The Jordan Harbinger Show - 626: Adam Grant | Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) is Wharton’s top-rated professor, the host of podcast WorkLife with Adam Grant, and the author of several New York Times Best Sellers. Here, he joined us to discuss Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. [Note: This is a previously broadcast episode from the vault that we felt deserved a fresh pass through your earholes!] What We Discuss with Adam Grant: How to give to someone you don’t know without being awkward and transactional. What stage gates are and how you should use them. How to avoid committing social capital suicide. What Abraham Lincoln could teach us about the power of powerless communication. Why you'll be a better, more effective giver if you practice chunking rather than sprinkling. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/626 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Miss our conversation with actor, producer, and Scientology survivor Leah Remini? Get caught up with episode 485: Leah Remini | Surviving Hollywood and Scientology here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy med yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. It's not a lot of work, right? If you have a reminder in your calendar on the last day of every month, just to contact one person you used to know, that's 12 rekindled connections every year.

Some of those are going to pay off and you don't have to be strategic about it. It's just one of the things you do to stay in touch with people who once were a part of your life. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show,

we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional rocket scientist, extreme athlete or undercover jihadi. And each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to the show, welcome.

We've got a great way for you to dive in and get started. Our episode's starter packs available at jordanharbinger.com slash start. These are collections of top episodes organized by topic that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show. Again, Jordan Harbinger.com slash start. They are also in Spotify. Today, one from the vault, recorded the better part of a decade ago, but still holds up perfectly. We're talking with Adam Grant, author of Give and Take, originals, and many other books that are sitting on many a desk around here. He was also listed by Malcolm Gladwell as one of his favorite social science writers. This guy's a genius. You've probably heard of him before.

We'll discuss how to be of value when reaching out and connecting with others instead of being a pest. Actually, I relate a lot of personal experiences here in this one. I get a lot of letters from a lot of people, and I really kind of discuss some of that very freely in this one. So if y'all are writing in, by the way, and helping me out, I appreciate that, of course, and this episode will give you some clue as to how this appears to busy folks when you reach out to try to expand your network. We'll also explore how we can protect our own time and energy as entrepreneurs or as individuals, and something called the five-minute favor and why it's just about magical in terms of getting through to people, as well as how to spot selfish takers and protect

ourselves from the evil reign of anti-networking terror. So if you're looking to reach out and connect with more people in your company or even your industry, this is a great episode for you. Adam Grant always has great professional skills. There's a good reason why he's one of the most well-known writers in his category. By the way, if you're wondering how I've connected with all these amazing folks, our six-minute networking course is a great place to learn a lot of the skills we teach in episodes like this. The course is free. It's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. The course is not only about networking and connection skills, but also about inspiring others to develop a personal or professional relationship with you. The course will make

you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker. Again, all free at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course, and most of the guests you hear on the show, subscribe and contribute to this course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here's Adam Grant. I'm glad to have you on the show finally. I noticed you got your PhD from the university. of Michigan where I went for seven years getting various degrees of various types. Go blue. What did you study there? I made my own concentration in undergrad, which is this weird thing that you can do. I don't even know if you know about this, but you can kind of go, hey, academic standards board, I don't like math and accounting all these dumb prerequisites you

stuff people into, but that's what I basically did. And I said, I really want to study political science, economics, and some other cool stuff like business, German and Spanish. And they They went, okay, but it's got to be pretty hard and rigorous to match up with any other normal concentration. And you probably know how universities have these things where they're like, oh, counting 271 is going to be like the weeder course that's so hard that everybody quits and switches majors if they're not cut out for this. Well, I managed to skip all of those things because my opinion, the preconceived

notion that Americans have that languages are so hard that I said, listen, I will take German, Spanish, Serbian, you know, I will pack those into a concentration with econ and political science. And they went, this guy's crazy, he's going to do multiple languages. Well, that's obviously hard enough to be considered a concentration. So honestly, these were great because throughout your academic career, when you do that, you can actually go into a class like econ, whatever, and you can drop it and go, man, this totally sucks. Go back to your academic advisor and go, you know, the syllabus for this course actually wasn't as blah, blah, blah, focused on X, Y, Z as I thought it was going to be. And they go, cool, what do you want to replace it with?

Nice. If you do that in a regular major, they're like, tough crap. That's why we put that in there. And so I made my own concentration in undergrad. And then after that, I went to law school. So getting an undergrad degree, to be fair, of any type is not a great way to get a job. But especially making one up where they go, huh, what's this? And then you have to explain it while they zone out is not a good selling point.

