The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Conversation with Adam Grant — Honing Your Potential and Building Strong Character Traits

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Adam Grant, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and bestselling author, joins Scott to discuss his latest book, “Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things," and more. Scott opens with his thoughts on going to the White House, Twitter’s valuation, and Meta launching a subscription service in the EU. Algebra of Happiness: fatherhood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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NMLS 1617539. Episode 274. 274 is the area code belonging to the northeastern parts of wisconsin in 1974 the rubik's cube was invented and richard nixon became the first u.s president to resign as a result of the watergate scandal true story i told my boys if they get a tattoo they need to get it somewhere where it doesn't matter so they got them in wisconsin go go go where it doesn't matter. So they got them in Wisconsin. Go, go, go!

Welcome to the 274th episode of the Prop G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with my nemesis, my Luke, my Lex, is it Lex? My Lex Luthor. That's right, my Krypton to my excellencies. And the reality is he doesn't see me as his nemesis, as I'm like a gnat hitting the windshield of his academic excellence. People have, no joke, mistaken me.

I once got booked on MSNBC, and they brought me on, and they were prepping me. And I was in the makeup room, and the producer came in and said, we're just thrilled to have you. And she's like, I went to Penn. And I'm like, OK, she went to Penn. Why is she talking about it? And then it dawned on me. They thought they had booked Adam Grant.

And I didn't know how to break it to them. But you realize I'm not Adam Grant. Anyways, we discuss with Adam his latest book, Hidden Potential, the science of achieving greater things. Well, smell you, Adam. OK, Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving Greater Things. Well, smell you, Adam. Okay, what's happening? I was at the White House. That's right. Who let the dog in?

I have never been to the White House, so I was very excited. And we were there. I went there with Kara Swisher. I actually have another podcast, which you may not know about. It's not important. It doesn't do very well. But anyways, my co-host there is a lady named Kara Swisher. And Kara found out I was going to the White House and somehow got herself invited.

And we went. And it was just a ton of fun. It was some observations about Washington and the White House. The first is there is a lot going on at the White House. The White House is every tech bro's dream of people working 18 hours a day and doing nothing but working. There's people just running around everywhere and very busy, very productive. There are a lot of people with guns. That's another thing I noticed. There's an incredible firepower there,

all these young ripped men and women with all manner of guns and bulletproof vests, which I thought was kind of cool, felt like kind of badass. And the other thing that really struck me is how just incredibly impressive the people were. I was there for the AI summit and this lovely woman next to me introduced herself. And it ends up she's the deputy undersecretary for the Department of Energy. And I'm like, wow, what are you doing? She's like, well, amongst other things, we oversee the world's most powerful supercomputers and we're providing input into AI. And it was clear within about 10 seconds of talking to this individual, she was crazy,

crazy smart. And it ends up she's a chemist and her name is Geraldine Richmond. She's from the University of Oregon and has this incredibly distinguished career as a chemist. And it just amazes me that our government is able to comb the four corners of the earth and find these incredibly impressive people. Anyways, the government in D.C. is just super inspiring. And it was just a ton of fun to be at the White House. Okay. Anyways, let's talk about the new executive order that outlines how the U.S. can be the leader or continue to be the leader in AI, all while reining in this technology's potential harm. I mean, when you really think

about it, it's just exceptional. An entirely new technology, you know, 10 countries making multi-billion, if not trillion-dollar investments in technology. And what do you know? The people who come up with the gangster or kind of own the new gangster technology and capture the majority of its value are not only in America, not only in California, but in about a seven-mile radius of SFO. It's just amazing. I don't care if it's Nvidia or an Anthropic.

I think Anthropic is in the Bay Area, is it? Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. I wanna hear my imitation of Dr. Evil. How about no? That's good. How about no? Anyways, this extensive order, if you open the administration,

is requiring that AI developers submit their safety test results to the government to ensure their products are not making alarming things like biological or nuclear weapons. See, I'm kind of on board with that. I'm kind of on board with somebody who, you know, kind of just ensuring they're not making biological or nuclear weapons. And the government can demand this type of order under the Defense Production Act. The Defense Production Act is a Cold War era law that gives the president power to control domestic industries, specifically in the interest of national defense. Makes sense to me. The executive order around AI also outlined several other measures around civil rights, consumer protection, scientific research, and worker

rights. So Goldman Sachs estimates that AI investment could reach 100 billion in the U.S. and 200 billion globally by 2025. Bloomberg reported that at least 25 US states considered AI-related legislation in 2023, and 15 have already passed laws or resolutions. This sweeping order comes about a month after Congress brought tech leaders, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Sachin Adela, and Sam Altman down to DC to discuss guardrails around AI. So the market is obviously inspired by AI. I would argue that the majority of the gains in the S&P and the NASDAQ have been AI inspired. Not necessarily that AI is having that much impact already, but people believe

that Microsoft and NVIDIA and Netflix and Meta are going to continue to register enormous upside from AI technology. Also, what should we talk about? What else is going on? I know, let's talk about me. I was on Bill Maher on Friday, and I did not enjoy it. This is my fourth time. Fourth time? Fourth time. I'm trusted in the fifth time I get access to some sort of special steam room and a jacket. I did not enjoy it as much this time. One, I get increasingly nervous. I'm always nervous about going on the show, but this week it just sort of was in my head way too much. And this week was a weird week. They had Governor Andrew Cuomo on as the kind of initial interview,

