Ronaldo is an individual Superstar but

the way he plays his game does not

Elevate the team so what can we learn

from this first of all Adam Grant

business psychologist one of the world's

most influential career and business

thinkers he will help you do the best

work of your life and reach your

professional potential my job is to

study how to make work not suck and help

you become a better version of yourself

so what is some of the myths and

findings about unlocking our hidden

potential these might surprise people it

turns out that that perfectionism is not

all it's cracked up to be it's a risk

factor for Burnout firstborns score

higher on IQ tests but later borns tend

to be more willing to take risks we

don't procrastinate for the reasons we

think we do it's not hard work that

you're avoiding when you procrastinate

it is Decades of research on

brainstorming has shown that if you get

a group of people together to generate

ideas if instead you'd let them work

alone you would have gotten more ideas

and also better ideas when people talk

about imposter syndrome that feeling is

actually pretty rare what's much more

common is imposter thoughts but there

all kinds of benefits of having those

thoughts for example data from 50,000

people found that Chrome or Firefox

users are on average better performers

and they stick around longer than if

you're using Safari or Internet Explorer

give me one more okay well this is the

most vital skill to unlock the hidden

potential of yourself so what you have

to do is before we wrap I have a couple

questions for you I feel why do I feel

nervous you should feel nervous course

uh first question is what's something I

can do better as a podcast guest oh

gosh

quick one this is really really

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[Music]

deal

Adam at the very essence of your work

what is it you are trying to do teach or

give people I want to give people the

most useful insights from social science

to help them think more clearly and

critically and make choices that will

build happiness and meaning and success

and if you if you think about your

career over the last couple of decades

what points of inspiration have you

pulled from to give you as an idea of

your sort of academic and and experience

profile that has poured into all of this

work all of these books that sit in

front of me now so I'm an organizational

psychologist by training uh that means

my job is to study how to make work not

suck sometimes is a tall order uh but

I'm interested in uh how we find meaning

and motivation how we can lead more

generous and creative and curious lives

we were talking earlier about the books

that you've written this particular book

in front of me here Originals one of my

team members Grace Miller she went

around our office and gave a copy of

this book to everybody and she wrote a

personalized note inside when you use

this word Originals you yourself are an

original in many respects I I had a a

read through your earliest years and it

was quite clear to me that you

were different in several ways throwing

that question back at you you know I've

got this photo here actually it's my

team printed off for

[Laughter]