It's great for grad schools, though. they love that stuff. Absolutely. So I know that you're also one of Malcolm Gladwell's favorite social science writers. That's pretty cool. And I figure he probably didn't just call you and go, hey, yo, Adam, I'm going to name you as one of my favorite science writers. Did you just read an article? You just picked up social science daily and there you were? Or how does that work? I would love to read that if it existed. But there was a New York Times piece where he was interviewed in the fall that a bunch of people sent me where he was asked to name some of his favorite social science writers and was kind enough to put my name on that list for reasons that are unbeknown

to me. And also you're one of Wharton's youngest full professors, really highly rated teacher, et cetera, et cetera. But why don't you tell us what you teach? Because all the accolades in the world really don't mean squad unless you can convey something to us. No pressure. All right. I'll do my best. So I'm an organizational psychologist. Basically, I teach anything that has to do with people in organizations. So one of my courses is on leadership and teamwork. you set a vision and motivate people to follow you, and how do you collaborate effectively when you're working with others? I teach another class on negotiations, and another one on organizational behavior, which looks at everything from making group decisions to selection

and hiring, to organizational change in culture, and just about everything, people relevant in between. Excellent. And you wrote a book called Give and Take, which everybody is like, you know, gushing about. Tell us, I mean, essentially, when you're looking at this book, it's not just networking. It's about figuring out how much you can give without sort of getting taken for a ride. That's a great way of capturing it, absolutely. Why is it important to give, first of all,

and why is it important to think about being taken for a ride? I mean, there's a lot of people that I've encountered that are just, they're takers. And yeah, at some level, you go, damn, that guy's never going to really pay it back in any way. He's just going to kind of continually make me feel bad about it. it. And yeah, you can cut those people loose, but at some point it does actually start harming you. And I guess we can get into that in a little bit. But first of all, what's up with giving and how come

you decided to study it? Because isn't it so obvious that you just, you know, you give a lot of valued other people and eventually dot, dot, dot, profit, right? That's like the newest thing in entrepreneurial thinking and networking. It is. But it turns out to be a lot more complicated than that. Oh, damn it. I thought this was going to be a seven minute interview. All right. Continue. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I guess, you know, the place to start for me is to say that in any industry or any culture, you find these three styles of interaction.

So on one end, we have the takers. And those are the people, as you described, who are always trying to get stuff from other people and they never like to give things back. They're great social loafers and free riders and shirkers. They hog the interesting, visible, important projects and leave the grunt work for everyone else. And then walk away with the lion's share of credit for collective achievements.

And I just love working with those people. I'm sure, yeah, don't we all? Yeah. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the givers. And just to be really clear, for me, a giver is not a philanthropist or a volunteer necessarily, but just someone who enjoys helping others and often does it with no strings attached. Interesting. Because here's the problem, right?

A lot of people, when they talk about things like networking, like we're going to get into a little bit, they say things like, give value. And it's like, oh, that's such a good idea. And then they turn around and they go, wait, what does that mean? I don't get it. I don't have a lot of money. I just got out of school or give value. This guys make $10 million a year.

What am I going to give him? Where do I even begin? Yeah, I think this is a common challenge for most of us. So you can break down giving into a bunch of categories. One is sharing your knowledge. So if you have expertise that other people would value, providing that, whether it's something as simple as passing along an article or actually giving some more in-depth feedback.

Another way would be to provide mentoring to people who are trying to follow in your footsteps. So even if you're just starting out in your career, there are probably people who are considering similar majors might be looking at different kinds of career options that are things you've explored in the past and taking some of those people under your wing is one way of giving value.

Another way of thinking about giving is making introductions. So your network obviously is a huge resource and being able to connect people who are currently strangers but could really benefit mutually from knowing each other is a powerful way to give. And a lot of times it's something as simple as showing up earlier or staying late to support the people around you. And I think usually whatever kind of giving are going to focus on, it starts with asking the question, what do other people need?

What are their challenges? What kinds of problems are they trying to solve? And then looking at who you know and what you know and trying to figure out if you're able to connect the dots. Okay. This might be a little bit off the reservation here, but is there a way to differentiate? And this is just a problem that I'm kind of running into. And I hope I don't scare people away from emailing me or trying to help out when I say this. but there's a class of people that goes, hey, Jordan, do you want an introduction to this guy? I think he'd be a good fit for the show. And I'm like, oh my gosh, yes, that's really helpful because now I don't have to read 10,000 blogs to keep my finger on the pulse.

My audience is doing it for me. It's one of the most helpful things ever, especially when they offer to make the introduction, even if they don't know the person and they're like, I'll send a contact form email and I'll let them know how to reach you by putting your email in there and, you know, seeing if they reply, blah, blah, blah, that's super helpful. But then there's this other class of people that's kind of like, hey, let me give you some help on your internet marketing. And I'm like, yuck, no thanks. And then they list off all these weird critiques that, like, aren't useful and aren't very helpful. Or they're like, you should have this guy in your show. And I've taken the liberty of telling him that you would be interested.

And it's like some completely weird dude that I'm not into. And now I've got to, like, deal with that introduction and blow the guy off nicely or something like that. You know what I mean? And so how do we do it in a calibrated way where we're actually doing the person of favor, not just sort of going through the motions of doing that person of favor while sort of secretly being a little bit annoying? Yeah, I think this is a common challenge that most of us run into. And it stems from the fact that most of us give what we like to give as opposed to what other people want to receive.

Oh, that's interesting. There are a couple ways to try to get around that. One is to directly ask, right? So, you know, Jordan, I really like the work that you do. I would love to figure out if there are ways that I can be helpful to you. what kinds of challenges are you stuck with right now? You know, if you were going to reach out to somebody and say, hey, it would be really awesome if somebody did X, what would X be?

And then you could give me a little bit of direction. Another thing, though, is I actually think receivers can do a good job with this. So you could broadcast your interests much more clearly. Right. So I've seen a growing number of people who, when you click on the website in their Twitter profile, for example, it takes you to, here are the things that I would love to engage on, and here are the things where I'm not that interested.

