Adam M. Grant Quotes

#1. As much as agreeable people may love us, they often hate conflict even more. Their desire to please others and preserve harmony makes them prone to backing down instead of sticking up for us. "Because

Adam M. Grant

#2. The art of advocacy is to lead you to my conclusion on your terms.

Adam M. Grant

#3. Being original doesn't require being first. It just means being different and better.

Adam M. Grant

#4. You never know where somebody's going to end up. It's not just about building your reputation; it really is about being there for other people.

Adam M. Grant

#5. groupthink occurs when people "are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group," and their "strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.

Adam M. Grant

#6. The thing about credit is that it's not zero-sum. There's room for everybody, and you'll shine if other people are shining.

Adam M. Grant

#7. Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another. By

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#8. The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists. I've

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#9. To get Firefox or Chrome, you have to demonstrate some resourcefulness and download a different browser. Instead of accepting the default, you take a bit of initiative to seek out an option that might be better. And that act of initiative, however tiny, is a window into what you do at work.

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#10. Practice makes perfect, but it doesn't make new.

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#11. Giving and taking are based on our motives and values, and they're choices that we make regardless of whether our personalities trend agreeable or disagreeable.

Adam M. Grant

#12. When women speak up, they run the risk of violating that gender stereotype, which leads audiences to judge them as aggressive. Voice

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#13. People who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it.

Adam M. Grant

#14. ... superb presentations - start by establishing "what is: here's the status quo." Then, they "compare that to what could be," making "that gap as big as possible" - Quoting Nancy Duarte

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#15. the more familiar a face, letter, number, sound, flavor, brand, or Chinese character becomes, the more we like it. It's true across different cultures and species; even baby chickens prefer the familiar.

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#16. Passionate people don't wear their passion on their sleeves; they have it in their hearts." The

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#17. In these pages, I learned that great creators don't necessarily have the deepest expertise but rather seek out the broadest perspectives.

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#18. This explains why we often undercommunicate our ideas. They're already so familiar to us that we underestimate how much exposure an audience needs to comprehend and buy into them. When

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#19. Argue like you're right and listen like you're wrong.

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#20. 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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#21. Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity, but it can be a resource for creativity.

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#22. As Charles Darwin once wrote, a tribe with many people acting like givers, who "were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.

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#23. In a study of over 15,000 classical music compositions, the more pieces a composer produced in a given five-year window, the greater the spike in the odds of a hit.

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#24. If we communicate the vision behind our ideas, the purpose guiding our products, people will flock to us.

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#25. kissing up, kicking down." Although

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#26. In the deepest sense of the word, a friend is someone who sees more potential in you than you see in yourself, someone who helps you become the best version of yourself.

Adam M. Grant

#27. When our commitment is wavering, the best way to stay on track is to consider the progress we've already made. As we recognize what we've invested and attained, it seems like a waste to give up, and our confidence and commitment surge.

Adam M. Grant

#28. Conviction in our ideas is dangerous not only because it leaves us vulnerable to false positives, but also because it stops us from generating the requisite variety to reach our creative potential.

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#29. As Samuel Johnson purportedly wrote, "The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

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#30. So if givers are most likely to land at the bottom of the success ladder, who's at the top - takers or matchers? Neither. When I took another look at the data, I discovered a surprising pattern: It's the givers again.

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#31. Nobody walks in here with what they think is a bad idea.

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#32. Similarly, when women offer suggestions for improvement, managers judge them as less loyal than men and are less likely to implement their proposals. Especially

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#33. 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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#34. And astronomy stagnated for decades because Nicolaus Copernicus refused to publish his original discovery that the earth revolves around the sun. Fearing rejection and ridicule, he stayed silent for twenty-two years, circulating his findings only to his friends. Eventually,

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#35. Ultimately, by repeatedly making the choice to act in the interest of others, strategic matchers may find themselves developing giver identities, resulting in a gradual drift in style toward the giving end of the reciprocity spectrum.

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#36. to the psychologist Robert Cialdini, people can capitalize on this norm of reciprocity by giving what they want to receive. Instead

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#37. a perspective gap: when we're not experiencing a psychologically or physically intense state, we dramatically underestimate how much it will affect us.

Adam M. Grant

#38. Shapers" are independent thinkers: curious, non-conforming, and rebellious. They practice brutal, nonhierarchical honesty. And they act in the face of risk, because their fear of not succeeding exceeds their fear of failing.

Adam M. Grant

#39. Of course it was Hamlet - The uncle kills the father, and the son has to avenge his father's death. So then we decided it was going to be Hamlet with lions." In that pivotal moment, the film got the green light.

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#40. As physicist Max Planck once observed, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.