me

yeah I was seven years old and I was

obsessed with Nintendo and I I think

there must have been a Saturday where

was uh I must have played for seven or

eight hours straight and then I got

really frustrated when I didn't beat the

game and my mom said like these video

games are just like turning my happy kid

into a

gremlin and I'm worried that they're

frying his brain and she called the

local newspaper and said you should do a

story about how video games are hurting

kids and they said you're right and we

want to profile your child so here I am

uh with a lot of hair no teeth uh just

hooked on a video game and uh you know

what's funny about this is uh if you

read the research on the effects of

video games it turns out that most of

the benefits outweigh the costs uh that

kids who play video games even a few

hours a day end up with more

self-control better working memory uh

more grit and self-discipline uh because

they're constantly having to face and

overcome challenges and build their

resilience and um they're even some

possible mental health benefits so video

games were not the devil as my mom

thought it's funny cuz when I was

reading about those early years where

you seem to be quite

obsessive when faced with a variety of

different challenges it did feel like

you're someone that's committed their

life to trying to beat the game first by

understanding the game and then

understanding the levers you need to

pull to to beat the game is that like an

accurate assessment that's fascinating I

never thought about it that way I think

that that's been a huge part of my

motivation but I think at some point I

got dissatisfied with the idea of

beating the game and I wanted to try to

make the game better interesting I think

maybe to take a specific example um I

remember so I I had I had a moment in

gosh it was

2011 uh I found out I got tenure and

tenure uh so you know essentially a job

for life at at my

University and the question is now what

you can keep just doing research and

teaching

classes and a group of students sat me

down and said you should write a book

because you know you should make your

knowledge accessible to people who

aren't in your class and I felt like I

didn't have anything to say and I I I

was passionate about teaching other

people's ideas and they said no your

research has influenced us and we want

you to make that more widely

available and I think at some point it

hit me that

what they were asking me to do was to

try to redefine the game um that at the

time I think the the lesson I was trying

to teach them was you do not have to be

a selfish taker to succeed um and

actually I'd done a bunch of research

showing that people who were givers who

were happy to help others with no

strings attached uh in the long run

actually outperformed expectations and

my student said to me look what you've

taught us is um we don't have to you

know kind of take a me first uh

competitive attitude all the time uh

achieve a lot of success and then start

giving back we can be sharing our

knowledge we can be making introductions

uh to try to help people connect and

expand their networks we can be giving

others feedback um and solving problems

for them and that can actually

contribute to Our Success you got to get

that message out there and so um you

know making the case that it might be

better to be a giver than a taker was my

first attempt to to change the the the

way we Define the game and and really

the way we think about the rules of

success and that's kind of been my

mission uh as an author um ever since to

ask what are we getting wrong in the way

that we try to play the game and how do

we shift it I want to talk about that

and I I'm a Manchester United fan and I

was thinking I've been debating my

friends in our Manchester United chat

for the last two years about Christiano

Ronaldo and we have two contingents in

the group and this is to your point

about giving and taking we have the one

contingent who think that he was

tremendously beneficial to Manchester

United and really any team that he

touches and then you have

me who believes that on balance when you

look at the M this the stats he actually

has a net negative impact on the team

because he takes more than he gives and

then in reading your book you use the

word Ronaldo so I feel like this is a

wonderful opportunity to ask you about

that and what your thoughts are on those

kinds of sort of self self-centered

individuals in in teams yeah it's it's

such a fascinating Dynamic so I'm not a

Ronaldo expert but the way the way that

he carries himself and the way he plays

his game does not scream give her to me

um and I think the best evidence I've

seen that speaks to this is a study of

NBA basketball teams uh so there are

obviously some differences uh between

basketball and football but I think one

of the commonality is you have high

inner dependence where the team really

depends on every player to play a

critical role and what you see in the

NBA data is that if teams have um more

selfish takers on the team more

narcissists uh they actually fail to

improve over the course of the Season

you end up having a ball hog uh who

doesn't Elevate the team and that's

especially true if the biggest star or

somebody in the core role is very

self-centered and so I think based on

that evidence there's a case to be made

that Ronaldo is is basically you know

he's an individual Superstar but he's

not making other people better and I

think the most meaningful way to succeed

is to help other people succeed I think

a true leader I think Messi is more like

this is somebody who asks how can I make

everybody around me more effective I'm

going to have to say I agree and do you

yeah I do agree and I I spent some time

looking at the numbers and I I credit

the athletic as well for doing a piece

called the Ronaldo effect where they

looked at every team he had joined I

since since he was at Real Madrid and

every single team um according to the

data and I'm kind of paraphrasing here

I'll put a link in the description below

to the article I'm referring to had

fallen in performance when he joined

post His Real Madrid days which means he

went from Juventus and all these all

these clubs and they've all got gotten

worse he's actually gone out now to um

play in the Middle East and that club

was top of the league when he joined

they're now second in the league and

they they had a six-point lead when when

he joined so I think it it speaks to

something about this idea of giving and

taking for for optimal team performance

but Ronaldo in many respects is an

original it's hard to argue with that

you know what I mean I mean look some of

the things he can do um on you know on a

field you just wouldn't expect a human

being to be able to pull it off uh so

there there's definitely extraordinary

skill and I think improvisational

creativity there but yeah we can ask

some questions about is that ultimately

in service of the team what is when you

wrote this book and called it Originals

what did you mean by an original how do

you define that I think about Originals

is people who don't just question the

way we've always done it but actually

take the initiative to create a better

way uh so it's not just about having a

new idea it's about taking action to

create change and I think that's so

important because I think it's it's

often said that that ideation without

execution is just

hallucination there's so many people who

dream up interesting ideas but never do

anything about them and actually I I'll

give you a personal example uh when I

was uh when I was in university I had a

roommate uh this is um

2000 um who had an idea for a social

network and he said what if what if we

could build like an online yearbook

where everybody had access to each

other's profiles and they could

communicate and they could plan parties

and he stayed up all night coding it and

actually building the the basics of the

platform and then he never followed

through and never did anything with it

and you know then what a few years later

Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook in the

house next door and I could look at that

and say my roommate was an idiot like

why didn't he do anything about it but

guess what I missed that same

opportunity uh 1999

uh I co-founded uh what was called uh

the first online social network uh on

our campus and it was an egroup of we

had connected about an eighth of our

entering uh College freshman class

before uh before we got to campus and we

were all exchanging messages and

connecting and then we got to campus and

we shut it down because we said we all

live in the same town now why do we need

an online community and so I made the

same mistake I was part of a group of

people that had a very original idea and

we did not execute it so the difference

is execution there I think it's the

biggest difference and what does it take

for someone to be an

executioner uh I hope no one becomes an

executioner but maybe an ex an Executor

would work um I think I think the it's

not what I thought I think um I assumed

that you had to be somebody who was

always the first mover uh that you know

if you didn't act on The Social Network

idea in those first few years it was

going to be too too late but as I think

you know you know this already Stephen

but uh I was surprised to find that some

of the best originals are actually

procrastinators that they don't rush in

uh they wait for they wait for their

best idea as opposed to just immediately

implementing their first idea and of

course they're testing and iterating and

experimenting along the way um but I uh

well let's let's go back to my Nintendo

days here I felt like I'm I'm not an

original thinker for a long time and one

day I had a a PhD student G Shin who

came to my office and said you know I

actually think that procrastinating can

make you more creative and G is

incredibly creative and I didn't believe

her I was like no this can't be true and

she said really I have my most creative

ideas when I'm procrastinating and I