And then, you know, hopefully people will stop offering you the things that you don't want. That's a really good idea that I've never thought about. And I feel like that could be a simple line item in someone's bio. Because for me, it's more useful than I think for, like, somebody who's not on the internet all over the place all the time. There's a lot of things that people always are trying to critique that make no sense. And it's like, hey, we're doing this for a reason. But I don't want to explain that in every email.

So I get this little sort of auto thing. I think it makes perfect sense. But what if we're looking to give and we, and we don't know. Like, what if somebody's emailing you out of the blue and they're like, I really want to help Adam Grant because he's awesome. How do I find out what you want?

I mean, you wrote a book, so maybe you're not the best example. But if I look in the book, am I going to find out how to reach out to you and help you, or do I have to guess? No, actually, you'd probably still have to guess because I tried to write the book in a way that was about the evidence and the stories

as opposed to about me. So you'd be grasping for straws. Yeah, there are a couple ways that you could do this if somebody is not that visible or if they're just a completely, stranger. One would be, I would download an app called Refresh, which is a really clever way of preparing for first-time meetings. Have you used it before? I have not. I found it to be quite fascinating and useful. So what Refresh does is it basically aggregates everything you would ever

find in a web search. And instead of having to go through all these different hits, what it does is it gives you one sort of consolidated profile of all the information that's out there online about a person. and then you can figure out that, you know, like you lived on the same street four years apart, or, you know, you might share a common interest in a really obscure minor league sports team. And then you've got a foundation for a conversation, which then feeds into the other person being more likely to open up and actually tell you about how you could be helpful. The other thing you could do is you could actually propose several different things that you might be able to offer.

So, you know, hey, I think the work you're doing is really meaningful. I would love to support it in any way I can. and the three ways that I most enjoy being helpful, Jordan, typically are, you know, one, I really love sharing research. I study all these dynamics about organizations, and if you have a question about that ever, I'm likely to be able to think of a study that might reference it. Two, I really enjoy making introductions. And these are the kinds of people that are in my network. If you ever want to meet somebody like that, great. And then three, you know, I also occasionally find it pretty entertaining when I can share something that's not typically in my wheelhouse, but

has come on my radar. So, for example, because I wrote Give and Tick, a lot of people have emailed me to tell me about apps that they've created that are facilitating giving or that are helping people who are looking for certain kinds of help to connect with givers who want to provide it. I could certainly direct you to those kinds of apps. You could almost treat this like your server at a restaurant, present a menu of the different ways that you enjoy being helpful, and then see if the person bites on any of them. Excellent. So if they do bite, then how do we turn that into an efficient process because here's what I'm definitely afraid of and I know I'm not alone on this because I talk with people who run successful businesses every single day, almost all day long,

essentially. And one of the big annoyances is you go, all right, yeah, sure, send me some feedback on this because you're, yes, you're a blog reader or whatever, you know, you've consumed my product if you're a product guy. And I'd love to hear what you think about it. And then it turns into this like time suck where they're like, great, well, send me these resources and then let me look at this and then let's jump on the phone and you're going, how did I just commit myself to like a 10-hour part-time job after accepting help from somebody else? Well, I think, you know, there are a lot of ways of dealing with this. One is you set up stage gates. So you have people in your organization who feel those initial conversations. And then they tell you who's likely to be most helpful or

who, you know, seems to actually fit in a category where you think there's mutual benefits. to further engagement. I had the misfortune after giving take came out last year. I'm getting about 4,000 emails from people in the span of a few weeks who wanted various things or wanted to help in a number of ways. And I ended up hiring someone who basically does triage. And he takes all the initial conversations. He figures out what they're looking to give or ask for. And then he comes back to me with a report on, here are the things that I think you should definitely contribute to or engage with. Here are the things that are maybe. And then on these others, let's brainstorm about whether we can direct them toward resources that are up their alley.

Right. The other 3,900 emails, right? Exactly. The second thing that I would say is I would recommend starting with the initial conversation. I think that any kind of scheduling app that allows you to book like a 15-minute conversation is a pretty good start. And then, you know, the conversation has a dedicated end time, which most people find awkward to schedule verbally. But if that's part of the system, it's there, then you can sort of figure out after that conversation whether further engagement is useful. The other thing I would do to go back to this idea of sort of broadcasting what kind of help you do and don't want is refer people either in your auto reply or in your actual email response. Here's my statement about why this kind of help has not been useful to me in the past.

If you have a rationale about why I'm wrong or you think you can be helpful in a way that I don't currently understand, give me your best one sentence or two sentence explanation of why. And then if they can pull that off, maybe you're interested in having that conversation. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Adam Grant. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting this show. I love having these guests on. I love these conversations.

And your support of those who support us is what, frankly, keeps the lights on around here. All the deals and discount codes are all in one place. Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals is where you can find them. It's a newly designed page. You can find it working on your phone. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Now, back to Adam Grant. Just to be super clear, I'm not doing this to be like,

wah, wah, wah, me and Adam are so important. We get so much email. Everybody loves us and wants help. I'm looking at this from what can you guys learn from listening to people sort of who do get a lot of this. I did the math recently because somebody got mad at me for recently declining a meetup. I literally counted it up.

