best ideas and everybody else's ideas are crap. We have a lot of amazing accomplishments as a country and also many things to work on, but we would not be where we are today without taking ideas from multiple sides and saying, well, listen, this is not what I would choose, but we got to get something done here. You know, like the constitution would not be what it is. If everybody was like, nope,

this is my line in the sand. Absolutely not. I'm not willing to budge on this. We are going to have a unitary legislature. That's it. Nevermind. We're walking away. You know, like if we didn't have the ability to compromise on any of these issues, we would probably still be British subjects. You know what I mean? Like we need to, if we want to move forward, we're going to have to integrate ideas from multiple viewpoints. It's just how public policy works. That is a scary counterfactual, isn't it? You know what you just made me think of is it's a different kind of narcissism in politics. It's not, I'm right, you're wrong. It's we're right, they're right. Yeah. And in psychology, that's called collective narcissism, right? It's believing

in the superiority of your own group, which incidentally even shows up in collectivistic cultures that you normally think are more self-effacing. No, people still take pride. They just take pride in their group superiority instead of their personal superiority. It's hilarious to me when people say things like, America is the greatest country on earth. I'm like, I'm sorry, how do you define greatness? We can measure that. Like we're not at the top of the freedom index. We're not at the top of the economic growth and prosperity index. We are not at the top of the economic growth and prosperity index. We are not at the top of the happiness index. So I don't know what that belief is founded on. But I think that one of the things that has made us a good country over time is that we are never satisfied. We are always trying to

get better. And that's one of the few things that people seem to agree on across the aisle is we are not as good as we would like to be. And we have very different visions about how to get there. But I think that requires, for whatever collective narcissism there is about, you know, your tribe's greatness or your country's greatness, that needs to be tempered and counterbalanced with some humility saying, but we're not as great as we want to be.

Yes. And I'm not as right as I want to be. Yes. This is one of those things that I'm very sick to death of that I'm very passionate about. I think there's so much we need to rethink when it comes to how our government works and just the question of what qualifications do you need to run for office and govern effectively? Why do we not talk about that? How much time do you have? I mean, it goes back to the idea of when the constitution was written, you didn't need to put that in there

because who would be eligible? You know what I mean? Only the learned landholding white men, right? Also was college a thing that was widely accessible? No. So, you know, like you didn't actually even really go to law school. You just apprenticed with an attorney. You know what I mean? So obviously if you're looking at this document that was written in 1787 and doesn't have any qualifications for a holding a position of leadership, you can understand why there's nothing in there. It's just like, it wasn't needed at the time. And now it's a little bit useful. Now we might want to rethink it because education is widely available.

And it might be useful when we're dealing with a far more complex country, when we're dealing with a far more complex and massive amount of federal bureaucracy. We're not just talking about a couple million people here. We're talking about 330 million people from all over the world living in one country in a huge geographic area, trying to make rules that apply to everybody. It might make sense to have a little bit more background on that topic. Might make sense. Just a touch. And what I think is hilarious about this is in my day job, I work with organizations of all kinds, trying to figure out how to help them become more effective. organizations of all kinds, trying to figure out how to help them become more effective. And you would never appoint a CEO of a company, right? Who had zero qualifications,

no experience, no expertise, no demonstrated competence, nothing, right? No, that's ridiculous. No, of course not. What you start with is a competency model. What do we need in a leader in order to be effective? And normally that model would include decision making skills, negotiation, vision, and then we could start to talk about values as well, right? On my wishlist would be integrity, generosity, humility. Then we can actually start to assess those, right? And somehow in the political realm, we throw all the confidence and all the character out the window. And we say, well, if that person agrees with me on one issue, I think they're going to do a good job running the country. Absolutely. This goes back to my idea that Congress should just have to blind introduce their bills of just like, here's my bill. And nobody knows who it came from. And it either it's a good idea or it's a bad idea.

