The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant - You Don't Get an A for Effort

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

Previously released on Dare to Lead, this is part of a special six-part series with Adam Grant on Brené's book, Strong Ground. Brené and Adam unpack the difference between effort and excellence, why coaching matters more than judgment, and how unclear priorities can quietly derail even the hardest-working teams. From there the conversation moves further into prioritization, a consequential 2x2 decision-making framework, and how leaders inadvertently signal the wrong priorities through their emotional reactions. Circling back to effort, they also discuss why the first question leaders should ask when results fall short is whether they set their team up for success in the first place. Plus, Brené has a real-time realization that her own team may not be aligned on what's actually consequential. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know – Adam Grant, 2021, Viking Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit – Brené Brown, 2025, Random House No, You Don't Get an A for Effort – Adam Grant, 2024, The New York Times Mindset: The New Psychology of Success – Carol Dweck, 2006, Random House Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation and Performance – Mueller & Dweck, 1998, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology What Having a “Growth Mindset” Actually Means – Carol Dweck, 2016, Harvard Business Review “Both/And” Leadership – Wendy Smith, 2016, Harvard Business Review Genius of the AND – Jim Collins, n.d., JimCollins.com Reversible and Irreversible Decisions – Shane Parrish, n.d., Farnam Street The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You – Elaine Aron, 1996, Broadway Books Sensory-Processing Sensitivity and Its Relation to Introversion and Emotionality – Elaine Aron, 1997, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Above/Below the Line Practice – Brené Brown, 2025, BrenéBrown.com Fairy Tales and Script Drama Analysis – Stephen Karpman, 1968, Transactional Analysis Bulletin (Origin paper for the villain/rescuer/victim model of conflict) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. The Curiosity Shop is on summer hiatus, but stay tuned as we'll be back with brand new episodes July 30th. In the meantime, we're revisiting some of our favorite conversations. Today's episode was originally recorded during Brne's Dare to Lead series on Strong Ground. In this episode, we tackle a question every leader eventually faces. What do you do when someone's giving their all, but the results just aren't there? We talk about the difference between effort and excellence and how great leaders coach people toward meaningful growth. Let's dive in. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales,

using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time. connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus. Starring Emmy Rossum, Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice,

and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. Welcome to The Curiosity Shop, a show from the Fox Media Podcast Network. Hi, everyone. I'm Bray Brown, and this is Dear to Lead, and I am back for episode six of this special series with my friend Adam. Hi, Adam. Hey, Brenna. How's it going?

So far, so good, but we'll see where this goes, won't we? Yeah. I, you know, you're one of that. So there are several, there are teachers in the book, and the teachers in the book includes you are folks who I thought their work was, their impact on the book and my research and my thinking was so big. It was more than just kind of a paragraph. It was, I wanted to share a lesson directly from you.

So I think, again, is one of my all-time favorite books. And so I share an excerpt from Think Again in the book. Were you surprised to see yourself come up in yet another chapter? It was. It's such an honor to be featured at all. And I, you know, I, of course, skipped through the part that I wrote, not wanting to reread my own writing. Oh, yeah, that's horrible. I don't do that either.

The worst. And so many edits when I got into the first paragraph alone, I said, yeah, I can't do this. That's enough rethinking for now. And then I thought I was home free. And I'm just, you know, sailing along a couple hundred pages, and all of a sudden, I came across my name. You're in, yep, you're in the chapter called The Big Reward. And so I talk about your op-ed. Let's get everyone caught up.

So you wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled, No, you don't get an A for effort. Tell me about the origin of this op-ed. Tell me the premise. Okay. this started when I was teaching a week-long course for brand-new MBA students. And at the end of the class, a couple years ago, I got several grade complaints that were worded completely differently from any prior grade grubbing I'd come across.