And if I met with everybody that requested time from me last quarter for one hour on the phone or in person, I would have spent over 700 hours working, which is more than any reasonable full-time position every single day of every single week. Yeah, and none of those people who are reaching out have any idea how many other requests are on your plate. So even if plenty of them are not takers, it just adds up. Well, let me ask you this.

Would you agree that it kind of pays to assume that that person is slammed beyond all reasonable opportunities so that you really go, listen, I'll keep it short. boom, boom, boom, this is what I can do. If not, no response necessary. You know, just make it as easy for them to reply, as easy for them to sift through as possible. Absolutely. I actually ended up writing two different blog posts on this

because I was so stunned when I went through this transition from being sort of like an invisible professor to being an author that was a little bit more in the public eye and findable. So last year I wrote one about six different ways to get me to email you back. I basically went through all the different emails that I had received in the preceding. couple months since the book launched and try to figure out which ones I was most motivated

to respond to and why, and then sort of boiled it down to a bunch of really simple pieces of advice that I guess fall in like a knowing doing gap category. When you read it, like none of it's surprising, except that almost no one follows any of the rules. I'm totally on board with that. And then actually just this past spring, I wrote one about rude emails, which sort of categorized the nine different things that people do almost every day in emails to me where I think, gosh, that was not a good way to make a connection. I would love to also hear about what has worked and what has been one of those completely like, wow, this guy's a Yahoo and I'm never going to talk to this person again. In fact, let's start with that because it sounds fun. Oh, it's fun.

So I guess when Given Tate came out last year, there was a New York Times piece that wrote about the book and talked about, I guess my wife got quoted as saying that I never say no or something to that effect. It was like putting up a big neon sign to all the takers in the world. Hey, contact this guy. And I got one email from a guy who wanted me to help him fight his medical malpractice lawsuit. Now, I'm not a doctor or a lawyer, so I don't know how we can help with that, but I felt bad for him. And then there was another one from a guy who said, my dream is to become a millionaire. I'm not currently one. I'm wondering if you can introduce me to all the millionaires in your network so I can become one. That's brutal. Yeah, that's like take a breath and realize what you're asking.

Like, I want to expend all my social capital introducing you to people so that you can essentially ask them similarly ridiculous questions in the hopes that you'll eventually get money. It sounds like a fun experiment in social capital suicide. Exactly. Yeah, like, hey, I just wanted you to meet this guy. He's probably going to incessantly ask you for things because he wants to be wealthy. There's no other plan on how to get there other than asking you for ideas slash money slash resources to that effect. And people would go, remind me to never answer a call or email from Adam Grant ever again. Exactly.

I would be giving to this stranger in order to take from like the busiest most successful people I know. That sounds totally fair. Yeah, absolutely. And I understand that. And I want to just be again really clear. I love introductions. I'm sure that you also appreciate introductions when they're fruitful. And even when something doesn't quite work out, it's like, eh, it's really a thought

that counts type of situation for me anyway. Oh, wow, this wasn't a good fit, but I can see how you would have thought that. It's worth one in ten that's really a stinker to kind of go, okay, fine. But then after a while, if you notice sometimes those stinkers all come from the same person, you go, wait a minute,

what's this person's individual track record of wasting my time? And a lot of times you can zoom in and find one or two culprits that are like, oh, this guy actually only sends me about one in three that are any good at all, and the rest suck. So you know, you got to zoom out or zoom in, depending on how you look at it, a little bit with the networking stuff. Yeah, I've had that experience, Jordan. It's funny because

when I've sort of traced those introductions back to a few of the common offenders, it seems that either they just have really bad judgment of, you know, like who I would want to spend my time with or, you know, how I can be helpful to other people, or I somehow am the most important person in their network, and they're making introductions to me to gain status with other people. Yes. Which, like, I don't know, if the most important person in your network is a professor and that's your status move, that's kind of sad. Yeah, well, that's an interesting way to look at it too. It makes you wonder, damn, what are actually famous people dealing with on the daily basis, right?

Like, hey, I run a podcast, not a big deal. If you're sending me this because you want to look cool to this guy, damn, I feel for you. You know, there's guys on Twitter that have more cloud than I do in pretty much every scenario. Exactly. But I digress. So how do we go and help people efficiently then? What were some of your rules for getting through the defenses built around your time and your network? Well, I think if the goal is to help efficiently, my favorite practice that I've learned about is called the five-minute favor. The backstory on this comes from this incredible serial entrepreneur, Adam Rifkin, who founded his first company at $50 million of funding. He started two other companies that did

well and retired in his 30s, basically to become a full-time giver trying to help entrepreneurs. And Adam said the biggest mistake that people make is they think they're supposed to be like Gandhi or Mother Teresa. And that's just not sustainable for any of us. What you want to do is find ways of adding high value to other people's lives at a low personal cost. And that's what the five-minute favor is all about. So he says, no matter whether you're a giver or a taker, we can all do three or four more five-minute favors in a given week than we probably do. And so Adam actually experienced this personally about 12 years ago, he was extremely shy and introverted. And he said, all right, I'm going to try to do more five-minute favors. And what Adam loves most, to your point,