didn't believe it because I guess I've

I've always been what psychologist call

a

precrastinator uh which which is

somebody who the moment you have an idea

you want to immediately put it into

practice and so I you know I was always

excited to get things done early and I

was I was proud of being a good finisher

and G said you know I actually think

that's a mistake and I challenged her to

test it and so she went out and and

studied people in various jobs and had

them actually fill out a survey on how

often they procrastinate and then their

supervisors rated their

creativity and then we ran some

experiments together where we tempted

people to procrastinate by um putting

different numbers of of funny YouTube

videos available while they were

supposed to be doing creative tasks and

then uh we got their their creativity

scored by experts and lo and behold it

turned out that people who procrastinate

a little bit are more creative than

people who procrastinate like me what's

your conclusion as to why well we we had

a few hunches at first that that we

tested uh well the first thing I wanted

to know is what happened to the people

who always procrastinated and G was like

I don't know they never filled out my

survey yeah no they they did eventually

fill out the survey and they were they

were also less creative so both extremes

were bad if you never procrastinate if

you always procrastinate you are less

creative than if you sometimes do or if

you do a little and what we found is uh

there a couple of mechanisms at play um

one is that procrastination can lead you

to incubate ideas uh in the back of your

mind uh so uh you have time to connect

the dots see patterns you didn't see

before another is that you end up

getting some distance from the problem

and that allows you to reframe it uh and

look at it from a broader perspective

and so what was interesting in the data

though was that procrastin only boosted

creativity if you were intrinsically

motivated by the problem so if you were

putting it off because you were bored or

you didn't care then it didn't stay

active in the back of your mind but if

you were if you were putting it off

because you were stuck and you hadn't

figured it out yet or you were being

patient and you kind of you wanted to

have 10 or 12 more ideas before you

decided which one to pursue then you

actually got a creative boost so

interesting and i' really relate to it

because do you yeah 100% relate are you

a moderate procrastin yes

100% 100% I think this is important to

say because I think sometimes people

think that I get a lot of messages from

people saying um Steve I'm

procrastinating so much how do you not

procrastinate and I always look at that

and say I'm not the guy to tell you how

to do that because procrastination in my

mind is a bit of a tool um as you said

there's different types of

procrastination that I notice myself

doing one of them is when I get stuck on

something and I find myself picking up

my phone as if I'm a manp possessed I

literally what I'll do is I'll be in the

middle of work and then the next thing

I'm on Instagram and I'm like how did

that happen oh yeah because the part in

this piece of work you got to is um

psychologically difficult for some

reason I don't feel prepared or whatever

and then the other thing I notice myself

procrastinating on is just when I'm

thinking through something I'll end up

just walking around the house I'll end

up cleaning doing the dishes or whatever

and then coming back to the piece of

work later um but I I would say that I'm

definitely a procrastinator that's so

interesting and I think think let's be

clear I'm not encouraging people to

procrastinate more that's that's not the

goal here the goal is just to normalize

procrastination and say it's a natural

part of the creative process everybody

does it sometimes and even though you

expect it to be counterproductive um in

certain situations it can actually lead

you to better ideas and I think there's

a maybe a myth worth busting here uh

research led by fuchia Sur has shown

that uh we don't procrastinate for the

reasons we think we do so a lot of

people think I'm being lazy I'm avoiding

effort um what's wrong with me why don't

I want to work hard but it turns out

it's not hard work that you're avoiding

when you procrastinate it's negative

emotions unpleasant feelings you are

avoiding a set of tasks that makes you

feel frustrated confused bored anxious

um a lot of procrastination is driven by

fear I don't know if I can do this I'm

not sure if I'm up to the challenge and

so I put it off and I I think one of the

best ways to to manage that is to ask

what are the tasks that you consistently

procrastinate on what negative emotions

are they stirring up and then how do you

change

those what you procrastinate on I

procrastinate a lot on editing actually

and revising I love rough drafting it's

very it feels very creative for me um

it's fun to figure out what is the best

evidence say how do I tell the story

that brings the evidence to life and

then the process of you know tinkering

to get each sentence just right it bores

me and so I put it off and I had to

figure out how do I make that more

interesting in order to to stop

procrastinating altogether on it and how

did you do that well one of the one of

the things I did was uh one of my goals

uh in in my recent writing was to to try

to get less abstract and more concrete

MH and so what I started doing was I

started rewriting paragraphs in the

voices of my favorite fiction authors

which was such a fun experiment so how

would Stephen King write this

paragraph uh how would Maggie Smith an

amazing poet how would she write these

sentences and um and that that made it a

creative exercise again as I was doing

my research ahead of this conversation

um I was watching your Ted Talk and one

of the things that really stood out to

me in your Ted Talk was where you start

talking about internet

browsers I immediately checked which

browser I was using and I was using

Google Chrome there go but you make the

case that people who you can tell

someone's I guess creativity I'm paraph

I'm putting words in your mouth here by

which in internet browser they use and

there was a really important message in

there for me so can you tell tell me

about that um exactly what the findings

can tell us yeah I was I was sitting at

a a conference that it helped to

organize and this researcher Michael

hman is giving a presentation he's got

data from 50,000 people and he he knows

um they're filling out a survey and then

he's tracking their job performance huge

range of jobs and he knows um what web

browser they're on uh it's one of the

automatically collected data points and

he's like I wonder I wonder if if

there's anything there and he finds that

he can predict your job per performance

and also your likelihood of staying in

your job from which web browser you're

using this was so weird and he he stood

up and he said I I don't know what's

going on here but it turns out that

Chrome and Firefox users are on average

better performers and they stick around

longer than if you're using Safari or

Internet

Explorer and immediately I I had a hunch

um I'd been studying initiative and

proactivity and being an original

thinker and what hit me was Internet

Explorer and Safari are the defaults

they came pre-installed on your phone or

your

computer in order to get Chrome or

Firefox you had to question the default

and say huh I wonder if there's a better

browser and take a little bit of

initiative and so I start I start you

know proposing this and people are like

great so if I download a better browser

I'm going to be better at my CH no no

it's not it's not about the browser it's

about the resourcefulness to say you

want to be the kind of person who

questions the default and asks if

there's a better way and I think what

happens is um in in people's jobs I've

gone on to study this with with some

colleagues the kind of person who

upgrades their browser is also kind the

kind of person who asks is there a more

creative way to do my job um can I

reinvent the way that we work together

uh and that ultimately not only makes

you better at your job it also helps you

create a job that you want to stay in it

makes sense and so on ongoing BAS is I'm

only going to hire people who have

Mozilla Firefox or Chrome installed on

their browser it should be an interview

question I don't know if I would go that

far you said it so I'm do I think it's

it's a fun question to say okay how did

you like let's let's not limit it to the

browser but talk to me about uh how

you've challenged the status quo in the

past yeah that's a good really good

question

um when we think about Originals who are

the sort of landmark Originals of our

time in your mind

mind uh what domain do we want to talk

about are we talking Tech and business

Tech and business let's go for that I

mean it's hard not to put Elon Musk on

that list uh you can love him or hate

him but uh when it comes to you know

dreaming up the vision and also taking

the initiative then to try to make us a

you know a multiplanetary spa species

with SpaceX uh and build reusable

Rockets which you know NASA had never

really thought to do you know moving us

into an all El electric car future um

yeah I think there are a lot of things

to complain about with elon's leadership

and decision- making and the way he

communicates on the platform formerly

known as Twitter but uh I think he's an

original no doubt about it how does he

fit your profile of an

original I think I think he fits first

and foremost because he challenges the

status quo uh would be the beginning and

then secondly I think he's uh he's

Relentless in trying to make his vision

a reality which is uh I think I think

something that's that's driving some of

his former fans crazy right now some

people might say well he you know he was

like a child prodigy or he was a child

genius so that's why he's so so great do

you agree with that statement or do you

dispute it I I think it's hard to say in