And then it takes away a lot of this, what politicians refer to as coalition building. But in reality, it's just to a psychologist, it's just your little tribe. It's literally politics. Your tribe of people. We automatically assume, oh, she introduced that? Hard no. That's ridiculous. You know, like we look at a person's name and we're like, absolutely not, forget it. When in reality, the idea itself might have merit and we are shortchanging ourselves because it's attached to a person that we don't care for

or it's attached to a party that we don't align with. Yeah. Instead of just looking at the idea on its face. I think that is such a good idea. So good, in fact, that it'll never happen. Absolutely, because leaders lack humility and they want the credit. They need the credit for it.

Not surprisingly, I've had some conversations with some people in Congress over the last few months about all the rethinking that needs to happen in this country. And every call I've gotten, I've started with, I don't know anything about government, right? I'm an organizational psychologist. I can talk to you about collaboration and culture. And they're like, but that's our problem. It seems to me that the only real way that we get out of this mess is we put term limits on Congress and we stop incentivizing people to do whatever it is that they think will

get them reelected to maintain their power. I cannot see another way out of this structurally. Can you? The American public is strongly, strongly in favor of term limits. The only downside that I see is that we would need to change the rules of Congress, which are based on seniority. Your position in a committee is based on your seniority. And so we would need to change the rules of Congress, which are based on seniority. Your position in a committee is based on your seniority. And so we would need to alter the rules. Who's going to be in charge of this committee? If you're only here for two terms, who gets to be in charge? How do we make those decisions? We can overcome those obstacles. We do them in every other kind of organization. Well within our capability to rewrite the rules, right? Well within our capability. Somebody said to me recently, America has achieved whatever it prioritizes.

Whatever it prioritizes, it will achieve. And so it just needs to become a priority. Now, are members of Congress interested in putting themselves out of jobs? Of course not. interested in putting themselves out of jobs? Of course not. Of course not. Most of them are not. So it becomes a difficult thing to actually create that public policy. Could we have a convention of states to create a constitutional amendment that would put term limits on members of Congress? We could. Oh, I love this idea. How do we make this happen? It would require two-thirds of the state legislatures to say, we're going to create term limits. We're creating a constitutional amendment. This has never happened in American history, but the methodology exists in the Constitution.

Wow. We've just never used it. This is so exciting. I mean, we had a few other things that have never happened in American history happen this past year. Interesting. So you're saying things that have never happened before could still happen? Maybe. It's a theory waiting to be tested. I want to know, like, what do you think would be the most important thing that the average American can be doing to make change in this country? Just like from a personal standpoint, I'm not talking about like writing letters to your Congress people, you know, like,

yes, that's great. We can do that. But what could a person listening to this who wants the world, who wants America to be better than it is today, what can an individual do? Don't agree to disagree. Tell me why. I hate that. Let's agree to disagree because you're giving up. You're saying we are incapable of having a thoughtful disagreement about this issue. And I think once you give up, you've basically, you've resigned yourself to close your mind and you're letting the other person do the same. And I think we should all be committed to open-mindedness. I think a good alternative to let's agree to disagree is whenever somebody says that to me, I say, you know what, actually, I don't believe in that, although I'm open to rethinking my beliefs. So maybe I'll change my mind, but I'm not a fan of that. And as soon as they say that, it reminds me that I need to stop

arguing to win and start asking questions to learn. And I'll say to the person, you know what, clearly that conversation stalled. You said, let's agree to disagree because we are not going anywhere. And maybe we're even getting more entrenched and that's not where I want to go. But I would love to learn from this discussion. Tell me where I went wrong. What did I say that lost you? And given what you know now about my perspective, how could I have been more reasonable? How could I have made a little bit more sense to you? And the hope is then that I learned something to talk about that issue with someone else and that I learned something to talk with you about another issue that we disagree on and I can keep evolving. And even if I don't rethink everything I believe, I'm at least

rethinking how I go about shoving my beliefs down other people's throats and becoming the world's worst logic bully where I'm just bombarding people with facts and data to convince them that they are in fact ignorant and they need to become enlightened. I love the phrase, stop arguing to win and start asking questions to learn. That just like perfectly encompasses a lot of your teachings. It encompasses a lot of my personal beliefs that, you know, listening to understand doesn't obligate you to agree, but listening to understand is actually tremendously powerful. And the way it's approached, of course, is everything, you know, like that's just an old adage of, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. You know, like it's, you can't just be like, and why do you want to believe that?