is making introductions. So he decides he's going to start making three intros every day. And he just kind of thinks about who's in his network, how they can help each other. And he wakes up in the morning and makes three introductions. He has done that every day for 12 years. And by my count, over five dozen companies have been started because he's connected up. If you're a business person, he's found you're your tech partner. or vice versa. He's also accidentally arranged a few marriages. What's great about it for Adam, though, is that it just takes him a few minutes. And he often then move on with his day to get his own work done. And it's life-changing for many of the people that he connects. He's really careful, though,

to do a lot of double opt-in intros where he'll reach out to you and say, you know, hey, Jordan, I think you should meet this guy, Tim Ferriss. Here's his background. Here's why I think you should connect. And then he'd reach out to Tim and say the same thing about you. And then if there's mutual interest to make the intro. And all of this connecting actually got Adam named Fortune's best networker in 2011. And you never would expect that he would be the best networker on Earth, according to Fortune. But he got it because he had more powerful connections on LinkedIn than anybody else to basically the founders of every tech company that you've ever heard of. And he did all of that just by being generous with his network and making connections that were mutually beneficial.

That is awesome. And yeah, Adam Rifkin is essentially like the man, when it comes to that. He's super, super giving. And yeah, it's kind of brilliant, the double opt-in system. Do you want to go over that for a second? Because I think a lot of people don't do that. In fact, I just started doing it a short time ago. I can't remember exactly. But it's brilliant because it does stop you from introducing people that already know each other or that don't want to deal with each other anymore because either they already know each other or one person looks and says, ah, I can't touch this because I have a contract in place. You would never have known that, but thanks for asking.

And then you go, oh, good thing I dodged that bullet. It's happened to me quite a few times where I think, wow, I've made a lot of intros and never done this. And now that I'm doing this and I'm getting people saying no for various reasons that I couldn't possibly have known, I just wonder how many of my other intros have gone unanswered and made me look kind of like a dumbass. Yeah, I think this is also a relatively new practice for me.

I used to just see introductions as uniformly positive and just think that it was always exciting when new people got to connect. And then after receiving a few bad intros, and also ending up introducing people who already knew each other. I was like, okay, there's got to be a better way to do this. So, you know, I think the basic idea is to reach out to both of the people that you're planning to connect and give each of them just a sentence or two of the rationale

for why you think they would hit it off. And that ought to go beyond just, oh, you live in the same city and I happen to know you both. It's you're both interested in the same technology. Or you both happen to love this TV show that no one else watches and I'm sick of the two of you telling me about it. whatever it is, right? You should have what social scientists call an uncommon common commonality. So something that you both really care about or are interested in or good at,

but that's relatively unique to each of you. That's good because my least favorite intro, please hold that thought, is, hey, you guys both live in San Francisco. You should get beers together. And I'm like, hmm, I like beer. Wait a minute. Who are you? I don't know you. No, I can't even spend time with my own parents and girlfriend. Sorry. It's too common of a commonality. or hey, he lives near you. That's great, but so to like literally millions of other people. Exactly. So give me a really unique reason for why I should connect with this person or why this person should be enthusiastic about connecting with me. And not only will that increase the likelihood that both people go in sort of ready to make a meaningful connection, but it also, it signals

that you're more of a giver, right? Because you actually sat down and instead of just imposing this introduction on two people, you asked whether it would be something that would benefit both of them. and then when it does, guess what? That means that you actually get to test your judgment and you know moving forward what kinds of people to connect. The double opt-in is brilliant. It takes a little bit longer, which is I think why I was a little bit resistant to doing it.

I'm like, ah, they'll dig it. But then it was, I definitely had a couple stinkers where I thought, okay, I need to go ahead and do that anyway. Now, in your book, you talk about essentially the power of powerless communication. What does that mean? It's basically a way of kind of highlighting how people who talk like takers end up projecting confidence and confidence,

but alienating the other people they're trying to build relationships with and how there's another way of speaking that tends to work better. The concrete example that always stands out for me is Abraham Lincoln. So Lincoln was in a debate, and his opponent called him two-faced. And Lincoln, he was very quick-witted, obviously, and actually had a pretty disarming sense of humor. without even skipping a bead, he says, you call me Two-Face. Well, do you really think if I had another face I would wear this one? Oh, nice. And the audience, of course, loses it. And what's great about

this is he is deliberately making himself look bad, right? He's commenting on his own appearance in a negative way. That is conceding some level of power. He's making his attractiveness or lack thereof salient. But he's doing that in such a way that humanizes him and makes it makes people much more interested in connecting with him as a person. And that's what powerless communication is all about. So in a networking context, what it usually means is instead of saying, here are the eight reasons that you should want to connect with me, instead saying, hey, I really admire your work

and give me the other person some of the power. And I was wondering if you might be willing to spend five minutes with me talking about this topic, you know, answering this question that I'm grappling with that's uniquely relevant to your background. Even though you're putting yourself in a little bit of a deferential position, you're also allowing the other person to feel intelligent and competent. And that turns out to be a powerful thing, even though it feels powerless. Yeah, excellent. And you kind of hinted at something else there. You said that spotting takers, they often communicate this sort of arrogance and maybe a little bit

of some other qualities. Can you teach us how to spot a selfish taker before we get taken for a ride? Such a critical skill, especially in networking. And a lot of us get fooled because takers actually actually tend to make more charming first impressions. Uh-oh. Yeah, I don't like where this is going, man. I'm sorry, Jordan, but if you look at the data, it's the biggest narcissist and the most egotistical people who exude that confidence that just draws us to them,

and then they end up being the same people who stab us in the back or maybe in the face. So a couple ways to spot them. One is to look for a pattern of kissing up but kicking down. A lot of takers are really good fakers when dealing with powerful people. Ah, yeah. But they find out pretty quickly.