And different students wrote different versions of, I'm not happy with my grade because it doesn't reflect the effort that I put into this course. I was so surprised to read that because we don't grade effort, we grade excellence. Leaving aside the fact that in a week-long course, there wasn't a lot of room for Herculean amounts of effort. And I was really curious about why they expected

to be rewarded for hard work alone, as opposed to mastery. And what finally crystallized for me was they'd some of these students had been, they'd taken the wrong lesson from Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset. Say more, this is really, this is so interesting to me. Well, there's a whole generation of, you know this well, of parents and teachers who were told, don't praise ability, praise effort.

Because if you tell a kid, you're really smart. When they fail, they're going to think, well, I didn't have the cognitive horsepower. I don't have the talent to succeed at that. Whereas when you praise kids for effort, when they fall short of a goal, they learn, oh, I need to try harder. And that's much better for their resilience. It's better for their persistence, ultimately serves their growth. But if you take that too far and you only praise effort, what you're essentially doing is you're rewarding students for only their inputs and ignoring their outputs. You're telling them you should keep beating your head against a brick wall, as opposed to saying,

huh, that strategy is not effective for me. Let me find a different one. And I guess where I landed as I was working through this puzzle was, I think we should be praising effort that leads to progress. So we don't just want to look at how much energy you expend or how long you persist. We want to ask, did that move you forward? Is your effort, is it fueling your growth? And if not, it might not be the right effort. It's so powerful to me. And so there's, there's 10 directions we could take this conversation. And I'm going to write one of them down because I want, if we have time, I want to circle back to it.

Let me write and make, make myself a note. Okay. So I read that op-ed when it first came out. I agreed with it wholeheartedly. Right. No, and. You know my commitment to the paradox. Jim Collins would say the tyranny of the or the genius of the and.

I'm going to go with and. And what I have found working inside of organizations is kind of dualistic thinking that either says, I am going to praise and reward effort even when the outcome is bad. Or on the other side, this is a perversion of the original growth mindset thinking. And if I see you putting a ton of effort into something, but the deliverable or the outcome is subpar, then you get nothing from me. And so my thinking is that we should be rewarding effort with time, with our time. And so if I see you, we'll take the student example, if I see you really busting your ass,

you're in class, you're taking notes, you're present, you're asking compelling questions, You have an active role, because you know, both teaching an MBA programs, you have an active role in your group. You are all in, and you're spending a lot of time and energy trying to move the ball down the field. And the ball's not leaving the 50-yard line. You know, it's just, I'm not going to call that a touchdown. I'm not going to reward that with seven points because the ball's still on the 50-yard line. I'm also not going to dismiss you for how hard you're working. because I see you working.

What I am going to reward you with is my time in trying to sit down with you and say, I see your effort. Let's talk about why the ball's not moving. Let's see. And this is really hard because I think in the dualistic situation, in the dualistic solution situation, where you can just give them nothing,

or you can give them seven points. Both of those answers are easy for you as the scoregiver because it takes no investment from you. Right. You're just a judge. You're not a coach. You're just a judge, not a coach. That's exactly right.

You're a scoreboard, not a coach. Right, that's it. So to me, when I work with leaders, I always say if you see effort, don't reward it and call it excellence or success because that's a lie. that's usually about your own comfort. And also don't ignore it because, man, one day you're going to wish you had someone that put that much effort into something. Reward it with your time.

So I'm curious about your take on that. Oh, I find that very compelling. I think that's what's needed because if somebody is putting in the energy and they're not getting the result, then that's the ideal moment for coaching. Yes, that's coaching. That's when they need somebody to say, okay, you're working really hard. Let's talk about what it would look like to work really smart. Or it seems like, you know, we actually haven't given you the training

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to C-suite leaders, is I'm working so hard. I'm busting my ass. I'm working 60 hours a week, and I'm not moving the ball. And when we get underneath why there's no, there's so much effort and no result, I'm not exaggerating right now. at all, in this context of geopolitical crisis, tariff issues, volatile markets, changing strategies, horrific supply chain issues, the problem identification always lands on prioritization, the lack of prioritization skills. No one's teaching it. No one's talking about it. The communication around it is terrible. What can you tell me or teach me about prioritization? Oh, that's such an interesting question. It's such a crisis right now, everywhere I go. It doesn't

matter what industry I'm working in. Even in, even with sports teams I'm working with right now, are we should we be prioritizing toughness or discipline? Should we be prioritizing accountability? and I think there's probably a swirl of those things that all are related to each other. But what would you tell a leader that said, I'm working so hard, I'm not seeing the results because the priorities from on high are shifting daily. Huh. I think, I'm thinking out loud here. I love it.

