Jun 1, 2021 · 1h 2m · knowledge-project
#112 Adam Grant: Rethinking Your Position
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of The Knowledge Project, host Shane Parrish and organizational psychologist Adam Grant explore the science of rethinking, examining how individuals and organizations can decouple identity from beliefs, overcome cognitive biases, and build cultures rooted in intellectual humility and psychological safety.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Shane holds 17.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Shane as informed peer 4.6 Guest teaching 5.2 Guest disagreement 2.0 Shane pushing back 2.1
speaking balance: gold is Shane, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 37:27 Adam Rejects Shane's Persuasion Premise
When Shane asks how to convince someone that they are wrong and you are right, Adam immediately rejects the one-sided premise, noting that if one party refuses to move, no real progress will occur.
Hardest push from Shane ▶ 7:13 Shane Challenges Adam's Optimism on Updating ViewsShane firmly pushes back on Adam's assertion that rethinking is natural and fun, reminding him that people rarely update their views in practice.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 22:00 Why Feedback Seeking FailsAdam details empirical study findings showing that asking for feedback often produces defensive behavior, educating Shane on why public self-criticism by leaders is significantly more effective.
Shane holds their own ▶ 30:45 Shane Proposes Scientific Identity ReframeShane articulates that unless a concept is a law of nature it is merely a theory, suggesting identity be rooted in scientific thinking, prompting Adam to enthusiastically concede that Shane's reframe is superior.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Shane as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Shane pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Obligation to Rethink Public Opinions | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Shane asks why it is so difficult for individuals to rethink their own beliefs despite easily diagnosing rigidity in others. Adam explains the psychological mechanisms using French and Raven's framework on expert power and identity fragility. | |
| Decoupling Personal Identity from Beliefs and Methods | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | Shane asks how one can realistically attach identity to core values rather than specific beliefs. Adam playfully challenges Shane's skepticism by highlighting that rethinking is simply the essence of human learning. | |
| Navigating Overconfidence Cycles Versus Rethinking Cycles | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Adam describes overconfidence and rethinking cycles, citing Shane's writing on second thoughts. Shane articulates his background in the intelligence community and explains how knowledge workers tie ego to judgment. | |
| Balancing Decisive Action with Process Accountability | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Shane probes the tension between staying open to rethinking and taking decisive operational action amid escalating sunk costs. Adam presents his process versus outcome accountability matrix. | |
| Designing Structured Decision Processes for Organizational Hiring | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Shane asks how to evaluate a process whose results take years to emerge. Adam outlines a structured, disaggregated hiring assessment model designed to eliminate confirmation bias. | |
| The Limits of Measurement in High-Stakes Scouting | 6 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Shane brings up professional sports scouting and Special Forces assessments as domains that invest heavily in structured evaluation yet still see high variance. Adam explains measurement noise and attribute aggregation dilemmas. | |
| Building Psychological Safety Through Vulnerability and Self-Criticism | 3 | 7 | 1 | 1 | Adam details empirical findings showing that leaders soliciting feedback often backfires, whereas leaders publicly criticizing their own past failures produces lasting psychological safety. | |
| Understanding Trust and Respect in Psychological Safety | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Shane clarifies whether psychological safety variables differ across romantic and workplace relationships. Adam cites Edmondson's core pillars of trust and respect, debunking the misconception that safety equals lack of standards. | |
| Preachers, Prosecutors, Politicians, and Thinking Like Scientists | 7 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Adam reviews Tetlock's preacher, prosecutor, and politician archetypes versus scientist mode. Shane offers an impactful reframe tying identity directly to scientific thinking and testing theories, which Adam enthusiastically validates. | |
| The Seduction of Certainty and Tribal Distinctiveness | 5 | 6 | 3 | 3 | Shane asks why societies consistently elect charismatic leaders projecting certainty over nuanced decision-makers. Adam explains Dunning-Kruger dynamics, Brewer's optimal distinctiveness, and terror management theory. | |
| Reframing Arguments as Dances Through Inquiry and Common Ground | 4 | 7 | 3 | 2 | When Shane asks how to persuade someone else that they are wrong, Adam rejects the one-sided premise. He reframes persuasion as a dance and explains Neil Rackham's research on asking 'how' rather than 'why'. | |
| Overcoming Feigned Knowledge and the Logic Bully Trap | 4 | 5 | 4 | 2 | Shane asks how Adam handles feigned knowledge. Adam recounts insulting investment bankers and shares how being called a 'logic bully' by a student taught him to ask what evidence would change someone's mind. | |
| Cultivating Intellectual Humility and Joy in Children | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Shane asks how to teach children intellectual flexibility. Adam discusses rewriting textbook history sections, hosting dinner myth-busting sessions, and embracing the joy of being wrong. | |
| Dismantling Binary Bias and Embracing Nuanced Spectrums | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Adam explains Peter Coleman's work on binary bias and why complexifying dichotomies into spectrums produces superior outcomes, citing ambiverts and moderate procrastinators. | |
| Learning from Daniel Kahneman and Amazon's Decision Architecture | 7 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Adam recounts Danny Kahneman's joy at being wrong and Jeff Bezos's decision framework. Shane contributes first-hand experience running silent-reading memo meetings to ensure genuine deep thinking. | |
| The Intellectual Responsibility Attached to Voicing Opinions | 3 | 5 | 4 | 2 | Shane asks how to counter 'I am entitled to my opinion'. Adam emphasizes the ethical obligation of evidence-based open-mindedness, then playfully refuses to end until Shane tells him what to rethink. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Adam Grant: People Resist Rethinking Because Fragile Knowledge Threatens Identity and Status
“There are probably multiple reasons for it, but I think Two of the reasons why people are really hesitant to rethink things are one, it makes the world feel much more unpredictable. You know, if my views aren't fixed, then who am I? And how do I navigate a rea…”
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.”