and he came out there with one of his deputies, which was sort of awkward. There was two of them. I do not envy the producer that had to thread that impossible needle of not being an apologist for Governor Cuomo, but obviously giving him some space to explain himself and give him some running room while offering pointed questions. I think if actually if you look at the interview, I think Bill actually puts on a masterclass around how to thread that needle. I think he's just, for lack of a better word, I just think he's such a pro. But because it went long, the actual panel interview, I was on with Jessica Tarlow, who's kind of the sane gangster on The Five on Fox, who's fantastic. I think she's a star. I think she's going to have her own show soon. And she's just super smart and lovely. And I got to

meet her and her husband, which was really nice. But the panel was cut short. So we didn't really get a chance to get into anything. But also the overtime session was with the governor and his aide. And we were talking about everything from Israel to deaths in nursing homes. And I'm sitting there thinking, Jesus Christ, I'm a marketing professor. Can we talk about TikTok or something? It was just so heavy and fraught with so many like one false move and you cancel yourself for the rest of your life. Anyway, so that was Bill Maher for me. Poor me. Poor me.

But the good news is soon after, I put on a Deadpool costume and I went to this great Casamigos party. I'm now at the point where I'm not cool or famous enough to be invited to cool parties for being cool or famous. I get invited as sort of their diversity invite. They're like, oh yeah, it makes this interesting to invite kind of a lame professor. And I just have a great time because I love to drink and I love hanging around hot people. Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't? LA for the weekend, Beverly Hills Hotel, which I absolutely love. I absolutely love. Yeah, am I rubbing my privilege in your face? A little bit, but you know what? I spent most of my life with no money. So it's just so much fucking fun to have it, quite frankly, and spend it at the counter, which is the best breakfast spot in the world. Anyway, I absolutely love it there. Great weekend. And then talk about a contrast You have to pay the Scott tax when you listen to Prop G. What else is going on? X is supposedly worth less than X. Fuck X. Twitter. It's Twitter.

Twitter is worth less than half of what Elon paid for a year ago. Employees were given equity in the company at a valuation of $19 million or $45 a share. So first off, that's total bullshit. It's equity values declined by 100%. And just a quick lesson in cap structure. A company typically has debt and then equity. So Twitter has $13 billion in debt. They borrowed, or he borrowed $13 billion in what was the largest impulse purchase in history to finance his $45 billion acquisition of Twitter. So imagine you buy a house and you borrow $100,000 to buy the house and the house is worth $150,000. That means you have $100,000 in debt and $50,000 in equity. And if the company becomes worth $100,000 and the house becomes worth $100,000, you lose all of your equity because

like, well, you still owe the $100,000. So the equity has been wiped out. So equity is kind of the tail of the whip here. And the way you look at this is you look at is the company worth more than the debt? If the company is not worth more than the debt, then the equity value is zero. Morgan is in this one, still holds the $13 billion in paper. In other words, they have an obligation from Twitter. They say, all right, Twitter, you owe us $13 billion. We owe the paper. We own the bonds, if you will. And at some point, as investment banks are not in the storage business or in the moving business, they have to sell this debt to the market. Now, the reason they haven't done that yet is interest rates accelerated so fast that the debt on Twitter that they managed to raise money offering a 12% coupon in exchange for loaning Twitter this money, interest rates have skyrocketed, meaning that 12% premium on a company or that 12% coupon on a company that's this risky and has seen such a massive implosion in revenues would no longer satisfy the market. So the bonds trade down in value. You're not getting $12 on $100. You'd get $12 on 75 bonds worth $75, meaning that you are getting an annual coupon of, I don't know what that would be, 16% or 18%. So these bonds are trading for

less than what Morgan Stanley paid for them. And so essentially, when they sell these bonds, they're going to have to take or cure the loss. Meaning if they sell them for 70 cents on the dollar and they have $13 billion of these bonds, they're going to lose 30% of 13 billion or they'll lose, what is that, 3.9 billion. And they'll have to take that loss in their next earnings. And they've been avoiding that, hoping that the market comes back. But at some point, they got to get this shit off of their books, see above, not in the storage business and the moving business. Now, if those bonds go out for less than 100 cents on the dollar, which they will,

it kind of implies that there's no equity value. And the question is, is this thing worth $13 billion? And I would argue it isn't. What is Twitter? Twitter is unprecedented. I would challenge you to come up with any company doing more than $5 billion a year, which Twitter was, I think about $5 or $5.5 billion a year, that registers a 50 plus percent decline in revenues within six months, which is what happened to Twitter. They're claiming it's 55. I bet they're lying again, and it's more like 60 or 70. Not during wartime. I've just never heard of that.