it's a lot of work to pretend to care about everyone they interact with, and they let their guard down with peers and subordinates. So if you find somebody who's really nice and generous with people above them, but pretty unpleasant with people below, that's one risk factor. Sorry, how would we find that out? Oh, you know, I think that a lot of times this is actually gathering gossip. Okay. It's positive gossip. Do a little recon, little recon. Yeah, you're going around and asking people, hey, what do you think of this person?

And if you notice a pattern where people who are in positions of power over them are always positive, and everyone else is negative, then that's something I would want to investigate more closely. Ah, yeah, that's a good call. Interesting. You can definitely look at their speech patterns. So when talking about success, takers use a lot more eyes and me's as opposed to us and we,

which is not really surprising, but a lot of us forget it. There's a great finding on social media, which is if you go to Facebook, for example, the narcissistic takers among us, I actually have more self-glorifying and attractive profile photos. Now, just to be clear, Takers are not hotter than the rest of us, but you will find a greater gap between how they look on average and how good they look in their profile picture, because they're the ones who put all that time into putting their best foot forward.

This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Adam Grant. We'll be right right back. By the way, you can now rate the show if you're on Spotify. This is a big help. Just search for us in Spotify and click those three dots on the upper right to rate the show. Now, for the rest of my conversation with Adam Grant. You know, thinking back, I'm racing through my head for examples, especially with the I and the we, and it's like, you know, my company, I've built it up to this and this and this, and I'm thinking, does no one else work there? Or you wrote the whole thing by yourself? Or, you know what I mean? It's especially when you'll hear somebody who wants to maybe come on the show and give their work some exposure. And then you talk to other people and they're like, he's really rude. And you go, man, but in his phone calls and his emails, he's been so polite. There must be two sides of the story. and the other side of the story might be

that once he's done with me, he doesn't give a crap, and I've experienced that plenty of times, have someone on the show, and then you go, hey, I was interested in this and this and this, and they go, yeah, I'm really busy right now, or they just don't even answer at all,

and you go, oh, I see what you did there. You came on, got what you thought you could use from us, and now you don't need us anymore. In large part, it's like, talk to me in three years when you write another book and you want to come back, and then it's funny, those things must bite people in the ass all the time, though.

They do, and a lot of that is because of this third group, of people that we haven't talked about yet, but are actually sort of critical in explaining why givers rise and takers fall. So most people actually are right in the middle of this spectrum as what I call matchers. And a matcher is somebody who tries to keep an even balance of give and take. So I'll do something for you if you do something for me. And matchers really believe in fairness and justice. So they hate seeing takers act selfishly and get away with it. And when that happens, they feel like, all right, it's now my mission in life to punish this person and become the karma police so that the next person they try to screw over.

you know, we'll actually see them coming. And since most people kind of follow this norm of matching by default, it makes it really tough for its take her to burn one bridge and then start over fresh with a new person. Right, because somebody will come out of the woodwork and go, by the way, I saw that so-and-so tweeted at you or post on your Facebook wall, just so you know, the guy's a freaking dipstick. Don't deal with them. My two cents. That is basically the contribution that matchers make to all of our lives by wielding that sort of justice. Interesting. I do get messages like that all the time from people. Like, hey, I noticed you had this person on your show.

Look at this email. He sent me a year ago. And usually it's like, you were kind of being annoying. Maybe you didn't get that. But sometimes it's like, wow, that was surprising. I didn't see that coming. And often enough, later on down the line, I'll get a similar email. Like I was saying before, oh, I see what you did there.

I had you on. And then I was supposed to go on your thing and you just don't answer my email. And it's like, ah, I got burned again. Damn it, you know. And it can be really frustrating. but I think maybe I should ask you this. How do you stay sane when that happens to you? Because for me, I just kind of go, eh, karma's a bitch, but it's really not my problem.

And I get philosophical about it, and I just kind of move on with my life because otherwise I'd go crazy. Yeah, I think actually that's a pretty common reaction among givers is just to say, you know, that you must live a pretty tragic life if that's how you're operating. Yeah. But I guess I've become increasingly convinced that paying that kind of reputational information forward is an act of giving in and up itself. So I feel like, you know, occasionally what I've seen

among some really successful givers is when they're on the receiving end of that, they will go out of their way to then say, all right, you know what, I'm going to try to prevent this kind of behavior in the future, and I'm going to go issue a bunch of these warnings. And, you know, that way at least,

even if these people don't get converted from the take her end of the spectrum, they learn that their reputations are following them and they might want to be a little bit more caring or cautious. Interesting. Okay, I can dig that. And you also mentioned in your book doing something called being a chunker, not a sprinkler. What do you mean by that? Imagine that you were going to do five, five-minute favors next week.