That's not going to work. That's so good. You can't, the way you say it is everything. People can tell if you're genuinely interested, like if they could tell, I would love to hear more about how you landed on that conclusion. I'd love to hear more about that. They can tell if you are saying that from a genuine place, if you're saying with the right tone of voice, right facial expressions, et cetera, versus like, and how did you arrive at that conclusion? You know what I mean? Those are two very different questions. And too often we are saying, well, I asked questions. I tried to learn and they were just, I love that. Okay. This, this goes to, I think I came on too one-sided before when I gave you a hard time for your Midwestern politeness. This is one of your secret weapons is the way that you

ask the questions that other people do condescendingly with genuine humility and curiosity. And I wondered if you could talk to me a little bit about how you do that, because there have to be some moments when you are sort of just enraged at the things that other people think or say or do, given how informed you are and how much you care. And I find myself thinking like, okay, is this a Minnesota skill that you practice? Is this a teacher skill that you've had to figure out how to not cause students to tune out? Tell me where you learned this and how the rest of us can do it. A lot of it truly is from the classroom. My very first year as a teacher, I was teaching in a very, very, very rough school. I got assigned

to teach one section, one class of health, which I am not at all qualified to teach. I'm not qualified to do that, but it was truly an emergency situation. And so I got assigned to do this. A boy raised his hand in class one day and asked, I have a question. And I said, what is it? And I can still see his face in my mind so well, I would recognize him on the street. And he said, so when a mom is pregnant and she's eating like spaghetti and soup, things like that, isn't that like burning the baby? And I was like, tell me why you would think that. And he was like, well, isn't the baby in her stomach with getting like the food all over it? He truly believed that babies grew in their mother's actual stomachs along with the food.

And I, in that moment was like, okay, all right, I'm going to be professional. And of course I'm like super young and not qualified at all to teach this class. These are like 16, 17 year old kids. I'm only a few years older than them. And I was like, let's revisit the diagram. Let's get out the diagram again. And this is a uterus. Okay. You know, like just trying to be like super professional and not mock him because I didn't want the rest of the class to think, yeah, missing man is going to make fun of you. If you ask a dumb question and that was never ask a question again, correct. Then you'll walk around the rest of your dang life thinking that babies actually grow in their mother's physical stomachs. And that was really like a turning

point for me, a Genesis of, I am going to take your question at face value. I'm going to assume positive intent from you. I'm going to assume that you genuinely would like to know the answer to this question. And the second I turn that into a way to make fun of you, it shuts the relationship down, right? So anytime there's a relationship with somebody, you feel safe asking those kind of questions. Any teacher will tell you this, that the relationship that they built with students is of utmost importance, perhaps even more important than just the curriculum that they're teaching. So a lot of what I do is rooted in my experiences in the classroom of just taking people's questions at face value and assuming positive intent that you genuinely just want to know the answer to this question. And I'm just going to tell you in the most

simple, succinct, honest way that I can. That is such a great frame to say, if you interacted with everybody that you meet as if they were your student, how could you not be respectful toward them? Yeah. Just like, okay, buddy, you don't know the answer to that. Now you do. And now he's much more equipped to deal with at least that topic because he had gotten to age 16 believing that. You know what I mean? And so the same is absolutely true of adult Americans. There are 55-year-olds who are absolutely believing erroneous things about the government all day long. And the second I decide to be like, are you kidding me?

Come on. You know what I mean? First of all, I've been teaching long enough that I truly don't think that. I'm just like, oh, OK. Yeah, absolutely. Here's the difference between Senate, House of Representatives. Here we go. 435 people, 100 people, bigger, smaller, longer

terms, shorter terms. It doesn't bother me. You know what I mean? I don't have those reactions of like, where have you been? Did you not pay attention in any of your classes? You know, like, I don't think that. Unless that person is in the Oval Office asking these questions. Yeah. And then I'm like, let's revisit the diagram. Let's revisit the diagram. Let's revisit the, so there's the three branches. Yes, it really is comes down to attitude and people helping people feel respected that I care about you. I want you to ask your questions. I'm offering this as a service and I genuinely enjoy it.