his case I think you know my my job as a

social scientist is to ask what is the

evidence tell us about child prodigies

and it turns out we overestimate them in

a lot of cases because um once you're

you know once something comes naturally

to you you often have a hard time um

thinking about it in original ways so uh

you know you see kids for example who

can play a a Mozart Sonata at age four

and they they drill over and over again

and they're amazingly fast Learners and

practice does make perfect but it

doesn't make new they don't learn how to

write their own original scores they

don't get experienced with failure with

trial and error and so they don't take

enough risks to figure out how do I

invent something that's never existed

before um that's you know that's not

true in every case but it it is

empirically true that most child prod

IES do not become known as adult

Geniuses and I think that's in part

because they don't learn to stretch

their creative muscles because they're

they're overwhelmingly talented so they

don't need to put in the hard graph that

others do and they don't need to fight

for new information in the same way that

others do in some cases they get

rewarded over and over again for

basically just mastering the way

everyone else has always done it and so

they don't they don't learn to break

free from the mold these adult geniuses

then what is it that they have that

child prodigies don't well a lot of it

is um is what what I've come to think of

is character skills um which is a set of

uh of capabilities to put your

principles into practice so there are

often people with hidden potential uh

they um they may not be Naturals at

first uh they could be you know

underdogs or late bloomers or slow

learners but they are um obsessive about

making themselves uncomfortable saying

if I only played in my strengths then

I'm never stretching myself and I'm not

taking Beyond enough new challenges

there's a bunch of research to suggest

they're like sponges uh they're soaking

up lots of information and then trying

to filter what's helpful out uh in and

then kind of rule out what's harmful and

they are um they what I've come to think

of as

imperfectionist which is they're um

they're they're really careful and

disciplined about saying uh when is it

important to aim for the best and when

is it okay to look for good enough

perfectionism is um a topic people talk

about lot and I think everybody it seems

to me that everybody wants to be

considered a perfectionist as if being a

perfectionist is better cuz it what does

that say about my my values it means

that I really care about things being

great it therefore means by way of that

that I think I'm I produce great things

and saying you're a perfectionist is

almost like saying I make great work um

but you're saying that being there are

some there are often times where it's

better to be an imperfectionist that the

Judgment of knowing when something is

good

enough yeah I I think you're under

something here here so you know when

when when you have to answer that

annoying job interview question what's

your greatest weakness it's everyone's

favorite answer I'm too much of a

perfectionist uh it's like Michael Scott

from the American office like I have

weaknesses as a leader I work too hard

and I care too much and yeah people do

think that perfectionism is you know

ultimately more of an asset than a

liability and that's why they they try

to get away with that in the weakness

question but the evidence tells a really

different story uh research led by Tom C

and here in the UK shows that

perfectionism is not all it's cracked up

to be uh it's a risk factor for

Burnout it also if you look at the the

best evidence available perfectionists

do get better grades in school but they

don't actually perform any better in

their jobs why I think the jury is still

out but my hunch based on the the

evidence that's been gathered so far is

that perfectionists uh are good at

school because they know exactly what's

going to be on the test and so they can

cram and memorize until they they're

prepared to Ace the material the real

world is much more ambiguous uh you

don't know exactly what's going to show

up in your performance review uh it's

not entirely clear what work is going to

be valued and perfectionists are

terrified of failure uh they don't want

any flaws they don't want any defects

they want to avoid every mistake and so

they don't take enough risks they focus

very narrowly on the things they know

they can excel at and they don't end up

growing and evolving and improving

enough I wondered if urgency has a

relationship with this as well because

in order to be successful in the real

world you have to be somewhat urgent

which means sometimes you have to say

that's good enough let's go let's move

let's move and I I guess a perfectionist

would if left to their own devices would

try and slow time down so that they

could focus more on this this thing

right now they'd probably never ship

that social network they'd probably

still be in their bedroom in in America

somewhere working on it whereas

Zuckerberg made a thing that was good

enough and shipped it

then learn from that and the iterative

process of making something better is

probably more conducive with success

than just you know the Lean Startup

talks about this a lot like get it out

there and learn from it versus just

incubating it forever yeah this is this

is I think a key Eric Reese point and

it's been backed up by a bunch of

ironically experiments showing that

Founders who experiment more end up

being more successful uh because they're

able to Pivot faster when something

doesn't work and they they get lots of

of Market feedback um and signals on

what's going to be successful and what

isn't and you I know you've you've lived

that but you know it's it's interesting

that you point this out because this

this is a lesson I learned firsthand um

during my days as a an attempted athlete

so after being too short for basketball

and too slow for for football uh I

stumbled onto springboard diving and I I

by the way I I had no business being a

springboard diver I was afraid of

heights uh and also my teammates

nicknamed me Frankenstein because I was

so stiff but I really loved it and I

wanted to get better at it and I was a

perfectionist and I thought that was

going to help me because in diving

you're supposed to get perfect

tense well guess what uh I have my most

basic dive a front dive Pike just jump

up touch your toes go in head first I

wanted to work on perfecting that all

practice and I was working on these tiny

little adjustments that would take me

from a six and a half to a seven and not

ever learning harder Dives and failing

to raise my degree of difficulty and

that really stunted my grow with as a

diver until one day my coach Eric best

pulled me aside and he said you know

Adam there's no such thing as a perfect

10 and I was like wait have the Olympic

announcers been lying to me when they

say a dive was done for perfect tense

what what what's going on here and he

said if you look at the rule book a 10

is for excellence there's no such thing

as a perfect

dive and that really shifted my

perspective and what we did then was we

said look I'm never going to get a 10 on

any dive what we have to do is to

calibrate what's a realistic goal for

each dive so for you know front dive we

started aiming for sevens and I would

want to do 30 of them in practice and

when I did my third one and Eric said

that was a seven it's time to move on

when I was learning a much more

complicated uh front two and a half with

a full twist you do two flips uh 360

turn and then a dive uh the first goal

was we want to do this for twos we we

just want to make it and then I got a

little better at it and we started

aiming for fours and fives on it and

Steve I have to tell you this has been

one of the most useful lessons I've

learned in my career is when I start a

project uh whether it's a book or you

know a podcast season or I'm writing an

oped uh the first thing I do is I ask

what is my target score here and for a

book it's a nine because I'm going to

pour two years of my work life into this

and you know I hope a lot of people will

read it and it's going to be useful to

them so it really matters to do it about

as well as I can when I'm writing a a

post for Instagram I'm pretty content

with a six and a half just above getting

canceled is is my target there but that

that calibration is helpful because I

could spend all day crafting that

Instagram post and then I'll never get

anything done do when you're thinking

about what's good enough through that

framework is part of the equation the

return on time spent because I'm

thinking about the Instagram quote like

if you have a 10 out of 10 Instagram

quote what's the return on that versus a

10 out of 10 book which can completely

as we've seen change someone's entire

life like a 10 out of 10 Ted Talk you

have a phenomenal Ted Talk I think it's

got tens of millions of views and that

can change your entire life in a way

that any Instagram quote I've had some

banging Instagram quotes I got I had a

couple of viral ones and what ends up

happening as everyone just copies what

you said and just posts it and you never

it never really does anything for you

but a 10 out of 10 Ted talk like you've

got or 10 out of 10 books like you know

exceptional books can change your whole

life so maybe part of the equation is to

think about the potential reward from

the investment I I think that's such a

powerful way to frame it well let me let

me react to a couple things first of all

I don't take tens uh so you're you're

being overly generous here uh and I

always want to know what can I do to get

a little bit closer to 10 but I think I

think the thinking about the return on

effort is really valuable and I think

about that Less in terms of like what's

the immediate reward for me and More in

terms of how can I have the greatest

impact for the investment of my time and