I think maybe the best lesson I've gotten on prioritization came from a conversation I had a few years ago with Jeff Bezos, who, you know, whether you love or hate him, and whether you're an Amazon fan or detractor, I think Jeff has been remarkably effective at being clear on his priorities. I don't think you can argue that no matter how you feel. Yeah, exactly. You might not agree with what the priorities are,

but he's clear on them. Yeah. And I was asking him how he decides what to prioritize. And I came away from that conversation with a two-by-two that I think about maybe once a week and I don't even have a real job. So this has to be much more relevant for leaders than it is for me.

But Jeff said the two questions he asked himself when he's making a decision are, one, how consequential is it? How high are the stakes? And then two, how reversible is it? Is he walking through a door that's going to lock behind him, or is it a revolving door?

And he said, there's only one quadrant there that I spend real time and energy on. It's the highly-concential, consequential, irreversible decisions, because they really matter, and you can't easily undo them next year. So imagine Amazon made a huge investment in the cloud. He's not going to wake up one morning and say, you know all those billions we poured into cloud computing? Just kidding, I want them back. It's not an option. He said with those decisions, he does not want a first-mover

advantage. He considers that a disadvantage. He will procrastinate as long as possible because he wants to see other people make commitments and make mistakes and learn from those. And also, he wants to gather enough information, you know, qualitative and quantitative data to try to figure out what the right, important, semi-permanent commitment is. And he said, I don't waste a lot of energy on the other three quadrants. If a decision is less consequential or more reversible, I will act quickly on the best information I have and just stay open to doubting what I know. I will delegate to other people. And I think that for me,

this framework has, I guess it has two applications. One is, in our own lives, to ask, what are the consequential, irreversible decisions? Let's prioritize those.

The other stuff probably doesn't matter that much. And two, this is a question to ask up the hierarchy. Right? If you feel like you're putting it a ton of work and the leaders above you

are not delivering on giving you clarity, right, asking them, hey, we've got a lot of things we're being asked to do here, which are most consequential for you, which are most irreversible for you, do you agree that those are our top priorities?

What do you make of all that? God, I could talk to you for 12 hours about this. This is like what I... It's what I talk about every day with folks, and so it's really interesting to me. I think that... Okay, I have like a lot of questions. So we're talking about rewarding effort

with our time and our thought partnership. And I brought up the example of prioritization. I have a question for you. And we're getting pretty technical in this conversation, but I think that's helpful because I think a lot of leaders listen to our conversations. And I think it's part of, you know, I think one of my favorite things about my conversations with you

is we can talk about the morality of ordaining yourself to decide who lives and dies. And we can talk about very specific prioritization challenges in leadership. So I love that. So thank you for that. I wonder if, depending on where you are in an organization, if part of rewarding effort with time is leaders helping coach leaders on how to make decisions and appraisals of what's consequential and what's not, what's reversible and what's not. Because I would imagine if I'm in the C-suite, I have a different understanding of what's reversible and what's not reversible. I have a different understanding of what's consequential or not than if I report up to someone who reports up to someone who reports up to someone who reports up to the C-suite.

