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58ce7a1
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Empathy is a pervasive force behind giving behaviors, but it's also a major source of vulnerability.
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Adam M. Grant |
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d4429f8
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Setting high expectations is so important," Skender says. "You have to push people, make them stretch and do more than they think possible."
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Adam M. Grant |
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45b2980
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giving was the only characteristic to predict performance: it didn't matter whether the salespeople were conscientious or carefree, extroverted or introverted, emotionally stable or anxious, and open-minded or traditional.
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Adam M. Grant |
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d670c6e
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powerless communication, marked by questions, is the defining quality of how givers sell.
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Adam M. Grant |
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223c855
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By asking people questions about their plans and intentions, we increase the likelihood that they actually act on these plans and intentions.
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Adam M. Grant |
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5aa38c9
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Givers tend to use more powerless speech, talking with tentative markers like these: * Hesitations: "well," "um," "uh," "you know" * Hedges: "kinda," "sorta," "maybe," "probably," "I think" * Disclaimers: "this may be a bad idea, but" * Tag questions: "that's interesting, isn't it?" or "that's a good idea, right?" * Intensifiers: "really," "very," "quite"
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Adam M. Grant |
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d714539
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seeking advice is among the most effective ways to influence peers, superiors, and subordinates.
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Adam M. Grant |
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2ab9553
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Advice seeking is a form of powerless communication that combines expressing vulnerability, asking questions, and talking tentatively.
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Adam M. Grant |
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396d4e6
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Teaching at any level on any subject is the most rewarding thing you can do," Inman told Thompson. "I just love to see the expression on the face of a student who gets it for the first time. Just watching the learning process come to full bloom gives me such a rush."
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Adam M. Grant |
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83f3f95
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research shows that people who regularly seek advice and help from knowledgeable colleagues are actually rated more favorably by supervisors than those who never seek advice and help.
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Adam M. Grant |
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1dcc885
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by asking for help, you're creating an opportunity for them to express their values and feel valued. By asking for a five-minute favor, you impose a relatively small burden--and if you ask a matcher, you can count on having an opportunity to reciprocate.
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Adam M. Grant |
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43d4054
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One of the keys to cultivating grit is making the task at hand more interesting and motivating.
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Adam M. Grant |
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6138dde
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takers sometimes win in independent roles where performance is only about individual results, givers thrive in interdependent roles where collaboration matters.
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Adam M. Grant |
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d2a3b87
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Steve Jones, the award-winning former CEO of one of the largest banks in Australia, wanted to know what made financial advisers successful. His team studied key factors such as financial expertise and effort. But "the single most influential factor," Jones told me, "was whether a financial adviser had the client's best interests at heart, above the company's and even his own."
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Adam M. Grant |
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be5ae04
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you can't just ignore someone because you don't think they're important enough.
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Adam M. Grant |
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7cde6b2
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escalation of commitment to a losing course of action. Over the past four decades, extensive research led by Staw shows that once people make an initial investment of time, energy, or resources, when it goes sour, they're at risk for increasing their investment. Gamblers in the hole believe that if they just play one more hand of poker, they'll be able to recover their losses or even win big. Struggling entrepreneurs think that if they just..
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Adam M. Grant |
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2e922e2
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Sunk costs do have a small effect--decision makers are biased in favor of their previous investments--but three other factors are more powerful. One is anticipated regret: will I be sorry that I didn't give this another chance? The second is project completion: if I keep investing, I can finish the project. But the single most powerful factor is ego threat: if I don't keep investing, I'll look and feel like a fool.
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Adam M. Grant |
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db9ab02
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value the perspectives and interests of others, givers are more inclined toward asking questions than offering answers, talking tentatively than boldly, admitting their weaknesses than displaying their strengths, and seeking advice than imposing their views on others.
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Adam M. Grant |
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7071b57
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When the average candidate was clumsy, audiences liked him even less. But when the expert was clumsy, audiences liked him even more. Psychologists call this the pratfall effect.
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Adam M. Grant |
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d33e198
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Meyer summarizes his code of honor as "(1) Show up. (2) Work hard. (3) Be kind. (4) Take the high road." As he contributed in ways that revealed his skills without spawning jealousy, colleagues began to admire and trust his comedic genius. "People started to see him as somebody who wasn't just motivated personally," Tim Long explains. "You don't think of him as a competitor. He's someone you can think of on a higher plane, and can trust cre..
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Adam M. Grant |
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325df6c
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The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle writes that "From a scientific perspective, it was as if the researchers had traced the lineage of the world's most beautiful swans back to a scruffy flock of barnyard chickens."
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Adam M. Grant |
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c1f37ba
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Malcolm Gladwell showed us in Outliers, research led by psychologist Anders Ericsson reveals that attaining expertise in a domain typically requires ten thousand hours of deliberate practice.
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Adam M. Grant |
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06bd1e9
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what motivates people to practice at such length in the first place? This is where givers often enter the picture.
