Adam Grant
Professor of Management, Wharton. On 4 shows, 7 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
academicauthorscientist
Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist and professor at the Wharton School. He is the author of Originals: How Nonconformists Move the World and conducts research on workplace dynamics, rethinking cycles, and intellectual humility.
4shows
7appearances
114statements
35resolved
32supported
1contradicted
91%fully supported
29said about them ↓ Everything Adam Grant said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Grant: The self-esteem movement has been disastrous for entrepreneurs
“I would also say that the self-esteem movement has been disastrous for entrepreneurs in the sense that Becoming a successful entrepreneur is not about thinking that you're special. It's about believing that, you know, somebody else could do this. Maybe I could…”
Grant: Exact replications in social science are nearly impossible to achieve
“The odds that you're going to find the exact same effect with a different group of people who don't have an identical distribution of traits are pretty close to zero in my opinion.”
Grant: Top Individual Salespeople Actually Tend to Make Worse Sales Managers
“And the better you are at individual sales, the worse you tend to be as a manager. Your teams actually achieve poorer performance.”
Grant: Independent idea generation produces more and better ideas than group brainstorming
“We have over 40 years of evidence that if you had a group of people, let's say five, brainstorming together, if instead you had let them come up with ideas independently, you get more ideas and also better ideas on average.”
Encouraging managers to seek feedback fails to create lasting psychological safety
“We found that when we went and encouraged managers to go and ask for feedback, it didn't have a lasting effect on psychological safety.”
One session of manager self-criticism boosts team psychological safety for a year
“When we randomly assign managers to kind of criticize themselves as opposed to asking for criticism, just inviting them to do that once increased psychological safety in their teams for at least a year.”
Grant: Pitching radical ideas requires starting with 'how', not 'why'
“But if you have a really original idea, that's terrible advice, because your why sounds insane to other people. And so if you're Meredith, or if you're Steve Jobs for that matter, sometimes the how is much more believable than the why.”
Grant: Hiring for cultural fit boosts IPO odds but slows post-IPO growth
“Founders who hire on cultural fit are less likely to see their startups fail, and they're more likely to make it to IPO. And then after IPO, their firms grow at a much slower rate than the ones that hire on skill or potential.”
Grant: 40 years of research shows assigned devil's advocates rarely work
“If you look at 40 years of research by Charlene Nemeth at Berkeley, she shows that devil's advocates rarely work.”
Grant: Shifting competitive teams to cooperative norms breeds cutthroat behavior
“We know that, for example, if you start out in a really competitive team and then you try to shift the norms to become more cooperative, it doesn't work. And you end up with this pattern of cutthroat cooperation where I'm pretending to help you, but I'm really…”
Grant: Second and third movers are seven times less likely to fail
“If you look at the entrepreneurship realm, for example, or companies launching new products on average the sort of the settlers as opposed to the pioneers, the second and third movers are about seven times less likely to fail than the first movers.”
Grant: Power poses cause behavioral changes, but boundary conditions remain unknown
“Do I believe that power poses can cause psychological behavior and behavioral changes in people? Sure. Do I know when those changes occur and for whom? Not a clue yet.”
Grant: Permitting Toxic Superstars Means Your Definition of Performance Is Broken
“If it's possible to be a toxic superstar, if it's possible to be a, you know, a high performer who's selfish, then your definition of performance is too narrow.”
Grant: Overly certain leaders pose risks by clinging to outdated visions
“Anybody who is, is familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect will know that the more sure people are of their opinions, the more Hesitant we should be to listen to them, right? But there's something very intoxicating about following someone who believes they've …”
Grant: Attention management drives productivity better than time management
“So I think that what I've tried to shift to is From time management to attention management. To say that the one thing I can really control is what I focus on. And I like to start every week with the people and projects that matter to me. And that way, when I'…”
Grant: Society does not need another leadership or self-esteem book
“We just don't need another leadership book. I, I'm pretty convinced. I don't think we need another self-help book either on self-esteem for that matter, right?”