Does that make sense? It does. It does. So how do you think about doing that? Well, I'm thinking right now about 4,634 misses. in my own organization based on what you just said that have happened

over the last two weeks because what I'm thinking right now in real time I'm almost like I'm almost breaking into a sweat is I have not taught to my teams about what feels consequential

and reversible and irreversible and not consequential. I have not shared I have not done mission critical communications which is a part of the book. I have not shared

with them what I believe is consequential and inconsequential and what's reversible and not reversible, I do not think my team is aligned. Sounds like a conversation worth having. Yes, because what I do see is, and what I hear leaders talk about all the time, is action over impact, which can feel really shitty.

That's really shitty feedback to give someone. Like, hey, listen, I see a lot of your work, but I feel like you're engaging a lot of action, action over impact. And I wonder if that diagnosis is wrong because my mindset is different about what's consequential and reversible. Yeah. If they have a different idea about what's important and what can be undone, then they're going to invest their action in other things. Yeah, because I'm getting stuff that is coming up to me that feels inconsequential and totally reversible. Wow. And.

Okay, so I'm curious about why that is. I know there's the, what's the famous parable about when Bob Rubin was the Treasury Secretary, and he made an offhand comment in a hallway about gold, and then this rumor starts spreading like wildfire, Rubin loves gold, and all of a sudden people are spending all this time analyzing gold markets and pricing and people overweigh. the offhand comments that leaders make, they're constantly trying to infer what's important by observing your behavior and observing your attention.

Is there a signal you sent that said, this thing that's inconsequential and reversible, is actually really important to me? Yeah, I'm having an IRL meltdown. Real time, folks, this is what it looks like. Yes, because I'm... I can be undisciplined in my emotional reactions to anything that doesn't meet our value of beauty and excellence, and that can be perceived as life or death consequential.

And therefore, people are spending wild amount of time, amount of time. on something that I had an emotional reaction to because there was a dangling monifier. And I'm making that out because I'm never really sure what that means. But like I, yes, it's about my emotional responsiveness and going under the line and being undisciplined in my responses and then my response is perceived as oh shit this is life or death for bernay so coming back then to where we started the conversation you inadvertently rewarded effort on the wrong the wrong things

i don't know what i don't i don't know if i rewarded effort on the wrong things or sorry let me say that differently yeah yeah sorry no no that's not what i mean what i meant is through the through having an emotional reaction, you signaled that a different kind of effort would have been rewarded. Yes. Yes. But it's not actually the effort you wanted. No. It's not. And in a more disciplined response, I would have been more focused on systems than people and we would have corrected systems not having, you know, and not making people feel like stuff is more consequential and irreversible than it actually is. Does that make sense to you? Yeah. Yeah, it does. So how do you think about course correcting on that?

Because what's interesting is it's reasonable to assume that if you have a strong emotional reaction to something, that's highly consequential for you. And separating those two things is not always easy for people. Like, why would you emot about something that doesn't really matter? Oh, because I think that's probably a huge difference between you and me. Like, I am an emotional being. I am a... Are you a highly sensitive person in the Elena Aaron sense? No.

No, but I am... I do want... If we send something to someone I'm working with and misspell that, that person's name, that can feel irreversible and consequential to me. But normally, I think the response to that is, should be above the line where I'm a good coach, I'm a good challenger, I'm a good creative, what systems do we have in place to make sure things have a second set of eyes, what's the proofing channels that we're using? You know, that's the answer to that question, not I need six people

spending 60 hours for three weeks on the mailing list. Yes. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. So this is an interesting example of something that it reflects it reflects on your values

and therefore it's worth spending some time on but it's not consequential in the capital C sense. It's not consequential, nor is it like reversible in the capital. And it's interesting because I'm working with a company right now, and the CEO is really talking about experimentation and reversibility. And leaders are having a hard time seeing the same things as reversible as what he thinks are reversible. like pricing or, you know, we can try something. But I think if you're heading that market, it feels very different, you know.

And so it does go back to, I never thought, I never thought when we reward effort with time and thought partnership, I think we have to start by when we see effort as a leader. And maybe even as a college professor, when we see. effort that is not leading to success or mastery, maybe one of the first things we need to do is reflect on our own part in that. Yeah. Yeah, did I send you a message explicitly or implicitly that this was the effort I wanted? And this is how we measure success. This is this is the effort we're looking for in service of this mission completion. Does that make sense? It does. It does. You know, it's so funny, my first organizational psychology class when I was a junior in college, I remember just falling in love with the material and thinking, I want this to be my future

career, not knowing that that would look like, and studying really hard for the midterm and getting a B-plus. and I was crushed, crushed. Like, this is my thing, and I didn't ace it. And I remember sitting down with the head TA and asking her, why did all the preparation that I did not result in an A, or at least an A minus? And she said to me, look, our expectations are really high in this course. And you regurgitated a bunch of material.

We wanted you to think about novel ways of applying the material. So this was this was not a test of whether you know the course concepts. It's whether you can use and extend the course concepts. And I studied very differently for the next test and did much better on it because she had taught me how to redirect my effort. And I'm realizing now I failed to pay that lesson forward to the students who told me that their grade did not reflect their effort. God, that's such a that that's such a that's such a great example. I mean, it's such a great example of rewarding effort

with a conversation with you about, yeah, you're smart, I get it. You understand the material. Interesting to see the transferability of your knowledge to different contexts and how can you apply it and get creative with it. Like, this is what I'm talking about. So I do think we reward effort

with both our time, I think we reward effort with our time and we start I think I'm going to start I don't know what anyone else is going to do I'm going to start when I see effort but I see the ball not moving down the field I want to start with myself

and say did I set this person up for success with a clear understanding of what are the priorities what's consequential what's reversible and what's not and what is success going to look like I think that's really, and then work with them, because they may have a full understanding of that and still not be moving the ball downfield. And I think that happens a lot, especially with young leaders and new people and students.

I really want to hear the post-mortem on how this conversation goes. It's making me think, just thinking about your example of, you know, if we misspell someone's name, I'm realizing now, as you've talked about that, there's nuance in the reversibility concept that I hadn't seen before. which is, in technical terms, that is not a reversible mistake. You cannot unsend the email. You can't take back the letter, right? The error was made. But the impact is reversible. You can show, you know, you can show remorse to the recipient.

You can let them know what a priority is for you to get it right. And then, as the saying often goes, the best apology is changed behavior. you can demonstrate to them moving forward, you're not going to make this same mistake. And that, I think, can reverse the impact, even though the event itself is not reversible. I think that's true.

I think that's absolutely true. And I'll just do a full confession here since the Adam Brunet confessional, this should be the new podcast, you know, with we each have the little collars on, take a picture of ourselves in a confession booth, which will take me back to Catholic primary school.

the confession for me is if I can be above the line is kind of hero, victim, villain, oh my God, you screwed this up, you have no idea how hard this is on me, I'll do it myself. Above the line is coach, challenger, and creative. So my job as a leader,

and I can be not good at this, that's my way of saying I can be really shitty here, is I can clean it up with a note to the person and say, you know, so sorry, we did this, I apologize. Or if I can stay above the line, I can say, we misspelled them. I'd love for you to reach out and make it right, which is so much more rewarding for that team

member who did it because then they get to clean it up and they get to not be the person who made the mistake and didn't show up again to clean it up. And so, but let me tell you what we're talking about here. If I pulled back from this conversation and asked myself, well, a group of leaders had lunch on Thursday and listened to this conversation, what's going to be their first comment? Their first comment to each other when the podcast is over is they're going to say, well, that shit takes a lot of time. Getting that right takes a lot of time. Thankfully, we recorded a podcast about that very excuse. Yeah, we did. We're like, a self- Do you want to? Do you want to invest a little time now to save a lot of time later?

That's it. That's it. That's it. I love it. Our podcast is going to become like a self-referencing system. We're going to close the whole loop and we're just going to be like, if you disagree with this, see Podcasts 1A and we'll take you on there. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what-if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. It all started with Call Me Maybe.