I think you're right um you know like

Instagram is a it's a quick hit of

dopamine and it feels really great when

you get a lot of likes and you know

enthusiastic comments on a post and then

it fades really fast and like I don't

know I mean people when I first became

an author people said you know well the

pen is mightier than the The Sword and

you know of course ideas like you have

to be in that world I don't know if the

pen is actually mightier than than the

sword I do know that the ink lasts and

that you know people ask questions about

a book that I wrote a decade ago nobody

asked me about my social media post from

several years ago and um I think

podcasting actually lives somewhere in

between M right we like when we talk um

sometimes idea stick actually there's

some evidence that audio is is more

memorable um and more intimate uh than

what you pick up on the page uh but I

think it's a little more fleeting like I

I don't I don't remember a conversation

I listened to from a few years ago the

same way I remember a book that changed

my world view and so I I put a little

bit more into writing than I do into

talking so interesting I want to talk to

you as well about something you

mentioned earlier which was this idea of

doing difficult things you mentioned it

in passing and the question that was

stored in my brain is what is it that

makes a certain type of person choose

and lean into difficulty and and a

certain type of person lean out of it

because that appears to be one of the

key sort of correlating factors with

success in life your ability to choose

discomfort yeah yeah I I think this is

this is such a vital skill and I want to

I want to be really clear to say it's a

skill right it's not just a personality

trait uh yeah you know some people are

born with a little extra maybe you could

say reserve of willpower or they have

the discipline or or the grit or the

resilience um and it comes naturally to

them but this is very much a learn scale

and I think the the the clearest

demonstration of this for me is in the

the marshmallow test which has been

wildly misunderstood in the last few

years so you're you're familiar probably

with the classic demonstration that

Walter Michelle did uh with his

colleagues where

you take um you take four-year-olds uh

you put a marshmallow in front of them

and you say you can have one now but if

you're willing to wait until I come back

then you can have two and then the

original finding is that if uh the

longer you can delay gratification if a

kid can wait 10 or 15 minutes for the

extra marshmallow uh the better they

score on a standardized test like the

SAT uh a decade later the better grades

they get in School uh there there are

all kinds of benefits of of this delay

gratification scill well in Psychology

recently there's been a controversy

about whether it replicates and uh some

of the replications um have shown that

uh if you have lower socioeconomic

status you struggle at the marshmallow

test it's really disappointing but it's

not at all surprising and in fact that

was um that was part of the original

research is if you grew up in a world of

scarcity um and I know you can relate to

this from from your own lived experience

um you could not afford to wait for the

second marshmallow it might never come

you didn't know if you could trust the

research team to come and and bring you

one and so you didn't have the chance to

practice that skill and learn the habit

but what's really interesting is if you

watch kids who who crush the marshmallow

test it's more skill power than

willpower what they have are simple

strategies that actually make the

Temptation less tempting so you see one

kid will actually um sit on uh he sits

on his hands so that he he's it's a

little slower for him to reach out to

the marshmallow um another covers her

eyes so she doesn't have to look at it

and then there's one kid who actually

smooshes it into a ball and starts

bouncing it so like you don't want to

eat that anymore and this is this is why

I say it's a set of skills um not just a

matter of will because if you have

techniques for making discomfort less

uncomfortable and you know how to get I

guess I guess if you know how to get

comfortable being uncomfortable uh then

you are willing to to go into many

situations where you're a little bit out

of your depth and say yeah this might be

awkward this might be embarrassing but

I'm going to learn something and I guess

you know for me that was that was public

speaking like we were you touched on

giving Ted Talks earlier I would have

never dreamed of of standing in a red

circle I had no business whatsoever

giving a TED Talk um I'm an introvert

I'm extremely shy I was terrified of

public speaking and in one of my first

lectures a student wrote in feedback

afterward that I was so nervous I was

causing them to physically shake in

their

seats and the only way for me to get

over that was to put myself continually

in that situation uh and get used to the

discomfort is that really the key here

cuz I I I'm thinking as you're speaking

about the people who I look up to like

even like a David Goggins who just seem

to be able to hold themselves into in

discomfort more than anybody else I mean

friend of mine called Russ is running

the entire length of Africa at the

moment um from the bottom to the top of

Africa he's running it he's doing like

two marathons a day you know most days

and I'm thinking are these people just

like super humans that were born with

this switch in their brain that I have

to I can only turn on if I have some

kind of traumatic incident or is it is

does the evidence support the fact that

this is a learned skill I think

everything that matters in life is

always a complex interaction of Nature

and nurture but I think we underestimate

the power of nurture in these situations

so Goggins is a great example I mean

he's he's a machine uh was he always

that way no his whole story is about uh

you know feeling like he was he was

vulnerable and wanting to become

somebody where no one could hurt him

right and I think when psychologists

study that uh my favorite theory is

probably called the theory of learned

industriousness which is a

mouthful but what what what is devout is

the idea that if you reward effort if

you reward hard work if you reward

seeking out discomfort then over time

being in uncomfortable situations starts

to take on secondary reward properties

in other words you get a little bit of

pavlovian conditioning where when you've

pushed yourself a little bit past where

you're comfortable that feels good and

you're used to that leading to to

something positive uh and that can

become sort of a self reinforcing cycle

I was thinking as you saying that about

the role trauma plays in people becoming

successful and if we if we take on this

idea that those that push themselves

forward and then get rewarded for it are

more likely to repeat that behavior the

question should probably become who are

the people that got the greatest reward

from pushing themselves out of their

zone of

comfort in my

mind for you to want to push yourself

out of a situation The Situation's

probably not great and I was thinking

about Goggins there what what he had to

do and many people that I saw on this

podcast and speak to it appears to be

the case a lot lot of time that there

was something traumatic or difficult

going on in their home life with their

parents maybe that forced them or pushed

them to pursue something out of their

zone of comfort it actually often for

pushes them off the the road um most

frequently traveled and they become like

an original because they went through

the shrubs and the prickly bushes yeah

is there evidence to support that it is

helpful in becoming an original so it's

complicated because I think in a lot of

the examples we look at there's a surv a

survivorship bias we see the people who

manag to overcome adversity we don't see

all the people who are broken by it mhm

and so we always have to pause and ask

uh is this is this causal

or is it just revealing that certain

people who happen to face adversity uh

and were able to take something out of

that you know we're we're growing from

that I do think what what we know is

that resilience is underestimated uh as

a general rule uh so uh if you look at

for example um rates of post-traumatic

stress disorder they are lower when

people go through trauma than people's

reports of post-traumatic growth saying

look I I wouldn't wish this on myself or

anyone else it was a terrible experience

but I had to grow from it and it made me

better or stronger in some way uh that's

more common uh than being you know

completely paralyzed um or Shattered by

traumatic experiences I think the other

thing we know is that um resilience is

not in an an individual skill um it's

not a muscle you work on just by

yourself it requires a support system

which I think of as scaffolding um a

temporary structure that helps you scale

a height you couldn't reach on your own

and

I think a lot of what that looks like is

having a parent a mentor a coach who

believes in your potential um and not

only you know helps you find the

motivation but then gives you the tools

uh to to bounce forward from the the

hardship you faced when we talking about

this point of nurture is I am the

youngest of four kids and in your work

you discuss how that can be

consequential in my relationship with

risk and um convention and all of those

things

what does the data say about siblings

and their and how the order in which

they're born can determine

their character skills okay we need a

giant disclaimer on this the science of

birth order is a mess uh it's full of

conflicting findings uh a lot of the

world's leading experts don't agree on

the patterns and what I'm going to tell

you is I think there are two patterns

that have very consistent evidence

across large samples and rigorous

studies but they are tiny effects tiny

so they don't say anything about you and

your future possibilities um their

patterns across very very big samples so