Grant: Delaying difficult tasks fosters incubation and enhances creative insight
“In this research that Jihei Shin and I did, we found consistently that if you were putting off a task because it was hard and you hadn't figured it out yet, that that opened up opportunities to incubate. You were more likely to access remote knowledge. You wer…”
Grant: Founders trained to think scientifically generated 40x more revenue
“Over the next year, on average, the entrepreneurs who had been trained to think like scientists, randomly assigned, brought in more than 40 times the revenue of the control group. That is a staggering effect. And the major mechanism behind it is they were more…”
Grant: Celebrating failure is one of Silicon Valley's worst exports
“I think one of the worst exports of Silicon Valley to the rest of the world is the idea that we should celebrate failure.”
Grant: Federal funding is the most underappreciated driver of innovation
“Federal government investment innovation, in innovation is probably the single most underestimated and underappreciated driver of creativity and of entrepreneurship.”
Grant: VCs ignore critical innovation to focus on easy 10x returns
“The problem with venture capitalists is they tend to invest in the ideas that are easy to 10 X or more. And we often have to look to the government to invest in ideas like a COVID vaccine, right? That are probably not going to be as profitable.”
Personal identity should be anchored in core values, not static beliefs
“I think that, for me, an identity is not about what you believe, it's about what you value.”
Organizations must stop rewarding lucky outcomes resulting from bad decision-making processes
“And I think we need to stop rewarding good outcomes with bad processes because that's just luck. That's kind of a boneheaded decision that, that happened to turn out well. And we need to start either celebrating or at least normalizing good processes with bad …”
Managers reject structured hiring because algorithms threaten their reliance on intuition
“I think it's less about the time and more about the gospel of intuition. Too many hiring managers are afraid that if they essentially delegate, I mean, this is a more algorithmic, it's a more algorithmic approach to decision making, right? If I delegate my kno…”
The other half of the tape: Adam Grant's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 28 times in 20 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 9Margaret Heffernan 3Todd Simkin 2Ray Dalio 2Naomi Gleit 2Bob Sutton 2Vikrama Dhiman 1Neil Pasricha 1
Statements about Adam Grant, by other people (1)
Agreeable takers are dangerous, while disagreeable givers are highly valuable.
“The most dangerous kind of person to have in an organization is an agreeable taker. And what that means is an agreeable person, super nice, everyone likes them, really easy to get along with, but they're a taker. Maybe their motivation is more self-interested …”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Knowledge Project 12
How I Built This 9
Lenny's Podcast 5
the a16z Podcast 2
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 6 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- Meta’s head of product on working with Mark Zuckerberg, early growth tactics, and more | Naomi Gleit
- Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read
- How a great founder becomes a great CEO | Jonathan Lowenhar (co-founder of Enjoy The Work)
- Unorthodox frameworks for growing your product, career, and impact | Bangaly Kaba (YT, IG, FB)
- A framework for PM skill development | Vikrama Dhiman (Gojek)
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 9 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- Logic: Logic & Chris Zarou (2018)
- #119 Todd Simkin: Making Better Decisions
- Live From The HIBT Summit: Gary Vaynerchuk
- Live From HIBT Summit: Payal Kadakia, Tristan Walker, and Perry Chen on Innovation
- Live From The HIBT Summit: Cynt Marshall, Chieh Huang, and Sadie Lincoln on Leadership
- Pipcorn: Jennifer and Jeff Martin
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2018 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2017 2 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Adam's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Professor of Management, Wharton | 4 | 57 | 93% 14/15 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Professor of Management, Wharton | 2 | 32 | 100% 10/10 | full record on How I Built This → |
| a16zLEDGER | Professor of Management, Wharton | 1 | 25 | 80% 8/10 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Professor of Management, Wharton | 0 +1 | 0 | — | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |