Adam Grant

Wondering Archive

August 2017

Can you describe the difference between healthy competition and unhealthy competition in the workplace, and the factors that contribute to each?

​— Mary

For me, the difference boils down to whether you’re rooting for your opponent to raise your game or trying to shake your opponent off their game. You know competition is healthy when rivals train together, go out for drinks afterward, and share a goal of making each other better. It’s healthy when the loser buys lunch for the winner, but unhealthy when the loser steals the winner’s lunch from the fridge. It’s healthy when you work extra hard to beat your opponent, but unhealthy when you hire someone to beat your opponent up.

It’s easier to get healthy competition if you…

  • Make the competition between groups instead of between individuals
  • Have collective goals that matter more than individual goals—like sports teams where players compete with each other during practice but band together to win games
  • Start off cooperative and only introduce friendly competition after people trust and respect each other
  • Put clear boundaries around competition—like IDEO does in brainstorming contests where people compete to generate the most novel and useful ideas

What are some of most effective behavioral interviewing questions? Do you have a favorite?

— Bill (Massachusetts)

I actually think we should ask fewer behavioral questions (“tell me about a time when…”)

​(a) They’re unfair—they give an advantage to candidates with richer experience. Ask a bunch of applicants how they handled a serious conflict with a colleague, and odds are you’ll get a better answer from the one who happened to face the biggest conflict.

​(b) They’re too easy to game—you end up hiring the candidate who’s the best talker, not the best contributor.

​(c) They’re not tailored to your organization or the job—they’re stuck in what applicants have encountered in the past, not what they’re going to do for you in the future.

​You can solve these problems by asking situational questions: “what would you do if…” They’re especially good for forecasting a candidate’s best performance, and especially good for assessing leadership and interpersonal skills. For example, to assess persuasive skill, I’ve often asked them how they would sell a rotten apple. And to spot an original thinker, I like to ask candidates how they would improve our interview process.

​You pick the challenges that are core to the job or key to the organization. Everyone gets the same scenario. You can even create a scoring key by collecting responses from your existing employees, and looking at what your stars do differently.

How might we encourage teachers to take more risks in the classroom and follow the road less traveled?

— Joel and Carrie (Colorado)

The mistake many of us make is highlighting the benefits of risk-taking: here are all the good things that could happen if you take the road less traveled. The problem is that they’re already convinced that the familiar road is full of benefits. Prospect theory reveals that if you want to motivate people to take risks, it’s more powerful to emphasize the costs of not taking them: here are all the bad things that could happen if you don’t try something new. And instead of trying to persuade them, let them persuade themselves by generating their own reasons. You might ask teachers to make a list of three negative consequences of failing to innovate.

Another step that can help is to frame nonconformity as an act of conformity. Psychologists call it social proof: when you see that an unfamiliar practice has worked for similar others, it starts to feel much less risky. Of all the experiments I’ve tried in my undergraduate courses, there are three that have worked especially well:

(a) Let students design their own day of class: On the syllabus, I leave one class session blank. Halfway through the semester, I invite the students to design their own day of class. They work in groups to generate ideas, and the class votes on the best ones. They’ve come up with so many brilliant ideas: writing letters to incoming freshman about how to make the most of college, holding a book club in class, hosting a day of “passion talks” where anyone who’s interested can speak for a minute about an outside interest or hobby.

(b) Have students film their own mini-TED talks: When I was writing Originals, I realized that I was failing to create space for students to challenge course concepts. To change that, I introduced a new assignment: students work in pairs to record 5-minute videos about how to improve life at work. They get to champion a novel or surprising idea, support it with evidence, and show how to put it in action.

(c) Encourage students to study together: On my final exam, I let students pick one question where they’re unsure of the answer, and write down the name of a classmate who they think knows it. If the classmate gets it right, they get the points too. I was stunned by the impact of this small change.

What is your favorite workplace teambuilding exercise?

— (Lauren, New York)

Give & Get is my top pick: it helps people deepen and broaden their connections through finding meaningful ways to help each other.

 

As a woman who is passionate to see progress, where can I find a mentor?

— (Carol)

Check out MentorNet, Ellevate, and Levo League.

 

What do you recommend someone to get someone to speak for him/herself when he/she feels it is selfish and is fearful of people perceiving him/her poorly?

​— (Julie, Indianapolis)

See Adam Galinsky’s TED talk, How to speak up for yourself.

 

Why do people deny climate change?

— (Jeni)

Here’s a great overview by Neha Thirani Bagir. If you want to change someone’s mind, try the inoculation strategy. At the policy level, here’s a proposal for a market solution that seems to be gaining traction among conservatives and liberals.

 

​What can we do if the CEO continues to ignore the team’s suggestion that we have a better way to work better?

— (Young, San Jose)

You might try asking the CEO for advice on how to get leaders to be more open to suggestions.

 

​What is the best research to study about how build a Habit? Tell us about some scientific literature.

— (Fabrizio, Genoa, Italy)

The most compelling research I’ve read on building habits is by Wendy Wood.

 

​When interviewing a candidate, what is the best way to discern whether that person will fit the organizational culture?

— (Charles, Jackson, Mississippi)

I wouldn’t actually recommend hiring on cultural fit; it’s too likely to privilege similarity and breed groupthink. Instead, try what Diego Rodriguez has done at IDEO: hire on cultural contribution.

 

​Is simply being aware of concepts such as biases enough to make sure that we look beyond ourselves, and don’t just see things as we are?