let me let me start with the bad news

for you Steve which is God uh on average

firstborns score slightly higher in IQ

tests than their younger siblings agree

to disagree I'm joking you're welcome to

disagree on that no I'm joking I'm

joking and that that does uh that does

make sense the major mechanism that

seems to explain it is what's called the

tutor effect which is if if you're the

firstborn and you have younger siblings

you end up teaching them a lot oh and

when you explain things you remember

them better and you understand them

better the best way to learn something

is to teach it uh and the last born

doesn't have a younger sibling to teach

and so sometimes they just miss out on

that opportunity tiny tiny difference on

average you will find many brilliant

laterborns uh many average intelligence

firstborns so don't don't take anything

from that but it's an interesting

finding to the point that you raised the

other the other finding is that uh

laterborns tend to be more willing to

take risks and become

Originals uh and my my actually my

favorite example of this comes from uh

research Frank Solway did on Sports so

this is a study of every um pair of

brothers who ever played Major League

Baseball so you've got two siblings same

family same parents same upbringing uh

they all they both make it to the pros

actually uh sometimes there's even a

trio uh and the question is which

brother takes more risks when it comes

to steal a base uh which you know in in

American baseball is is one of the

riskiest things you can do because it's

very easy to to get to get out uh

because you have to basically outrun a

ball that's flying in the air uh and you

have to outsmart a pitcher and uh uh a

guy who's ready to catch the ball and it

turns out that the laterborns are much

more likely to take those risks they're

more likely to try to steal a base and

they are also more likely to um to

succeed in stealing a base so you're a

last born why like where does this

pension for risk Tak can come from

what's what's your hunch about the

mechanisms oh gosh um oh I know what it

is I know what it is cuz I saw it in

your writing and I was like that's it

it's my parents gave me way more freedom

when I was 10 years old and I I say this

a lot but when I was 10 years old if I

left the house and I didn't come home

for two days there was no consequences

whereas I watched my sister try that

when she was that same age and it was it

was like we would call the police if she

wasn't if she wasn't home before like

10: would call the police and as they

went through the cycle of having kids

and they got to the fourth one it was

almost like I say this all time it was

like they had assumed I was the age of

the others and they assumed that their

job of parenting had been done and

that's what I attribute it to because in

that Independence in that void you can

start to experiment and you can start to

learn and take risks and then you get

the feedback from those experiments

which for me was starting businesses at

12 13 14 first kid in our family to not

go to university um so it yeah it made a

lot of sense when I read about it and I

also do believe that my all my siblings

have a higher IQ than me I think if we

did an IQ test I think every one of my

siblings would beat me on it and I think

they would all agree my brothers my

brothers are geniuses compared to me

Jason Works Jason my The Sibling that's

a year older than me um went to two of

the best universities Etc he's a genius

he's much smarter than I am but he will

even say that what he learned from me

was risk he says this he said it this

Christmas he was like when you came to

my house at um when I was 18 and I slept

on his sofa um he goes he was in a

university he was off to get you know

really really great job as like an

actuary he had gone to the London School

of Economics to study that and I was hit

this Dropout sleeping on his sofa

because I'd stopped by London and he

said to me at Christmas he was like the

fact that you weren't

concerned about your future yeah it

inspired me which ultimately led him to

quit his job in the city he was like I

learned from you risk taking wow um and

yeah so that's amazing because you

benefited from extra freedom and

Independence and then you were able to

actually pay that back

to an older brother I I think for me

that's also the most compelling reason

why laterborns end up taking more risks

and trying new things there is another

theory that has some support uh that I

think might be an additional piece of

the story which is um usually the the

firstborn ends up sort of impressing

parents by being a conventional achiever

and then the thinking is that that Niche

is filled and as a later born you got to

find a way to stand out like well

getting good grades in school is not

going to differentiate me from my older

siblings they're always going to be

ahead of me so let me try something

that's a little bit Road l traveled oh I

completely relate to that as well

risk-taking it is often believe that

risk taking is a key factor in what

makes entrepreneurs successful in their

life but your research and your work in

Originals on in chapter one page 17 kind

of starts to debunk that myth in a I

think a really liberating way this this

is good news for me as as somebody who's

not a big risk taker uh it turns out

that risk takers are more likely to

become entrepreneurs but the most

successful entrepreneurs don't love risk

um they take they take cautious risks

and they're they're constantly trying to

figure out how to reduce the downside um

and increase the upside you know I guess

this goes into two directions One

Direction is to say if you never take a

risk that's actually a risky way to live

your life it's like um it's like

building a stock portfolio where you

only invest in safe predictable mutual

funds no you need a balanced portfolio

um you're actually safer if you have

some risky Investments and some more

cautious Investments and I think life is

like that too I think on the the other

side of that though you don't want to

just be throwing caution to the wind and

making a bunch of dumb bets uh what you

want to do is you want to figure out

what's the probability of this unproven

idea succeeding and then do whatever you

can to raise those

odds

interesting because that's not the story

we hear in the movies and in the you

know it and I guess that's part because

we want to frame ourselves as Heroes

when we tell our own story and so

framing oneself as a hero involves

showing a huge uh courageous risk you

took whereas really when I think if you

you're saying if you zoom in you'll see

how the best entrepreneurs Protected

Their downside of that risk yeah yeah I

think that's critical so let's go back

to Elan for as an example uh I had

dinner with him a few years ago um sort

of interested in what what can we learn

from from what's worked for him uh and

then also what hasn't and I was talking

to him about risk-taking and he you know

he was talking a lot about wanting to to

put the first humans on

Mars and I said how how could you

possibly be willing to to gamble on that

it seems so unlikely and he said well

when I you know when I first started I

knew it was extremely low probability

and so that wasn't the original mission

for SpaceX the mission was I want to

build a reusable rocket and that's much

more real real istic and I can get

people on board with that and I can get

a government contract to do that and I

said okay quantify this for me like what

are the odds that that you're going to

make it to Mars in your lifetime and he

said well you know a couple years ago uh

I would have said I don't know seven

8% I'm like and and you're doing this

despite that and he said well no no the

probability has gone way up since

then I'm like okay tell me more and he

said I'd probably say 11% chance

now this is firing you up he's like come

on that's double digits like we're we're

close to reality but I think that

calculus of saying I've got to know that

this is unrealistic and I've got to have

a sideb which is something that can

build me a viable company um and you

know reusable Rockets are what did it um

that's what made SpaceX work it's not

the mission the moon shot or actually

it's a Mars

shot uh that that's not what what

ultimately allowed them to do what they

do now is is that in part on his behalf

a bit of a framing thing

to um as you said get people on board

because I think about nurlink in the

same way when when he first started

talking about neuralink it was all about

interfacing with AI and our need the AI

is coming and we need a way to be able

to interface with it because it's going

to be so much smarter than us that we

basically need to become these cyborgs

and in more recent times he's focused on

the ability to give um people who have

lost access to their limbs the use of

their limbs back and I was thinking

about the transition there he's done in

messaging

the latter this idea of helping people

who are disabled regain their ability

seems to be an idea that people will get

on board with and will fund the other

idea of interfacing with AI and us

becoming cyborgs doesn't appear to me

like something people would get behind

and fund no they either don't get it or

they don't want it yeah yeah exactly not

for me yeah this is this is a common

challenge for for original thinkers is

sometimes their bold Visions are just

not palatable to other people uh and

there's a term that I love that uh

Deborah Myerson and Moran Scully coin

they talk about being a tempered

radical which I think is a great phrase

to say take your your big extreme idea

and try to moderate it to make it a

little bit more familiar and a little

bit closer to what other people think is

plausible and desirable and then if you

do that successfully uh you can smuggle

your vision inside a troan horse and

that's all about bringing them with

you interesting let's talk about people

then people in teams um so one of my

real obsessions is is the topic of Team

culture and it's something that you