What's the lesson here? Understand the cap structure. If you're buying a stock, the most basic kind of valuation or financial literacy you need to do when you're looking at the value of the company is you look at the debt plus equity minus the cash. If you have cash, you take that off of the enterprise value. Anyways, a little basic finance valuation 101 from the dog. All right, what else? Meta launched a subscription service in the EU. Starting in November, users can pay 10 euros per month on the web or 13 euros a month on iOS and Android to get an ad-free experience. The subscription service in the EU, it's only available to people 18 and older. That's a good idea. We should age gate all social media. And its attempt to address European regulators' concerns over the firm's ad targeting and data collection practices. In other words, it's getting so hard to advertise. They're like, let's this subscription. I think that's a great idea. Like I love subscription businesses just because of valuation metrics that if you do a hundred million in subscription revenue,

you get valued at six or 800 million. If you do a hundred million in ad revenue, you're going to get valued at two to 300 million. Why? When you have a recession, your advertising revenue goes down by 40%, but your subscription revenue typically goes down three, five, maybe 10%. Look at what happened with the writer's strike. The ad-supported guys, fucked, right? The advertisers are like, well, if it's not a new Jimmy Kimmel or you're putting on some dumb reality show that's non-union, we're just not going to advertise. Netflix grows its subscribers, grows its subscribers. And also, Meta, I hate to say it, is arguably the best managed company in tech or one of them. This last quarter just blew my mind,

literally blew my mind. Okay. Okay. Why? Why? Because they grew their revenues 24% while reducing costs 7%. I've never seen that before. I've never seen on a company of this size that does whatever they do, 70 or 80 billion a year. I've never seen a company grow its revenues of this size 23% or 24% while reducing costs. This company, no doubt, is one of the best managed companies right now. Now, unfortunately, stocks at 300 bucks. Let's look at the one year returns. Oh, my God, the Internet. Oh, it's up 222 percent over the last 12 months.

I mean, it was at it was at 88 bucks a year ago. Now it's at 300. Jesus Christ, couldn't happen to more a mendacious group of fuckeries than Meta. But you have to acknowledge this company is incredibly well managed. Move to subscription avoids some of the advertising concerns. And if they can establish a revenue stream that subscription that's growing even faster than the core advertising business, you're going to see multiple expansion. Again, the way you improve your stock price is, well, there's a lot of ways, right? You're perceived as something AI. But generally speaking,

it's either going to be a function of an earnings increase or a multiple expansion. And over the last 10 years, we've seen both in the S&P. We've seen both an increase in earnings and probably even more so a multiple expansion. Is that right? Is there multiple expansion? No. Anyways, I'm sticking with it. But there's no denying this company puts on a masterclass around management. I love subscription businesses. Why? Why? We want to be in relationships when we know what we're expecting. You don't want to wake up and think, who am I waking up with this morning? Unless it's early in the relationship. That's kind of fun. That's a little sauce. Oh my God, she's crazy. That's good in the short run. That's good in the short run. Not in the medium or the long term. Kind of, you know, you want to make sure, ideally you want to be in a partnership where you're sort of fresh out of crazy a lot. Like let's go into the crazy cupboard. Oh, the

shelves are pretty barren. That is the basis of a good relationship. Drama is fun for a little bit. And if you enjoy drama, there's something wrong with you. Anyways, I've always brought that to my friendships and my relationships. I am fairly low drama. I take it all inward and I fight amongst myself and get depressed, but I'm very low drama as it relates to other entities. Except when I'm checking into a hotel. If they can't give me the wireless code really quickly, if I get upstairs and I don't know where anything is, I create a lot of drama. Probably means I'm an asshole. Anyways, we want consistent expectations in the marketplace. We don't want to be in a relationship with a bipolar stock. We want to know what we're waking up with. And subscription revenues just kind of smooth out the bumps and

the market just absolutely loves them. It's easier to predict cash flows and then you can plan your CapEx better, generally more sticky. No one cancels their Netflix or Amazon Prime subscription. That means your credit card has expired. But Meta, going to be very interesting to see if this gets any traction. And if it does, if it does, look for them to constantly talk about it in their earnings calls because they'll register that wonderful multiple expansion that companies like Netflix and to a lesser extent Amazon Prime get because a big part of their revenue is recurring revenue. Recurring revenue. We want to be in relationships with people and companies that are low drama.

We'll be right back for our conversation with Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and professor at the Wharton School and a bestselling author of several books, including his latest, Hidden Potential. Adam Grant, my nemesis. So I had a story about this. Look at you shaking your head. Hold on, I got to read the story. I was on, I think it was MSNBC? Anyways, they go, the producer, the scheduling producer, who looked about 14, came up to me and said, we're so glad to finally get you on the show. And we just love your work. And also I went to Penn and I'm like, okay. And then it became slowly obvious to me that they thought they had invited you on the show. And I had to say, you realize I'm Scott Galloway and I teach at NYU Stern. I'm not the, I'm not the org guy from Wharton. And you just saw their faces sink in disappointment. So I have been mistaken for you. People think they're getting

you when they get me. Anyways, Adam Grant, good to see you. Likewise, Scott. I'm really sorry. I had nothing to do with that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm literally, I'm kind of, you and I have spoken on the same stage together, and I think they always put you behind me because they don't want to be like, okay, we can't have Scott follow that guy. Anyways, let's bust right into it. You have a new book out, Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving Greater Things. And in it, you write, if natural talent determines where people start, learn character affects how far they go.