If you were a sprinkler, you would basically spread one across each day. So you'd pick one on Monday, one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, and so on. The chunker would say, instead of sprinkling them across the week, I'm going to consolidate them into one day. And I'm going to do all five of those acts on Wednesday. And there's some pretty cool research on this by Sonia Lubomerski and her colleagues who had people do exactly this for 10 weeks. So they were randomly assigned to either sprinkle their helping and giving acts across the week or pick one day each week to chunk them.

And only one group got happier and more energized. And it's the exact opposite of what most people think. Most people think the sprinklers get better off. It's actually the case that only the chunkers get a boost in their mood and their energy. And this is still pretty preliminary. but what we think is happening is when you kind of do one act of giving a day, it's a drop in the bucket. You don't feel like you really made a difference and you also get distracted from your own tasks. Whereas when you pick one day as kind of your giving day each week, you feel like, wow, what I did today really added up to have an impact.

And I'm also able then to take the rest of the week and focus on the stuff that I need to get done. And so, you know, I think that unfortunately most people end up sprinkling when they should be chunking. Interesting. And that's not just to get a better net effect. for getting a return on our networking or whatever, but it's actually good for us because it gives us brain chemical, so there's the benefit. Exactly, and then it gives you a bunch of energy

that can spill over either to help you do more giving if that's your goal, or just to give you a little bit more of a boost in terms of working harder, smarter, or longer. Now, some of the other networking tips that you give, or at least some of the other advice that you give, includes becoming a better negotiator, and I definitely want to touch on that before I let you go,

because I think a lot of people are often wondering, they might even be networking for the purpose of maybe getting a better job or getting a better position or getting a different project. How can giving actually help us become better negotiators or can it actually? Well, a lot of it depends on how you give. So the best study I've seen on this was done at Vanderbilt where essentially you're going to negotiate with somebody else and you get tested on your intelligence before the negotiation as your counterpart.

And then the results get tracked. You add up all the different people who have gone through the negotiation. And you look at who does the best. And it turns out the higher the average intelligence of negotiating pairs, the better they did. But it didn't play out at all the way that anyone expected. It turns out, so the higher your intelligence, the better the person negotiating with you is going to do. Really? Why is that? It just flies in the face of conventional wisdom.

We normally are afraid of negotiating with really smart people because we think they're going to outsmart But it turns out the smarter you are, the quicker on the fly, you can figure out what can I offer you that costs me nothing, but will help you a lot. And the really bright negotiators are constantly analyzing what you need that I can afford to give away and then putting that on the table. And so they end up turning a lot of what seemed like win-lose negotiations into much more win-win, because if I've got something that's huge value to you but low cost to me, then I want to make sure that I'm offering that up. So one of the big tips that you also give and that we talked about prior to the show was reconnecting with dormant ties. And this is an elusive one because a lot of people

go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I'm supposed to reach out to my college romance. I'm supposed to call my dad's friend and blah, blah, blah, I'll do that later. Right now, I'm doing XYZ. Or yeah, I already know that. Tell me something new, but you really think that it's important. Yeah, the data on this are shocking to a lot of people. So if you're working on a project right now and you need advice or information. If you reach out to people you used to know, you actually get better knowledge than if you reach out to people you currently know. And the reason is most of the people that we reach out to right now are strong ties. So the people we see every day, they know us well. And they tend to know a lot of the same stuff and same people that we do. So when we ask them for help or advice,

they basically just give us redundant information. Whereas dormant ties are traveling in different circles and learning different things, meeting different people. So that college roommate, the person you grew up across the street from, maybe somebody you worked with in a prior job, you can't predict who they know and what they know in the last three, five, seven years since you last connected. And so they can really open up a fresh window of insight for you. Now, when you do this, you'll find out really quickly if you've been a giver, a taker, a matcher in that relationship. Because if you've been a taker, basically that dormant tie is going to lock the door to their network and throw away the key. Whereas if you've been a matcher, it's a little bit

easier to reconnect. But matchers, because they have this quid pro quo mentality, tend to create a transactional vibe. Like Jordan, I didn't really care about you. I was just helping you so I could get something in return. Whereas if you've been a giver in that relationship, there's this reservoir of goodwill. And that person's super excited to hear from you, find out what you're up to and figure out if it's possible to help you. And so I think that that's one of the powerful ways that giving actually pays off in the long run. But a lot of givers are reluctant to reconnect with their dormant ties because they don't want to be a burden to them. Forgetting, of course, that if your dormant ties are matchers, they want to basically even

the score. They want to reciprocate. And so if you reach out, you're actually doing them a favor. Oh, that's great. That's a good way to look at it. Because a lot of people, especially, I dare say people that aren't doing so well in business, they often say like, oh, I don't want to connect you to so-and-so because I might need that connection later.

You ever hear that? Yes. And it's like, why is that zero-sum? Yeah, exactly. You can have that connection and I can have it too. People might say, oh, man, you interviewed Adam Grant. I really want to talk to him too. And obviously, I'll go through the old double opt-in process.