You know, it goes back to, you have to give in ways that bring you joy, give in ways that align with your strengths. It turns out teaching health is not my strength, but, but I can definitely talk to you about federalism all day long. I'll talk to you about what I do know about. So anyway, that's where it comes from. It's just assuming positive intent and knowing that that person is going to be better off having that honest, straightforward answer than if you just mock them. Yeah. Wow. We could use a lot more of that in America right now. A lot more. A lot more. If we just assume positive intent in the

other person until proven otherwise. I have watched a lot of people rethink a lot of things that I thought were core to who they were. And that doesn't mean everyone will change and that anyone is going to change tomorrow. But I think in a lot of these conversations, we're planting seeds. And I think that's one of my biggest takeaways as a psychologist is if you take a long view and say, look, what I want to do is, like you said, build a relationship with this person so that they trust me as somebody who cares a lot about the truth and accuracy and is interested in trying to get closer to the truth, not tell other people what to believe. They learn more from me. They listen more to me. And overnight, I don't often feel like I made a difference. But when I have students come back five or 10 years later, who were very

resistant to a point of view and say, you know, I've been thinking a lot about that experience we had where you kind of gently asked me if I was really confident what I thought was true is true. And I've changed my mind on that. I'm like, good. I respect that. Yeah. We've talked about this before too. Just when somebody changes their mind on something, instead of being like, oh, oh, you changed your mind, huh? You know, instead of having that kind of an attitude of like, oh, okay. I see. I see how it, I see how it is changed your mind. Okay. Hypocrite flip flopper flip flopper. Instead of having that attitude, which then just further incentivizes them to never change their mind again. What if we were just like, oh, that is so interesting. I would love to hear more about why you changed your mind or what do you think

now versus what did you use to think just Just having that genuine curiosity. We need to start incentivizing people for the right behavior instead of just slapping people's hands for the wrong behavior all the time. Yes, please. Yes, please. Newsflash. The faster you are to admit that you were wrong, the faster you can move toward being right. And that's where we all want to be. If we make fun of people who change their minds, then we're, to your point, we're discouraging them from having those moments where they say, you know what? I actually think that I was wrong about that. And here's how I've evolved since then. Right? So much of what gets labeled as hypocrisy or flip-flopping is actually just evolving and learning. Right. And this applies to our political leaders as well. People ask me all the time,

how can I get them to believe this? Or how can I get them to support this policy? Tell them when they're doing it right. Don't just write angry letters. It has to be actually kind of a really crappy position to be in to get nothing but angry letters all the time. Like today you got 850 angry letters. Great. I love this job. You know what I mean? It's even worse than that based on what you just said, which is they get praised for standing their ground and they get criticized if they change their minds. What are they going to do? It further entrenches you in this like, listen, I'm just staying right here. This is what I'm doing. What if you actually sent them letters saying, listen, I really liked

how you compromised with that other person that one time. Thank you for doing that. Thanks for being willing to listen to somebody else's point of view. What if we actually praised our leaders for doing the right thing instead of constantly criticizing them for doing what we don't want? I'm going to make a small plea based on that, which is, can you please run for office? The governors are with you. They're ready. 800 letters a day. Well, I promise I'll write you letters of praise, not just criticism. Will you write me nice letters?

I will. If you agree to run, I will write you a nice letter every day. Dear Sharon, I really like your sweater today. Love. And I will write back and say, thank you.

You will. I think that's perfect. Dear Sharon, thank you for being a thoughtful leader who's interested in facts and science and learning and making things better. Yes. If I could get a letter each day, that would really just, that would be a win in my book. I have so many more questions and so many more things we could talk about next time. Absolutely. Thank you so much. questions and so many more things we could talk about next time. Well, absolutely. Thank you so much.

We will talk soon. Thank you. Thanks, Adam. Have a good day. You too. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor.

Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe maybe leave me a rating or review, or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.