Over 10 years ago, we created Switched on Pop to Listen Closer, uncovering the songcraft behind even the glossiest of pop hits. Since then, we've released almost 500 episodes. We've defined the sounds of our modern soundtrack and interviewed hundreds of musicians and music insiders, including the singer of Call Me Maybe herself, Carly Ray Jepson. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

And on July 14th, Switched on Pop is embarking on a new chapter. We're stepping out from behind our microphones and in front of the camera to stream our podcast on Netflix. Now, you'll still be able to listen to the show anywhere you get podcasts, but now you'll be able to watch us each week, breaking down the sounds of the moment, digging into musical minutiae with your favorite artists and offering questionable dad jokes, as always. We're kicking off our Netflix debut with a four-part series on The Art of the Song,

with help from artists, producers, and songwriters. like Aaron Destner, Audrey Hobart, Trevor Horn, Cypress Hill, and Taylor Parks. Stream switched on pop on Netflix and anywhere you get podcasts every Tuesday, starting on July 14th. I just want to say, and this will be such a great, you know, great time for you to practice taking a compliment. How much it is meant to me for you to do this six-part series with me on the new book. It really has meant a lot to me, and I appreciate you and I appreciate the conversations. Well, I appreciate that. And I was so flattered that you were willing to have me do this

because I feel like most of the learning that I've done from your work has been outside of interaction with you. It's been reading your books. It's been watching your TED Talks. It's been listening to your podcasts. And so to have a chance to talk to you about the book right after I finished reading Strong Ground was it was a treat for me.

And I think, I don't know if you remember, this, but I think the first time we met, it must have been 2014, I want to say, we were speaking at the same event, and you were in a green room, and I walked in, I was like, I don't belong here, I had massive imposter syndrome. Like, I should not be talking to Bray Brown. She's too big of a deal. What? And I remember, I remember being so uncomfortable and then thinking, but she's all about courage. So I need to have this conversation. And if that version of me had known that we were going to have a conversation like the series that we've just done, I think I would have been speechless.

But you are amazing in making me feel like I do belong. And I appreciate that. More importantly, I think there is so much insight in this book. I think it's a book that people need to reread. because I think on a first read, there are so many rich ideas in it that prioritization could be a challenge. Yeah. And I've already started to use it as a bit of a reference and say, okay, I need to go back to the empathy misses and look at those because I'm really failing on two of these. I need to revisit the chapter on paradox because I'm fighting against two things that actually have to be handled in tension.

And so I think Strong Ground is a book that people are going to rely on over and over again. I really appreciate it. And thank you for being a part of the book. Thank you for being a part of the conversation. And thanks for hanging with me as I struggle through real-time learnings in our conversations. Like I'm already thinking, like, if I could suck back all the coffees, I'd like to add like four paragraphs, which is not something the book needs. It's already, it's hefty enough. Save it for the next book. Save it for the next book. Maybe we'll do some podcasts in the future because this is too fun for me. I always look forward to a conversation with you. And I think in the spirit of paradox, the sequel to Strong Ground should be called Weak Sky. Don't ever write that book.

By Adam Grant. I hope no one writes that book. No, I hope no one. Me too. But I do, I guess one way I didn't think Strong Ground would show up for me, is, I hope it is foundational for people in terms of changing their minds. Like, I've already changed my mind about some things that I wrote. And not that the conclusion is different, but there's a lot of nuance under some of these things that we got underneath in these conversations that I think will make me a better leader and a better person.

So I'm grateful for that. Well, I'm always excited to be part of rethinking as it happens in. real time. And I think I'm just excited to see all the impact the book is going to have on people both in their professional lives and in their personal lives. Well, thank you. Adam Grant, folks, thank you so much. We hope you're enjoying these conversations while we're on our summer hiatus. Again, just a reminder, we'll be back with brand new episodes of The Curiosity Shop on July 30th. Thank you for listening. The Curiosity Shop is produced by Bray Brown, Educational.

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