But I think some of the people that I've asked for introductions to other people, they say things like, well, I don't want to use it right now. Or I don't want to burn that one because I might have to ask him, I need that favor in the bank. And they don't say it necessarily like that. But you can tell they're kind of thinking, I can probably only email this guy one time. get something. So I don't want it to be for you. It's like, well, no, if you built a meaningful

relationship there, or even if you've fallen out of touch, but you had some significant history, when you're reaching out, you can always do it from the standpoint of being a giver rather than a taker and say, look, you know, one of the things that I'm looking to do is add value to the people who matter in my life. You know, I'd really love to catch up and get back in touch. Or, you know, another one that I found to be really compelling is when you reach out to a dormit tie and you say, you know, I just had this experience recently that reminded me of you. And, you know, I was really bummed that we fallen out of contact. It would be great to find out what you're up to you and if, you know, if there are ways that I can be of help to you.

And, you know, if you make a habit of doing that every so often, the Adam Rifkin recommendation is he reconnects with one dormant tie every month. It's not a lot of work, right? If you have a reminder in your calendar on the last day of every month, just to contact one person you used to know. That's 12 rekindled connections every year. Some of those are going to pay off, and you don't have to be strategic about it. It's just one of the things you do to stay in touch with people who once were a part of your life. How do you recommend people go about that? I mean, do you just write a list of college roommate, buddy from high school, former teacher that I really like,

is there a systematic way to do it? Because thinking about all of my former connections is like this massively overwhelming thing happening in my brain. Yeah, I actually think the less systematic the better because the research on this also shows that we can't predict which dormant ties are going to be helpful to us. We just don't know enough about what's been going on with them. So what I would say is either when you're going to travel to a given city, you look up who's there, or you literally just log into LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever social media you use and see who pops up that gives you the reaction of, I kind of miss that person. And if you make a habit of doing that once a month, you'll reconnect with some really interesting people.

Excellent. Thanks so much, man. Is there anything you want to leave us with? The one thing I would say here is a lot of people are really confident that they're already givers. And I would just urge everyone to be cautious with that because we all overestimate our own generosity. So I think that this is a judgment that can only be made by the people you interact with. So it's worth trying to find out through others' eyes how you're seen as opposed to just assuming, yeah, of course, because I have access to every act of generosity I've ever done, everybody else is going to think I'm a giver too. If anybody is interested, we have a free tool to facilitate that on the give and take site. If you go to give and take.com, you can invite

anyone to rate you anonymously, and then the site will aggregate all the ratings for free and give you basically a mirror to look at yourself through others' eyes. And I would say, try that one with your own risk. Yeah, wow, because you can get an answer that you really don't like. Yeah, and I think in some ways that's the most valuable feedback anyone could get. Oh, I would agree. Wow. Thanks so much. Adam Grant, obviously, we'll have your book, Giveandake.com, linked up in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me.

Pleasure to be here. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with actress and former Scientologist, Leah Remini. There's a special department in the Scientology Organization. Their sole job is to go after those speaking out against Scientology. That's all they do day in, day out. One of the directives says by Elwyn Harvard says, find out what the person is seeking to protect and go after it. And I'm quoting now, if at all possible, utterly destroy.

When you want to talk about, oh, it's like any other religion, you need to get your head out of your fucking ass and really understand what the difference is between having faith and having an organization that has a price list and has an organization dedicated solely for the utter destruction of people who leave. Scientology's goal is to make 80% of the planet Scientologists. Without Scientology, there's no hope for man. And that is the extremist attitude of every Scientologist on the planet.

The leader's wife has been missing for years now. What do you think happened to her? Where is she? I don't know that Shelly's a lot. I don't know where Shelly is. This is David Miscabbage, the leader of Scientology, chairman of the board. This is Tom Cruise's best friend. Jordan, if you had a best friend that you knew had a wife that was with him all the time,

wouldn't she say, well, I haven't seen your wife? Like, I need to see her. I'm sorry to worry that she's in a fucking freezer somewhere. No one's done that. I have been the only person that has ever inquired about Shelley Muscavage. To learn more about the dangers of the cult of Scientology from Leah Remini herself, check out episode 485 on the Jordan Hark. Harbinger show. Always love a good combo with Adam Grant. I hope relating my personal experience

helps people out here, because it can be really tricky. And a lot of times when we don't put ourselves in the shoes of the people we're reaching out too, we can make a mistake. And I also thought it was very useful to learn how to protect your own bandwidth, whether we're a business owner or anyone else for that matter, as well as how to spot takers and protect ourselves from those folks as well, because they are friggin' everywhere. And I'm sure that all of us have encountered a few dozen of these people throughout our lives and will continue to do so until we take our last breath here. So be sure to use that five-minute favor and be sure to reach upward with style and grace and do those double opt-in introductions.

Big thank you to Adam Grant. Links to all things Adam will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Please do use our website links if you buy books from anyone here on the show. It does help support the show. Transcripts are in the show notes. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or you can hit me up on LinkedIn. love connecting with you anywhere and everywhere. Again, the six-minute networking course,

I highly recommend it if you are into networking or you're learning to network and reach out to people and you don't want to be gross and annoying and salesy. This course is for you. It's also free. It's at jordanharbinger.com slash course. I'm teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty.

Reach out, reach up in a graceful and classy way. And most of the guests you hear on the show, they subscribe and contribute to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who loves Adam Grant or is interested in learning how to network a little bit better and not be gross with it, share this episode with him. Hopefully you find something great in every episode of this show. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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