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Speak softly, but carry a big stick. --Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. president
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Adam M. Grant |
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I'd rather be defined by perseverance than by whether or not I passed an exam.
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Adam M. Grant |
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identify high-potential people, and then provide them with the mentoring, support, and resources needed to grow to achieve their potential.
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Adam M. Grant |
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The identification of talent may be the wrong place to start. For many years, psychologists believed that in any domain, success depended on talent first and motivation second.
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Adam M. Grant |
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Peter Drucker, these "knowledge workers, unlike manual workers in manufacturing, own the means of production: they carry that knowledge in their heads and can therefore take it with them."
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Adam M. Grant |
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Dormant ties offer the access to novel information that weak ties afford, but without the discomfort
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Adam M. Grant |
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Of course, natural talent also matters, but once you have a pool of candidates above the threshold of necessary potential, grit is a major factor that predicts how close they get to achieving their potential. This is why givers focus on gritty people: it's where givers have the greatest return on their investment, the most meaningful and lasting impact.
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Adam M. Grant |
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Conceptual innovators tend to generate original ideas early but risk copying themselves. The experimental approach takes longer, but proves more renewable: instead of reproducing our past ideas, experiments enable us to continue discovering new ones.
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Adam M. Grant |
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Justifying the default system serves a soothing function. It's an emotional painkiller: If the world is supposed to be this way, we don't need to be dissatisfied with it. But acquiescence also robs us of the moral outrage to stand against injustice and the creative will to consider alternative ways that the world could work.
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Adam M. Grant |
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Start the spark of reciprocity by making requests as well as helping others. Help generously and without thought of return; but also ask often for what you need.
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Adam M. Grant |
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Good givers are great getters; they make everybody better," Simmons explains." --
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Adam M. Grant |
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The opposite of a taker's powerful communication style is called powerless communication. Powerless communicators tend to speak less assertively, expressing plenty of doubt and relying heavily on advice from others. They talk in ways that signal vulnerability, revealing their weaknesses and making use of disclaimers, hedges, and hesitations.
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Adam M. Grant |
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Powerless communication had made all the difference. Instead of working to establish my credentials, I made myself vulnerable, and called out the elephant in the room.
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Adam M. Grant |
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In roles as leaders and mentors, givers resist the temptation to search for talent first. By recognizing that anyone can be a bloomer, givers focus their attention on motivation.
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Adam M. Grant |
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Being a giver is not good for a 100-yard dash, but it's valuable in a marathon.
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Adam M. Grant |
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We tend to stereotype agreeable people as givers, and disagreeable people as takers. When a new contact appears affable, it's natural to conclude that he has good intentions. If he comes across as cold or confrontational, this seems like a sign that he doesn't care about what's in our best interests.*
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Adam M. Grant |
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grit: having passion and perseverance toward long-term goals.
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Adam M. Grant |
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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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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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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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powerless communication, marked by questions, is the defining quality of how givers sell.
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Adam M. Grant |
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 |