But character skills aren't always immediately apparent. So let's start there. How should we be better thinking about talent and potential? Well, I think the mistake that a lot of people make is they judge potential by where people start. So if you look like a natural, you're destined for great things. If you're a prodigy, the ceiling is extremely high. If you struggle at first, if you fail, if you seem like you lack capability, then we start to question you. And we do this to ourselves too,

which is why so many people end up feeling like either imposters or underdogs. And I think that's a huge mistake because potential is not about where you begin. It's about how far you can travel. What are some of the character skills that you think are most under and overrated? Well, I think, I mean, the basics are kindergarten skills, right? So when you study, what are the character skills that you actually learn in kindergarten that matter for your adult success? You find that kids who learn to be

disciplined, determined, proactive, and pro-social do better? And for me, that's kind of table stakes. Those are pretty obvious. We know those skills matter. What I got curious about is what are the more sophisticated applications of those skills? And so I guess I've started to break them down into a few categories. You know, when I think about adult character skills, the ones that we need to learn to continue growing and reaching our potential. I think we need determination to seek out and embrace discomfort. We need to be proactive in being sponges. And by that, I mean, we need to not only absorb information that will help us improve, but we also need to filter out criticism and maybe some pieces of data that won't benefit us. And then finally, we need the discipline to accept the right imperfections

as opposed to trying to ace everything. And what are the core signs that someone has hidden potential? Like, how do you recognize what might be a hidden potential within someone? Well, where do you want to do this? Should we think about job interviews, betting on a founder, college admissions? Yes, all of that.

Let's take you to those. All of the above. All right, let's start with job interviews. So my favorite example that I've seen is a call center called Call Ya'chul. The founder, Guy Winch, is a fellow organizational psychologist, and he decided years ago that he was going to hire people with disabilities. So he started hiring people who are neurodivergent. He hired people who are blind and deaf, and he knew that he had to do something different in order to see their hidden potential in a job interview because they were so often

underestimated and overlooked by society. So what he did was he said at the end of the interview, I'm going to ask them how they thought it went. And then if they weren't happy with it, I'm going to give them a do-over. And I thought what was brilliant about that is that it's actually the change from the first interview to the second that shows us somebody's potential to grow. When you improve dramatically, when you get that second effort, that's a sign that you have strong motivation and ability to learn. And I think that's what we should be looking for. So Scott, this tracks with the science for me. I think the research says pretty clearly past

experience is a terrible predictor of future performance. You might have had the same year of experience on a job 20 times. That doesn't tell us a whole lot about your capacity to learn a job. That evidence also says that prior credentials and prior performance aren't that useful. If we want to look at future potential, we want to know, do you have the character skills to overcome adversity? And I don't know of a better way to see that than looking at whether somebody can improve if they didn't do a great job on their first try. There's this new kind of train of thought that I'm struggling to wrap my head around. And it seems a bit contrary to some of your writing and thought leadership. And this is not like I was on with Dr. Sapolsky, who I think is an evolutionary anthropologist. And Sam Harris is talking a lot about this. We're talking about free will. Yeah. There's no such thing. You're kind of the dire cast. What are your thoughts? It's a bit of

a movement right now. And it's compelling when you hear about it. And I understand when they're talking about it. And then I'm like, this feels like it's, it almost feels sort of borderline unhealthy that we don't have self-determination. What are your thoughts about it? I've never understood the appeal of this argument. And I also want to know, if we don't have free will, then who forced Sam and Robert to make these arguments? Yeah, to start a podcast. I mean, look, I'm not a philosopher. I'm a psychologist.

But I think there's a logical fallacy that leads people to reject free will. So if I understand Sapolsky's argument, he's basically saying, look, there are a lot of forces outside of your awareness and outside of your control that influence your decisions and your behaviors. That's true. That doesn't mean I don't still have choices about what I do and who I become. So most personality traits are about 40% heritable. And we should not discount nature. Whether you're an extrovert or an introvert, whether you tend to be more agreeable like me or disagreeable like you, there's you know, you can think about your upbringing and your, you know, your culture is shaping your choices. But at the end of the day, I don't think there's any reason to believe that we don't decide our own destiny within the set of constraints and affordances that we have in front of us. Yeah, that makes sense. That's well put. Talk about how alternating

between different skills can lead to better performance. This was a complete surprise to me. It was one of my favorite things that I learned while I was writing Hidden Potential. I've always assumed that you should practice the same skill over and over until you get better at it. So back in my days as a springboard diver, I would do, you know, five or seven reps of the same dive and try to make little adjustments. And then hopefully I'm working toward mastery. And yet experiments show that you're better off doing what's called interleaving, which is, let's say, you know, you're trying to improve as a mathematician and an artist. You should spend maybe 10 or 15 minutes working on your math skills

and then switch over to painting and then switch back. And there's something about one, the variety that's motivating. It keeps you from either burning yourself out or just experiencing what psychologists call bore out, which is literally being bored out of your mind. And then there's also, there's a processing benefit that when you switch regularly, there's deeper learning that comes from having to recall the skills and kind of pick them up fresh as opposed to just repeating them on autopilot. So I just want to press pause. You said you're a springboard diver. I forgot about that, but I remember hearing it once. So my last company, L2, we were very data driven and we used to rank people. And, you know, that's probably a