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Adam M. Grant |
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4350671
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Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." Scott Adams"
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Adam M. Grant |
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732ab65
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One of the best things about developing that credibility was if I wanted to try something that was fairly strange, people would be willing to at least give it a shot at the table read," Meyer reflects. "They ended up not rewriting my stuff as much as they had early on, because they knew I had a decent track record. I think people saw that my heart was in the right place--my intentions were good. That goes a long way."
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Adam M. Grant |
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4b62266
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By giving away credit, Meyer compromised his visibility. "For a long time, George's towering contribution to what some see as the most important TV show of the period was not as well known as it should have been," Long recalls. "He was generating a tremendous amount of material, and not really getting credit."
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Adam M. Grant |
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cbe8864
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We were in the audience, your closest colleagues and devoted associates, who worked hard and faithfully for the same goal that you desired," Youngner began. "Do you remember whom you mentioned and whom you left out? Do you realize how devastated we were at that moment and ever afterward when you persisted in making your coworkers invisible?"
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Adam M. Grant |
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712b6a0
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responsibility bias is a major source of failed collaborations. Professional relationships disintegrate when entrepreneurs, inventors, investors, and executives feel that their partners are not giving them the credit they deserve, or doing their fair share.
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Adam M. Grant |
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64e59a8
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responsibility bias occurs because we have more information about our own contributions than others'.
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Adam M. Grant |
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7dc4198
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Research by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson shows that in the type of psychologically safe environment that Meyer helped create, people learn and innovate more.* And it's givers who often create such an environment: in one study, engineers who shared ideas without expecting anything in return were more likely to play a major role in innovation, as they made it safe to exchange information
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Adam M. Grant |
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72484e0
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givers and takers differ in their attitudes and actions toward other people. If you're a taker, you help others strategically, when the benefits to you outweigh the personal costs. If you're a giver, you might use a different cost-benefit analysis: you help whenever the benefits to others exceed the personal costs. Alternatively, you might not think about the personal costs at all, helping others without expecting anything in return. If you..
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Adam M. Grant |
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c44daad
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You gotta kiss a lot of frogs," he often told his team, "before you find a prince." In fact, frog kissing was one of his mantras: he encouraged his engineers to try out many variations to increase their chances of stumbling on the right one. But" --
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Adam M. Grant |
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579d3c7
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When takers win, there's usually someone else who loses. Research shows that people tend to envy successful takers and look for ways to knock them down a notch.
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Adam M. Grant |
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426f0f9
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If you're gonna make connections which are innovative," Steve Jobs said back in 1982, "you have to not have the same bag of experience as everyone else does." Working"
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Adam M. Grant |
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60b6a79
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The mere exposure effect has been replicated many times--the more familiar a face, letter, number, sound, flavor, brand, or Chinese character becomes, the more we like it.
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Adam M. Grant |
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9bdb82d
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No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader," he was fond of saying."
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Adam M. Grant |
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c5dff89
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Instead of courage' management guru Tom Peters recommends fostering 'a level of fury with the status quo such that one cannot not act.
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fury
motivation
status-quo
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Adam M. Grant |
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ccc36d5
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The people who had been recognized for making original contributions shared many more stories that started negatively but surged upward: they struggled early and triumphed later. Despite being confronted with more negative events, they reported greater satisfaction with their lives and a stronger sense of purpose.
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hope
improvement
patience
struggle
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Adam M. Grant |
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0792e99
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At work, our sense of commitment and control depends more on our direct boss than on anyone else. When we have a supportive boss, our bond with the organization strengthens and we feel a greater span of influence. As
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Adam M. Grant |
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e7dcea7
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Originals do vary in their attitudes toward risk. Some are skydiving gamblers; others are penny-pinching germophobes. To become original, you have to try something new, which means accepting some measure of risk. But the most successful originals are not the daredevils who leap before they look. They are the ones who reluctantly tiptoe to the edge of a cliff, calculate the rate of descent, triple-check their parachutes, and set up a safety ..
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Adam M. Grant |
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ffae6b7
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Merely knowing that you are not the only resister makes it substantially easier to reject the crowd.
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nonconformism
peer-pressure
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Adam M. Grant |
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bdea0fc
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When we have an original idea to invent a product or start a company, we're encouraged to be the first mover. There are, of course, clear advantages to speed: we can be sure to finish what we start and beat competitors to market. But surprisingly, as I've studied originals,
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Adam M. Grant |
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43ea51f
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Every day, we all encounter things we love and things that need to change. The former give us joy. The latter fuel our desire to make the world different--ideally better than the way we found it. But trying to change deep-seated beliefs and behaviors is daunting. We accept the status quo because effecting real change seems impossible. Still, we dare to ask: Can one individual make a difference? And, in our bravest moments: Could that one in..
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Adam M. Grant |
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3d3e0f0
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Without a sense of urgency , people ... won't make needed sacrafices. Instead they cling to the status quo and resist.' - Quoting John Kotter
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sense-of-urgency
timing
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Adam M. Grant |