— (Darryl, UK)

Sadly, no—there’s often a knowing-doing gap. But there are some good resources to help keep the knowledge top of mind: here’s a cheat sheet and a terrific infographic.

 

​Does how people treat the admin or who they assume to be the admin indicate how they actually treat others?

— (Anonymous)

It often contains clues—see Vonk’s research on the slime effect, which describes how takers tend to kiss up and kick down.

 

​How much of great leadership ability is inherited via DNA versus nurtured\developed by life experiences?

— (Ken, Philadelphia)

There’s evidence that about half the variance in leadership styles is heritable—some people may come to it more naturally than others, but leadership is ultimately a set of learnable behaviors. Even the ones that seem tough to develop, like charisma, can be taught.

 

​How can we deal with takers in the workplace?

— (Lauren, North Carolina)

My favorite book on the topic is The Asshole Survival Guide by Bob Sutton. Also, here’s a post with some of my thoughts: How to change a selfish person’s stripes. And Reb Rebele and I wrote an article, Beat generosity burnout, which covers some other strategies for dealing with takers.

July 2017

What are 3 great questions to ask an interviewer to determine if you would fit in with the company?

— Erin (British Columbia)

I actually don’t think the interview is the right time to assess fit. Your primary goal in the interview is to get the job, so focus your questions on how you can best contribute to the organization. (Great example: Lori Goler asked Sheryl Sandberg what her biggest problem was at Facebook, and then volunteered to take it on—even though it was in HR and her background was marketing). Once you get the job offer, you can cast a wider net to learn about the organization from people across different levels and functions. Here are three questions that I like:

(1) What’s something that happens at this organization but wouldn’t elsewhere?

​It’s my favorite way to pinpoint what’s unique about the culture (if anything) and if you ask multiple people, you can start to see patterns around whether the organization really lives by core values like justice, safety, and control. I wrote about why I love this question here.

​(2) If you could change one thing about this organization, what would it be—and how would you do it?

​This isn’t just a window into the organization’s problems. It also helps you gauge whether people have a voice: if the interviewer hasn’t spoken up about the issue or doesn’t know where to raise it, it’s not a great sign.

​(3) Can you draw a picture of the organization?

​Sometimes our feelings about organizations are hard to put into words, but we can bring them to life in visuals. At Apple in 1985, when 40 managers were asked to draw a picture of the company, one drew Steve Jobs struggling to wear two different hats at the same time (operating manager and board chairman), another drew Jobs and John Sculley both trying to steer a boat but Sculley having no control, and a third drew the manager of the Apple II division drifting out at sea on a windsurfer, trying to figure out where the wind would blow. Revealing. (Warning: wait on this one until after you’ve gotten the job offer, or the interviewer might think you’re weird. Then again, maybe you want to find out if the company can tolerate a little weird.)

Is there a psychological explanation for gossip?

— Srihari

Gossip gets a bad rap, and it’s often deserved—people use gossip to elevate their standing and show off their inside access to (unreliable) information. But it’s not all bad. It can even have some social benefits. In her studies of work teams, Shimul Melwani shows that gossiping strengthened bonds and improved cooperation—but only if they were talking about people outside the team.

There’s a fascinating evolutionary theory of why gossip exists. For thousands of years, survival depended on knowing who you could trust. It was impossible to have complete information about other people’s actions, let alone what was going on inside their heads. By collecting rumors, you could paint a fuller picture of who was safe and who was a threat.

Matthew Feinberg and his colleagues find that many of us—especially matchers who believe in justice—use “prosocial gossip” to punish people for acting selfishly and warn others about it. And when those takers know that gossip is possible, they start acting like givers. So you could say that gossip exists to promote generosity and to protect against selfishness.

Lately, I have been thinking about how to be influential with colleagues with whom I do not yet have a strong relationship. When we collaborate on work, I want to help them find a sense of ownership. We work on important, externally-facing documents that need to represent our organization as best as possible.  They need to be written well, tell compelling stories, be persuasive, etc. While accountability from their manager is one motivating factor, it is not always sufficient. Do you have any approaches for how to think about instilling a sense of ownership in peers?

— Christine (New York)

A great psychologist, Herb Kelman, distinguished between three ways of convincing people to change their behavior: compliance, identification, and internalization. Compliance is using rewards and punishments to get people to go along. Identification is influencing them based on their desire to maintain or strengthen their relationship with you. Internalization is when they change their behavior because it’s intrinsically rewarding: they value it.

Ownership is about internalization. Where many people get stuck is on convincing colleagues to change their values. Not easy. If you want your colleagues to internalize the behavior, don’t appeal to what’s important to you—appeal to what’s important to them. Show them how the change you want will help them live those values.

Example: a college student named Paul Butler wanted people to save a parrot from extinction in St. Lucia. Trying to get people to care about a bird was a lost cause. Instead, he appealed to a value they already held: national pride. He started calling it the St. Lucia parrot. Then his organization, Rare, turned this into a formula for protecting endangered species around the world: save the [location] [animal].

​To appeal to pride, you have to find out what people value. If you feel comfortable asking them, it’s actually a pretty interesting conversation: what are your guiding principles in life? What were the moments that shaped them? If not, pay attention to their behavior patterns: what are the projects where they show the most ownership, and what do those have in common?

Some books that address ownership from different perspectives: Switch by the Heath brothers, Take Pride by Jessica Tracy, and Drive by Dan Pink.

Load More