hate crime now, but we used to evaluate people and sort of rank them relative to each other. I'm sure you're going to tell me that's the wrong way to do it. But anyways, we did it. And then we try and find correlations so we could improve our recruiting or be more inclined to hire certain people over others. And we came away with three things. And these things are all a little bit upsetting. The first was they went to an elite school. And nobody wants to believe that now. And everyone's saying, and there's a lot of research showing that people from non-elite schools, especially the top,. Two, that they had participated in sports and specifically like a sport like diving or gymnastics kind of individual performance. It wasn't a romance sport, but required a lot of discipline. And then three, and we would never say this out loud, our top performers were women. And now there's a lot of data coming out showing that,

especially when you're hiring young people, that women's prefrontal cortex just matures earlier. I'd love to know when you're going to tell me the dangers and the caveats of having that kind of bias, if you will, but also specifically the importance of competitive sports or other types of activities that can enhance performance as an adult. Fascinating. I have so many questions for you. How were you measuring performance at L2 when you did this ranking? We would do 360 reviews and we would look at how strong their

performance was in the eyes of their colleagues, their peers, subjective judgment around how they were driving client satisfaction, their analytical skills, their communication skills, and whether they were a culture carrier, that they generally enhanced the culture. They made it a nicer environment to be around. We had sort of a balanced scorecard assessment. I'd be very curious to triangulate those scores with objective performance data, which is obviously sometimes hard to get. But I wonder, you know, when I think about the, let's start with the elite schools, when I think about the elite school advantage, there could be obviously some bias in how people are judging candidates

who are known to have a strong pedigree versus not. There's also, there's some work by Stern and Westphal that suggests that one of the sort of hidden advantages of, you know, generally coming from an upper-class background that makes you more likely to get into a top school is you learn these sophisticated influence tactics that are sort of out of reach for people who didn't have a privileged background. So instead of complimenting people directly, you compliment them behind their backs, and then it gets back to them. Instead of, you know,

selling your idea in a pretty assertive or maybe even aggressive way, you come and say, I'd love your advice. What do you think about this idea? How could I get it heard? And so I wonder if there's some tacit knowledge that's not available to people who didn't come from an elite background. Yeah, I mean, you just see the millions of ways that in a capitalist society, so much advantage accrues to people from our kids from wealthy households. I mean, stuff you never even think about. In the book, you point to the fact that students actually learn more when they have the same teacher for multiple years, which I thought was really interesting. interesting because both of us are educators. How might K-12 schools better format themselves so that students live up to their potential? And have you given any thought to in higher education,

what might be some fixes or some improvements in terms of getting kids a greater ROI on the substantial investment they make in higher ed? There's so much that we need to rethink there. I think, well, first of all, the idea of having the same teacher multiple years, it's a small effect, but it's been demonstrated in North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Chile. And what seems to happen is when kids have more extended relationships with teachers, teachers are better suited to, you know, not just instruct, but actually mentor and coach.

And they're much more effective at personalizing their instruction. Kids are also less likely to be absent. They have fewer disruptive issues. And then immediately everybody wants to know, well, what if my kid gets like Professor Snape? And, you know, interestingly in the data, staying with the same teacher for multiple years is more effective if the teacher is poor or if the students are struggling. And so I wouldn't necessarily count this out as something that's only relevant if you have a great teacher, because teachers can grow with their students over time. But I think that's one small practice that's not expensive. It's fairly easy to implement. It also gives teachers variety so they don't have to teach the same material every single year.

What else can we do? I think the evidence is pretty clear and consistent that play-based education is powerful, particularly early on. So I'm a big fan of the Finnish practice of giving kids 15 minutes of recess for every 45 minutes of instruction. We've kind of done the opposite in the U.S. where kindergarten has become more and more like first grade. You're spending less time on dinosaurs and space and the things that help kids love to learn, and instead doing much more sitting at your desk, drilling, you know, how to write sentences and how to do addition. And I think that's a mistake because empirically, the kids who get the best grades and ultimately show the most growth later on are the ones who have intrinsic motivation to learn. And I don't know of a better way

to cultivate intrinsic motivation to learn than to make school playful early on. Yeah, and a lot of people I respect say at the end of the day, the best thing you can do for your own kids is just to get them to play. Walk us through the Peter Principle. Oh, yeah, so this is a classic idea in sociology that you basically get promoted to your level of incompetence. The basic thought is

that every time you succeed at a job, you move up. And then at some point, you're not good at your job anymore. So you can't get promoted and you get stuck there. Should we be rethinking this? I find there's a hierarchy, and they've gotten a little bit better. People talk about individual contributors, but there's this general gestalt, I think, in corporate America that if you don't keep elevating by traditional titles, you have failed. And to me, it squanders human capital and creates unnecessary shame. What are your thoughts? I'm disappointed to be agreeing with you on that, Scott. It's a bad sign. It's a red flag, Adam.

It's a problem. But no, I mean, look, I think the evidence is pretty clear on this one. You can see it in research by economists on salespeople, where the salespeople who are the best revenue generators are more likely to get promoted and they're actually worse at management. Yeah. They're taken out of sales. Yeah. Yeah. So why would you want to put them in a position where they're not using their most effective skills? It turns out the best managers are not the people who are the biggest rainmakers in those individual contributor jobs. They're the people who are the most collaborative in helping their colleagues sell. And so I'm, I've become a fan of dual promotion tracks to say you could stay individual salesperson

or engineer or pick whatever your role is and we're gonna give you a bigger title and we're gonna give you a raise, but we're not gonna require you to manage people if you wanna move up because you may not have the skill or the will to do that effectively. Mm-hmm.