Pride in knowledge triggers confirmation bias and traps people in overconfidence
“The basic idea is we start by being proud of something that we think we know. And that leads us then to feel a lot of conviction. That kind of launches us into confirmation bias, where we look for information that confirms our expectations, as well as desirabi…”
Knowledge workers resist changing minds because identity is tied to judgment
“It's hard in a knowledge environment, though, right? Because You have so much of your worth. You want to contribute to something. I think there's a biological need to contribute to something larger than us. And if your identity, you're not mechanically making …”
Listing specific conditions to change opinions prevents locking into unhelpful beliefs
“When he forms a tentative opinion, will actually make a list of the conditions under which he would change his mind. And I've actually started doing this over the past few months because I don't want to get locked into something that was, you know, maybe sort …”
Organizations should shift to process accountability to encourage thoughtful decision-making
“What a lot of the research on this suggests is that we want to shift to process accountability, not just outcome accountability, and ask people to really think seriously about, okay, how would I know that this is a thorough and thoughtful decision process as o…”
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 …”
Comparing candidates to each other instead of predefined criteria ruins hiring
“Most basic mistake that people make in these kinds of decisions is they don't consider criteria before looking at candidates, right? So they interview their three people, and they start to compare them, as opposed to saying, no, I should have an independent st…”
Holistic single-interviewer evaluations trigger confirmation bias and desirability bias
“We know that it's better to go up to three or four empirically. In too many cases also it's each interviewer's job to make an overall assessment of the candidate, which makes it too easy to decide you like someone, and then confirmation bias and desirability b…”
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…”
Pro sports teams assess under ten attributes despite hundreds driving performance
“I I've worked with a whole bunch of professional sports teams over the past few years on this exact problem. And they're at best assessing on, you know, maybe seven or eight attributes when there might be 200 that are going to drive people's future performance…”
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.”
Psychological safety means trusting you won't be punished for challenging beliefs
“Psychological safety is knowing that other people are going to treat you with respect and trusting that if you go out on a limb and say something uncomfortable or challenge a deep-seated belief, that you are not going to be punished for that.”
Preaching and prosecuting freeze beliefs while politicking merely appeases tribes
“The danger of preaching and prosecuting is that you don't change your mind. You're right. Everyone else is wrong. And so you might be very motivated to get other people to rethink, but your views are frozen. They're set in stone. And politicking is interesting…”
Treating personal views as hypotheses increases mental flexibility and truth-seeking
“And so I think we could all get better at thinking more like scientists to say, you know what? Your views, they're actually just theories, right? You could kind of make them into hypotheses, and then you could run little experiments in your life to figure out …”
People should listen less to individuals the more certain they are
“We should stop confusing confidence for competence, right? Just because somebody is, is sure of an opinion does not mean they actually know what they're talking about. And in fact, anybody who is, is familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect will know that the m…”
Expert negotiators focus far more time on finding common ground
“And the experts they spent far more time planning for and then talking about common ground was the first takeaway.”
Expert negotiators ask significantly more genuine questions than average negotiators
“Then a second difference that, that jumped out pretty clearly is the experts asked a lot more questions than the average negotiators. And they weren't leading questions. They were questions motivated by genuine curiosity.”
Asking 'how' instead of 'why' exposes the illusion of explanatory depth
“What tend to be more effective are how questions, where instead of asking, why do you believe this? You ask, how would you implement this? Or how would that idea work if we were to come to some agreement on it? And that, that cultivates intellectual humility, …”
Asking for proof criteria grounds disagreements in agreed-upon methodology
“It refocuses the conversation in the realm of evidence as opposed to just opinion, right? And so when I ask them to tell me what a well-designed study is going to look like, we can then agree on what valid methods are, and once I tell them what the findings ar…”
Overwhelming people with airtight logic deprives them of owning their choices
“I had overwhelmed her with rational arguments, and she didn't agree, but she couldn't fight back. And my first reaction, Shane, was, yes! Because I thought that was my job as a social scientist, right? I want to come with airtight logic and rigorous data and m…”
Trying to understand 'the other side' reinforces harmful binary thinking
“I really came out rethinking my view that what we need to do is, is better understand the other side, which has been so much the political narrative. I think actually that's part of the problem, not the solution, because there is no charged issue that's ever s…”
The best leaders are ambiverts rather than pure introverts or extroverts
“The best leaders are not the introverts or the extroverts on average. They're the ambiverts who fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum and are comfortable flexing and talking and listening.”
The most creative people start projects quickly but finish them slowly
“The most creative people are not the procrastinators like me who dive right in or the procrastinators who wait till the last minute. They're the people who are quick to start, but slow to finish somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.”
Organizations overvalue fast thinkers at the expense of slow, deep thinkers
“I worry a lot that we spend too much time listening to people who think fast and shallow, and not enough time hearing people who think slow and deep, and I think we want to become the people who think slow and deep, because that's where most of our good rethin…”
Voicing opinions aloud incurs a responsibility to remain open to changing them
“If you keep your opinion to yourself, if you decide to say it out loud, then I think you have a responsibility to be open to changing your mind in the face of better logic or stronger data. And so I think if you're willing to voice an opinion, you should also …”