write about um in part two of your book

team

culture what are we what are we

generally missing about what it takes to

be and to build a great team what are

what are some of the sort of first myths

that come to mind about the greatest

teams that you your work has

debunked well this is this is one of the

big Topics in in my world of

organizational psychology and there are

I think a bunch of findings that that

might surprise people the the first one

is that uh we Elevate the wrong people

to leadership rols

consistently uh there's research on

What's called the babble effect which is

the idea that the more you talk in a

meeting the more likely you are to get

selected as the leader of a team so we

reward people who dominate the

conversation even though they are not

actually better at leadership and often

they're worse because they fail to

include and learn from the voices around

them in the room they're so obsessed

with being the smartest person in the

room that they fail to make the room

smarter and I think what happens there

is that we're consistently mistaking

their confidence for

competence so we need to change that the

people I want to elevate into leadership

roles uh are are basically people who

bring generosity and humility to the

table uh generosity is about saying I'm

going to put my mission above my ego and

I'm going to try to to make everybody in

the room better and I guess it's a form

of servant leadership and humility is

about saying it's my job to know what I

don't know and try to learn from every

single person I work with and I think

the idea of being a lifelong learner is

is something we throw around a lot but

we don't take seriously I think part of

being a lifelong learner is recognizing

that every person you meet is a

potential

teacher every single collaborator of

yours has lived experiences you you

haven't has expertise that you don't and

if you fail to realize that you are

stunting your own progress so I think

we've got to get humble givers into

leadership roles because they're there

to make the team successful I've always

had a suspicion that based on the size

of the company and where it is in its

life cycle that a slightly different

culture is required and and in your work

you talk about these commitment cultures

now a commitment culture is that a cult

I hope not the good ones aren't okay so

you're you're anticipating the baron and

Hannon research on uh hundreds of of

startups for 15 years and they compare

cultural blueprints where some Founders

say I going to build a star culture I

want to hire the biggest Geniuses and

the best talent uh and that's that's

what's going to make us grade and other

Founders say no I want to be about

commitment I'm going to focus first and

foremost about do you fit the culture do

you live our mission and breathe our

values and then you run the horse race

and ask which of which approach is more

successful from a culture perspective

and lo and behold the commitment

cultures win they are dramatically less

likely to fail significantly more likely

to go public and you think we're good

like we've we've hired people who are

all in on our company they made us a

wildly successful startup and then guess

what after these companies go public

they grow at slower

rates

why there's a a major risk that if you

are hiring on culture fit you are then

saying I'm only going to bring in people

who are similar to each other and you

end up weeding out diversity of thought

and background and promoting group think

interesting so okay you're all a little

bit too close to this the same painting

you're you're replicating what's already

working for you and becoming more and

more homogeneous and this is not to say

the culture fit is inherently bad um you

do want people align on your three to

five core values and that's important

the mistake we make is when we look at

fit we think about well I want a bunch

of people with the same personality

traits and I want a bunch of people who

you know who went to the same College uh

or you know studied the same subject and

then you end up with a really narrow

band of expertise and that leads you to

stagnate how important do you think the

culture you're in is on your own chance

of success and performance I often think

this I think we've we've been lucky even

as a podcast team to be in a great

culture and I play out the scenario if

you took one of our team members and

maybe move them to another culture how

much would that impact that team

member's personal performance and chance

of success oh actually there's H Boris

gyberg studies this uh he studies what

happens when you're a star in one

culture and then you move to a new

organization uh so he studied this with

uh with uh Wall Street security analysts

uh so Finance Finance professionals

turns out if you were a star performer

your current fir

and you leave for a new firm it takes

you on average 5 years to recover your

star

performance unless you take your team

with you and then you maintain your star

status from day one what Boris argues is

that we underestimate the importance of

the people we rely on um to to do our

best work and this is not unique at all

to Wall Street you can see it in

research on um on cardiac surgeons where

um you know how um it's it's pretty

common for surgeons to operate at

multiple hospitals mhm uh well it turns

out that the more practice you have at

hospital a the lower your patient

mortality rate is at hospital a but then

when you go over to hospital B later

that week it's as if as if you haven't

practiced at all because you're with a

different team uh they don't know your

strengths and weaknesses you haven't

built effective routines together um you

are much more interdependent than you

realize even if you think you're an

individual expert uh you can see it in

sports too uh it takes uh Pro basket

teams uh 3 to four years on average uh

even if you've recruited a really

talented team to maximize their their

odds of winning a championship because

they just haven't figured out how to be

effective together there's even um there

was a NASA simulation years ago where uh

you had to do a you had to go through a

flight simulator and uh some Crews were

uh were exhausted they just come off of

a you know a multile multi-day um sleep

deprived journey and others were

well-rested and it turned out that the

um the well-rested Crews who were

strangers actually made more potentially

catastrophic errors than exhausted Crews

that had just flown together and having

a little bit of shared experience was

enough to to compensate for the lack of

sleep now I'm not suggesting that we

should have pilots fly together and only

sleep for you know two hours a night but

the idea that that your history together

was even more important than how alert

you were is something I think we ought

to take really

seriously gosh it's like a double- Ed SW

sword though because so your history

together matters so you want to be you

want to be with a familiar group of

people however if you're too familiar

with them you're not going to come up

with original ideas and be as creative

and and Innovative as possible so that

it's a balancing act between familiarity

and Novelty

in the by way of introducing new members

to the group that have new ideas as it

relates to business that's exactly right

okay and you you actually see this in

the sports data um after that you know

three or four years of experience

together uh the benefit of shared

experience start to level off and maybe

the players get old part of it but their

routines also become really predictable

predictable to the opposition as well in

the context of sports other coaches can

go they always do this they always do it

like this this is how we'll defend

against it same thing is true in

business I think it's one of the reasons

why so much Innovation and disruption

comes from the outside because inside an

organization people get so attached to

the way we've always done it uh they

fall victim to what's called cognitive

entrenchment where they start to take

for granted assumptions that need to be

questioned um and need to bring in

outside Talent Fresh perspectives or

rotate yourself um shift your your

country shift Your Role um shift the the

group of people you're working with go

learn a new skill set in order to to get

out of that entrenchment when you think

about and when you study companies and

people that innovate and let's just

focus specifically stay on the idea of

teams that

innovate let's just I mean bring it

right back to the context of even you

know this podcast this podcast team is

actually about 30 32 33 people now

across the whole sort of business of the

dire of a CEO um it's going well you

know we we we do well better than well

yeah yeah yeah it's going well it's like

you know we've done a good job I think

that's that's that's fair to say but

there's a risk with that which is when

you've been right several times you can

start to get a little bit creatively

complacent and

also I saw I think it was Morgan H's

book same as ever some research that

shows when you are succeeding when

you're like number one at the thing you

do teams kind of switch off creatively

and they they go into a defense mode

which is okay this is how we've always

done it and it got us to here so let's

just keep doing it that way but to

self-d disrupt almost doesn't make sense

you know and so I'm my question to you

is from what you understand what is the

best way to keep a team like ours

continually striving for the next thing

even when the outside world thinks you

do a lot of things right best example

I've ever seen was uh in a podcast

episode I did at Pixar a few years ago

so let's go back to 2000 Pixar is at the

top of its game they've completely

reinvented The Way That animated movies

are made we we used to think you had to

draw them now they do them by computer

um Toy Story is a huge hit uh they've

got monsters they've got talking bugs

and uh you know they're riding as high

as you can in the entertainment industry