Something I struggle with, and you talk about it in the book, is how to deal with imposter syndrome. What can people do to mitigate that feeling? You still feel like an imposter? Oh, Adam, I'm 90% confident people are going to figure out that I'm not that talented and not that quality of person, and my whole world's going to come crashing down. I constantly have that fear. Really? Oh, yeah. I constantly have that fear. Really? Oh, yeah. I had no idea.

Yeah. Well, it's because you haven't invested in our relationship, Adam. I need you to spend more time with me. No, I have huge imposter syndrome. Anyways, what can people do to mitigate that? Well, first thing is, the research by Basima Tufek on it is very powerful.

She asked the question, why do we have to turn it into a syndrome? Yes, there are people who walk around feeling like I'm an actual fraud and it's only a matter of minutes until everyone finds out. But most people are not like that. Most of us, we have these temporary moments of doubt wondering, am I up to this challenge? Am I qualified for this role? Are other people overestimating me? Am I as good as they think I am? And what Basima shows, she studied how often people had those thoughts among military cadets, medical professionals, investment professionals. She found no consistent costs of having more frequent imposter thoughts.

She actually found benefits that people tended to work longer knowing they had something to prove. And they tended to listen better knowing they had something to learn. Is that your experience? I find it's a feature, not a bug that I want, I want to live up to people's image of me. It's very motivating. People think I'm really good and people think I'm a good person. And that inspires me to try and foot to that. Well, you've already answered your own question. Now I should say it's, I think it's probably easier to do that as a white guy. 100%. The world generally expects you to rise to those, those, those standards. But yeah, I think, you know, Basima's advice is exactly what you've just said. It's,

it's to say, Hey, if I feel like an imposter, that means other people think I'm pretty great. And now I go, I need to go and earn that. I would go further. I an imposter, that means other people think I'm pretty great. And now I need to go and earn that. I would go further. I think imposter syndrome is actually a sign of hidden potential. Because other people have a more neutral and more objective view of you than you do of yourself. And odds are, if they have high expectations of you, they have seen some capacity in you to grow that you haven't recognized yet. You recently tweeted, I am who I am is not a sign of a strong identity. It's a mark of a closed mind. A rigid sense of self is a barrier to growth and makes you a prisoner of your past. Say more about what makes one have a strong sense of self.

That's an interesting question. Well, a mistake I see a lot of people make is they anchor their identities on their opinions and beliefs. And that stops you from evolving what you think and also how you think. So I think a strong sense of self is not, you know, basically, I am what I think is true. It's I am what I think is important. In other words, I think if you're going to have a strong identity, it should be grounded in your values, not your beliefs. So maybe an easy example of this would be, if you're a if you're a doctor, if you decide that your identity is around doing well, let's go back a half a century or so. You know, I'm a professional lobotomist,

and that's what I believe is helpful to people. You're going to have a really hard time accepting the evidence that removing part of people's brain is not actually helping them resolve the disorder that you're trying to treat. Whereas if you anchor your identity on a value of protecting people's health and trying to promote their well-being, then as soon as the evidence shifts, you can change your

mind with it. And so, you know, I would not want to go to the doctor who has an identity around particular treatments. I want to go to the doctor who has an identity around following the evidence around particular treatments. We'll be right back. What types of personalities do you think are missing from leadership roles? What characteristics or attributes do we over-index on when we're trying to pick a leader versus those we under-index on. All right. So if you skip to chapter eight of Hidden Potential, there is some disconcerting evidence that we tend to promote narcissists consistently because we mistake their confidence for competence. We also over-invest in extroverts because it's called the Babel effect. The person who talks the most is the most likely

to seem leader-like, dominant, confident, assertive, even though that person isn't at all more qualified or more capable. So I think we should stop elevating the people who take up the most space, and we should start looking at people who have the character to elevate everyone else around them. So I guess my big test of leadership is not, is this the smartest person in the room, but rather, do they make the room smarter? And that really comes back to character strengths and skills. I want to promote people who are givers rather than takers. I think often we call that servant leadership. I want to promote people who bring humility, not narcissism to the table so that instead of denying their weaknesses and silencing their critics, they actually work to overcome their weaknesses and embrace their critics as an opportunity to learn. And I think if we started their generosity and humility, we would go a long way. Mm-hmm. I'm really curious to get your thoughts on it, and there's no easy to segue here, but

as an organizational psychologist, I'm just so, I'm curious what you think about the organizations in higher ed that are coming under enormous strain and stress based on what's happening in Israel and Gaza. And Penn has come under huge attack for not being more forceful, for the leadership not being more forceful in renouncing or speaking up against terrorism. I'm just very curious what your thoughts are in terms of universities as an organization. And is this highlighting an issue with the organization? Is this a healthy process? What are your thoughts about what's going on on college campuses right now?