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#41. 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. The

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#42. Now that you have a bit of respect, you value your standing in the group and don't want to jeopardize it. To maintain and then gain status, you play a game of follow-the-leader, conforming to prove your worth as a group member. As

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#43. Overall, the evidence suggests that liking continues to increase as people are exposed to an idea between ten and twenty times, with additional exposure still useful for more complex ideas. Interestingly,

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#44. To become original, you have to try something new, which means accepting some measure of risk.

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#45. All it took was having them spend their initial six minutes a little differently: instead of adopting a managerial mindset for evaluating ideas, they got into a creative mindset by generating ideas themselves. Just

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#46. Other studies show that male executives who talk more than their peers are rewarded, but female executives who engage in the same behavior are devalued by both men and women. Similarly,

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#47. highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability, and opportunity. If we want to succeed, we need a combination of hard work, talent, and luck.

Adam M. Grant

#48. Bryan finds that appeals to character are effective for adults as well. His team was able to cut cheating in half with the same turn of phrase: instead of "Please don't cheat," they changed the appeal to "Please don't be a cheater." When

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#49. When we become curious about the dissatisfying defaults in our world, we begin to recognize that most of them have social origins: Rules and systems were created by people. And that awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them. Before

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#50. People who started businesses and contributed to patent applications were more likely than their peers to have leisure time hobbies that involved drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, and literature.

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#51. The least favorite students were the non-conformists who made up their own rules. Teachers tend to discriminate against highly creative students, labeling them as troublemakers. In

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#52. It seems counterintuitive, but the more altruistic your attitude, the more benefits you will gain from the relationship," writes LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. "If you set out to help others," he explains, "you will rapidly reinforce your own reputation and expand your universe of possibilities.

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#53. Americans see independence as a symbol of strength, viewing interdependence as a sign of weakness

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#54. Merely knowing that you are not the only resister makes it substantially easier to reject the crowd.

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#55. The greatest shapers don't stop at introducing originality into the world. They create cultures that unleash originality in others.

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#56. 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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#57. Francis Ford Coppola observed, "The way to come to power is not always to merely challenge the Establishment, but first make a place in it and then challenge and double-cross the Establishment.

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#58. One participant got so angry after thinking about the insulting feedback that hitting the punching bag wasn't enough: he punched a hole in the wall of the lab.

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#59. The greatest tragedy of mankind," Dalio says, "comes from the inability of people to have thoughtful disagreement to find out what's true." Through

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#60. When we're determined to reach an objective, it's the gap between where we are and where we aspire to be that lights a fire under us.

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#61. When we've developed an idea, we're typically too close to our own tastes - and too far from the audience's taste - to evaluate it accurately. We're

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#62. Originality is taking the road less traveled, championing a set of novel ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better. Of

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#63. 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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#64. research shows that givers get extra credit when they offer ideas that challenge the status quo.

Adam M. Grant

#65. The more you give, the more you want to do it - as do others around you. It's like going to the gym. If you've been working out your kindness muscles, you get stronger at it. - Nipun Mehta

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#66. When we use the logic of consequence, we can always find reasons not to take risks. The

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#67. is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.

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#68. women were beginning to see that custom, religious precept, and law were in fact man-made and therefore reversible.

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#69. Interest in the arts among entrepreneurs, inventors, and eminent scientists obviously reflects their curiosity and aptitude. People who are open to new ways of looking at science and business also tend to be fascinated by the expression of ideas and emotions through images, sounds, and words.

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#70. To generate a handful of masterworks, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces before his death at thirty-five, Beethoven produced 650 in his lifetime, and Bach wrote over a thousand.

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#71. Rules and systems were created by people. And that awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them.

Adam M. Grant

#72. Success doesn't measure a human being, effort does.

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#73. Regardless of their reciprocity styles, people love to be asked for advice.

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#74. Middle-status conformity leads us to choose the safety of the tried-and-true over the danger of the original. Sociologists

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#75. At its core, comedy is an act of rebellion. Evidence shows that compared to the norms in the population, comedians tend to be more original and rebellious - and the higher they score on these dimensions, the more professional success they attain. After

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#76. creative geniuses weren't qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality.

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#77. Rather than looking outward in an attempt to predict the outcome, you turn inward to your identity. You base the decision on who you are - or who you want to be.

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#78. They're constrained by a shortage of people who excel at choosing the right novel ideas. The

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#79. As Jack Handey advised in one of his "Deep Thoughts" on Saturday Night Live, before you criticize people, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

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#80. But just as exposure research would suggest, the brief presentations interspersed between other communications - and the delays between them - caused leaders to warm up to Medina's ideas.

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#81. Housman ran the same analysis for absences from work. The pattern was the same: Firefox and Chrome users were 19 percent less likely to miss work than Internet Explorer and Safari fans.

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