and what most companies would do in that

situation is they would rest on their

Laurels and keep making films the way

they've done them because like you said

like we we should double down on our

success we know our core competencies

we're getting a ton of rewards for it

well Steve Jobs and Ed kull uh who you

know were were running the show were not

content to rest on their Laurels and

they knew that when you're succeeding

you actually have the most lack capacity

to disrupt yourself uh which is of

course when most leaders are least

likely to do it because they don't think

they need to and they said we've got to

we've got to shake things up so they

went and hired an unproven director uh

named Brad Bird he was coming off a

commercial

flop uh it uh his previous film had had

been you know just a huge disappointment

uh in terms of box office returns and

Brad came into Pixar and his charge was

to change the way that they made it

animated films why uh because they

wanted to keep getting better and they

wanted to keep innovating and Brad came

in with a vision that he was told was

crazy for a new animated film he was

told it was going to cost half a billion

US Dollars and take 10 years to make

which is just a non-starter if you're a

film studio and Brad got frustrated and

he said all right you know what give me

he said I want the Pirates I want the

black sheep I want people who are

dissatisfied disagreeable and

disgruntled and I'm going to build a a

band of Misfits to try to prove that

this movie can be made and that group

ends up finishing in a three-year period

uh so they shaved a year at least off

the original expected time uh they end

up coming in under budget uh becomes

Pixar's most successful film ever uh

wins uh wins them some major Awards uh

you might have seen it it's called The

Incredibles and what I think is

incredible no intended about that story

is a couple things one you know just the

the will to to break something that's

not broken deliberately I think that's

huge

number two uh what Brad does is he

discovers that there's a particular kind

of disagreeableness that's really

valuable is not just being cranky and

ornery for the sake of it it's not being

a a complainer brad says I want people

who are like racing cars stuck in a

garage like they're they're just being

stifled and you know shot down and I'm

going to open the garage and let them go

um so in my give or taker framework I

would call those people disagreeable

givers uh they're Gruff and tough on the

surface uh but they're doing it because

they want to help and they have ideas to

make things better and they're they're

not content to just stick with the

status quo and there there's a bunch of

research to suggest that people who are

highly disagreeable um if they're doing

if if they're challenging people because

they care uh they they actually end up

driving more Innovation and so I've I've

actually started advising leaders that

most of us know the value of a support

network and surrounding ourselves with

mentors and colleagues who who have our

back but what you actually need to get

better is a challenge Network uh a group

of thoughtful critics who you trust to

hold up a mirror so you can see your own

blind spots more clearly and Steve this

is not the norm when I work with leaders

and Founders um I I I think it's pretty

common actually um I I I don't want to

name a specific example here but I I

have interacted with a fair number of of

entrepreneurs and CEOs who I have this

vision of them coming into the office

one morning and saying good morning and

a bunch of people go great

point

it's a scary way to live but you know

this as you gain status and power it's

harder to get people to tell you the

truth and that's why those disagreeable

givers who are willing to challenge you

are so

valuable how how do you um cultivate

that what can you do to cultivate a

circle of dis disagreeable givers or

just people that are going to tell you

the truth well the first thing you do is

you pay attention to to who has actually

been willing to push you mhm uh and you

let them know that they play that role

in your life so I I've actually done

this in the past couple years um I've

had people who you know tore apart book

drafts for me people who told me I

needed to go back to the drawing board

on a an early version of a TED Talk and

I've gone to them and I've said hey you

may not know this but I actually

consider you a founding member of my

challenge Network First Response what

the hell is a challenge

Network because disagreeable people

always talk like that now they don't but

uh I had to explain it and I said I know

I haven't always taken your you know

your challenges well sometimes I've been

defensive other times I've just been

dismissive because I'm on a path and

what you brought was diverting and I

regret that because I know I need you

you have to push me to think again and

question the way I do things so if I

ever you know if you ever hesitate

because you're afraid of hurting my

feelings or damaging our relationship

don't the only way you can hurt me is by

not telling me the truth and the

particular conversation I found really

powerful there is to let people know

that they often feel a a tension between

honesty and

loyalty I don't I don't see a trade-off

there for me honesty is the highest

expression of loyalty the more candid

and direct you are with me the more I

will value your input and sometimes

that's enough in other cases I have to

go a step further which is something

that that I I explored in some research

turns out that sometimes asking people

for input uh doesn't get them over the

hurdle uh they're still afraid or they

think it's just an exercise in futility

so what you have to do is criticize

yourself out loud and and say here are

the things I think I'm bad at here are

the current shortcomings I see in my

work and what you're doing then is

you're not just claiming your open to

feedback you are proving you can take

it so in that instance where you critic

criticize yourself out loud and you say

God I'm so bad at this or that is in

part why you're doing that to make it a

safe space for them to then build on

what you've just said yeah you're trying

to create psychological safety as Amy

Edmonson describes it and in some

research I did with Constantino cerus uh

we found that When leaders sat down and

you know didn't just say I want to know

what I can do better at but said here

are the things that I think I need to

work on a year later when they were

randomly assigned to do that their teams

actually uh were were more willing to

speak up and and challenge them and and

give them constructive criticism and I

think part of what happens when you do

that and I I actually do this in my own

classroom um I uh I I read students some

of the toughest feedback I've gotten in

my career one said that I reminded uh I

reminded them of a

muppet never told me which Muppet thanks

for that uh there was another where um a

military leader had written I gained

nothing from this session but I trust

the instructor got useful

Insight not fun at the time but what I

find is when I read those comments out

loud afterward I hear much more honest

input from my students they tell me

things that they think are not going

well in my class they give me new ideas

for improvement

and I think what I've done there is I'm

showing that I take my work really

seriously I don't take myself that

seriously and you know I'm sort of

unoffendable is the goal and um

sometimes they build like they'll you

know they'll they'll say yeah we see

that weakness and you still need to work

on it and other times they say well

maybe you have a blind spot you didn't

tell us about this area where you're

struggling but we see this here Steve I

I have to say a lot of people get the

concept that are afraid to do it

because they don't want to admit what

they're bad at to the people who who

work with them well guess what the

people you work with every day they

already know what you're bad at you

can't hide it from them right so you

might as well get credit for having the

self-awareness to see it and the

humility and integrity to admit it out

loud on this point of teams as well um

and groups of people the other thing

that was quite challenging that I that I

loved that you discuss is this idea that

brainstorming doesn't really work well

and to maximize collective intelligence

we get more and better ideas when we

work alone and again it kind of there's

a through line here with what we said at

the start about procrastination and the

use of boredom one thing that's really

helped me recently that I wanted to

share and see if there's any resonance

with you is when I have ideas usually

when I'm alone to be fair um or when I'm

reading or when I'm thinking or writing

about something I then write them out

into memos now which is just like a

couple of pages for me to understand

them and then I share them with people

before I didn't do that

before I was a bit more of a pepper I.E

I take something I was thinking about

and just pepper it into like a group

chat whereas now having time and space

to write about it seems to be helping me

to refine the ideas better but just

helps me to come up with better ideas my

question here is about how groups of

people form their best ideas and what

you would suggest based on the research

well you're you're living the evidence

so let's uh yeah let's let's unpack this

a little bit I think Decades of research

on brainstorming have shown that if you

get a group of people together to

generate ideas if instead you would put

them in separate rooms and let them work

alone you would have gotten more ideas

and also better

ideas a lot of people are surprised by

this and there are a few reasons behind

it that that have good support one is

called production blocking we can't all

talk at once some ideas get lost two is

ego threat I don't want to look like an

idiot so I bite my tongue on my most

unconventional ideas and then three is

Conformity pressure which is sometimes