First of all, I would not want one of those jobs. Oh, my gosh. Can you imagine? I cannot imagine. So I guess I want to start as somebody who studies organizations and leaders, but doesn't have a position of responsibility like that. Let's just appreciate how challenging it is and how many different stakeholders are pressuring you to, you know, to favor their politics. You know, that said, I don't think it should be hard to see the difference between free speech and hate speech. And I think we should have swift responses and strong action against that. So, you know, that to me is, you know, is kind of table stakes. I think the, I guess one of the tricky things here is that, you know, we're seeing a lot of different voices call on leaders to make statements. And I think for the most part, the statements are the empty, they're empty words. What I want to see are policies that are going to be enacted and enforced consistently. And so, you know, as sure, it's nice to have an email. It's, you know, sort of, I guess, would require us to take extreme action to prevent marginalized groups,

groups that are under threat from being physically or psychologically unsafe on our campus. And here's what here's what violations look like. And here's what we're going to do about it. And I don't think those policies have been clearly spelled out. I think that's really powerful, Adam. And I love what you just said. There's a difference between free speech and hate speech. And, you know, I was so rattled. It's funny, as you get older, I don't know about you, but I was a younger man. I was just sleepwalking through life.

This kind of thing didn't really weigh on me very much. And now I find it's really rattling, for lack of a better term, triggering, whatever the right term would be. And when I see students at our most prestigious universities chanting what is just clearly hate speech, I believe that we should use, I don't know, whatever technology to identify them and then kick them out of school. I agree with you. I don't want to see any social media posts. I don't care about a letter to alumni that attempts to please everybody and pleases nobody. But I do think, and we are lacking there, I think it's time for someone to come out and say, hate speech is unacceptable and we're going to kick you out of school. You are here.

It is an honor for you to be here. And there are lines, you know, no shoes, no service. And one of those things is hate speech. Anyway, a bit of a speech on my end. What are your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think a lot of leaders have been taken aback, not realizing that it should not be, no one should need to say that this is unacceptable. We shouldn't need to have a policy about this. It's I mean, how could it not be more obvious? even rounding third base. You're still a young man. You're rounding second base. Do you set goals for yourself for the next five or 10 years? Is it just reach and influence? Is it more bestselling books? Do you write down specific objectives of where, if someone said, all right, you're going to wake up and it's five years or 10 years from now, what do you hope to achieve that you haven't achieved already?

Well, those are terrible goals. Reach, influence, bestselling books. Why? If you're doing important work, your work helps people. It's the important work that matters. Okay. Yeah, but you don't want to be a tree falling in the forest. You need to get it out there.

Of course. But I think those are really poor proxies for impact. So let's take a book, for example. We can both name some authors, and I'm not going to name them, who sold a lot of books that were read by very few people. That's a failure, in my opinion. I love that. Sold a lot of books, but were read by very few people. In other words, they got caught up in what was supposed to be a hot book and they bought it and they didn't get past the first chapter because it wasn't very well written. Yeah, exactly. And I think the opposite is, you know, is actually a success.

You write something that really moves even a small group of people, whether it helps them live a better life or, you know, enriches their thinking in a meaningful way or enables them to solve a problem in the world. I don't care about the reach there. What I care about is the depth of impact. And, you know, funnily enough, Scott, when I was actually first starting as an organizational psychologist, one of the early questions I was curious about is what matters for people's motivation? Is it the scope of impact or is it the depth of impact? And in the data I collected depth, just swamp scope. So it didn't matter how many people you reached. Uh, what mattered was like, how much did you touch each person who was affected by your work?

Um, so for me, what that means is when I sit down to think about next project for, you know, five year horizon, I want to ask what's an interesting and important problem that I can take on that I can bring novel evidence and a fresh thesis to? Adam, do you have kids? Yeah, we have three. How old? They are 15, 12, and 10. What, so you're kind of in the salad days of the golden years, except for the 15-year-old. Is the 15-year-old a boy or a girl? Girl. I can't speak to that. I have a 16 year old boy and I've gone from his hero to the anti-hero in about six months. So what, how has your work impacted your role as a father or the other way around?

I try not to take too much work home. I feel like I never wanted to be one of those psychologists who screws up our kids. So I don't know that it's had a huge impact. I think, you know, I certainly read more developmental psychology and more parenting research than I probably would if I were in a different field. And I hope some of that's been useful. I think one of the things I've, I guess I've learned from that, you know, I'm a complete consumer in this area, not a producer at all. But one of the things I've learned from the research is kids, at the end of the day, they need to feel that they matter. That's one of the most important forces for mental health. And you've talked, Scott, a lot about the crisis that boys are facing right now. I think in many ways, it's a crisis of mattering. So when most parents think about mattering, they think about making sure that their kids are unconditionally loved and that they get their

attention. But what we forget is that in order to matter, you also need to feel that other people rely on you, that you make a difference. And so one of the ways that I've tried to make that a reality in our house is when I struggle with something, I don't hide it. I don't just tell our kids about it. I ask for their advice on how to handle my challenges. And what I'm trying to do is, one, recognize that we can all learn something from everybody we meet, including our own children. They know things that we don't. They see things about us that we can't. Sometimes they're the best mirrors to help us recognize our own children. They know things that we don't. They see things about us that we can't. Sometimes they're the best mirrors to help us recognize our blind spots. But two,

I want to show them that they have the competence to solve adult challenges, even as kids. And the hope is that builds their confidence over time. And I don't think it would have ever occurred to me to do that if I weren't geeking out on psychology research in my spare time. Any thoughts on being a good partner? I have many thoughts on being a good partner. Where do you want to go with that? Well, our listenership is mostly young men in their kind of late 20s, early 30s. A lot of them recently married or trying to find a mate and just, you know, kind of getting into their childbearing years, if you were the role,

the role as a partner and a father. So advice to your younger self on how to be a good partner. So I think one of the challenges that a lot of people run into is in a committed relationship, you sort of end up just nagging each other constantly to do things. And nobody likes it. And it's extremely frustrating. And at some point, my wife, Allison and I sat down and said, you know, we need a weekly meeting. Yeah, you heard me right. This is not just something you need with your boss. I think it's something you need with your partner. And in that weekly meeting, we would sit down and talk about, you know, okay, here are the things I need

you to do this week. Let's check it on, you know, on all the tasks that are slipping through the cracks. And it was a dedicated time where we each were able to express, hey, this is something that might sound trivial to you, but it's actually really important to me. Like, I don't want the garbage can sitting out for three days. It's embarrassing and it's gross. And then, you know, instead of feeling like that's an interruption in the course of the week, and it's sort of a nuisance in the relationship, it becomes a chance to sit down and really think about, well, what can I do this week that my partner would really appreciate? So I've become a big fan of marriage meetings, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover there's some research suggesting that when you do these kinds of check-ins about what can we do to support each

other better, it actually improves the health of a relationship. Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a best bestselling author who explores the science of motivation, generosity, rethinking, and potential. He has been recognized as one of the world's 10 most influential management thinkers and has received distinguished scientific achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation. His latest book, Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving Greater Things, is out now. I'm jealous of you, Adam. I find that you continue to just do incredible work and you're smart at getting it out there. And I, you know, my jealousy is there's some things about it I don't like, but it's mostly comes from a good place.

And that is I admire what a positive impact you are having on the world. So keep on keeping on, brother. That's very kind of you, Scott. Well, I try not to do too much envy and jealousy, but we're all human. No, go on. Jesus Christ. Come on. No, but what I want to do is say I admire several things about you. One is I love the fact that you're just fearless when it comes to challenging people and being a little bit contrarian. I also really appreciate the fact that despite having, I think, a healthy ego,

you're not afraid to be wrong and to admit you're wrong. And I think that is something that needs to be modeled dramatically more than it currently is. And finally, you managed to be interesting and funny on a whole range of topics, which is, you know, not an easy task at all. So those are all things that I look up to. And yeah, maybe sometimes I envy them, but more often, I guess when I feel envy, I look at that and say, well, okay, that means I want what you have. So instead of, you know, feeling like, damn, Scott Galloway, I hate that guy. Like, okay, he's a role model for certain things that I want to work toward. And that gives me more to like than dislike, I think. I like it, Adam. Well, listen, I look forward to seeing you on the road and stay well. Same to you. Thanks for bringing me. thinking a lot about this, and this might be the wrong stool, but right now it's my stool.

It's protector, provider, and procreator. And I'm going to talk a little bit about procreator. What Dr. Atchis said that struck me was kind of how his advice to young men would be to be a dad. And that is what it is to be a procreator, is that ultimately you become a provider and you become responsible for the well-being of someone else. And that's what it means to be a dad is that you put their interests ahead of yours. And this has a lot of wonderful benefits. First off, a lot of downsides. If you don't find the right partner, your life's going to be full of stress. It is very difficult to manage the demands and the logistics and the costs of kids without a really competent partner. But assuming you can find a competent partner, and part of that is being, I hate to use the word aggressive because it sounds

unkind, but aggressive, putting yourself in social situations, introducing yourself to someone you might have a romantic or sexual interest in, texting someone maybe you don't hear back from them and your ego's like, that's it, I'm not texting her again. Well, okay, give it a couple weeks and text again. Who knows what's going on with her? Following up, being kind, trying to do thoughtful things, trying to, quite frankly, trying to romance a woman. Holding her hand, taking that uncomfortable risk of initiating physical contact. This is what it means to be a procreator. And then when you have kids,

ensuring that you're raising kids that are going to be more secure and loving than you. At the end of the day, that is the fundamental box we have to check as fathers. And that is where I've brought some more forgiveness to my father. My dad, you know, wasn't an especially good father to me, but then I think about, well, okay, he was much better to me than his father was to him, which means he's checked the key box and what it means to be a procreator. The means to the ends, the means, economic security, money, having some influence, being good at something, that's all a means. The ends is, in my view, having a group of people who love you, but more importantly, you can love immensely. And you will never love anything as immensely as kids. And the way I describe it is Anne Rice used to write these novels about vampires, and vampires could never climax. They could never orgasm. So they were kind of sexaholics because they never got to a point of satisfaction. And I feel a little bit about my life pre-kids that way. And that is no matter how much money I had, I always wanted more. I was never really satisfied. And the only time I've ever felt sated, the only time I've ever felt, okay, this is it, this is enough, is on rare occasions when I'm

with my boys. And I'll be at a soccer match, and they go crazy after a goal, or they're arguing with each other, which I find kind of funny most of the time, or they just instinctively jump on the couch and throw their legs over mine. And we have our dogs there, and my kids seem happy and secure and healthy. It's the only time, it's the only time on this planet where I felt, okay, I get it. I get it. This is enough. This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening

to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice as read by George, and on Monday with our weekly market show. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my goodness. Now that's great coffee. I'm sorry. Go ahead.