Adam Grant
Professor of Management, Wharton · 4 appearances on the record.
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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.
57statements → 16claims → 15claims resolved → 93%fully supported → 3.81/5average certainty → 2.16/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 12said about them ↓
14 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed how the 16 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
16 assertions · 3 opinions · 37 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 16 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 15 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Adam argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Adam Grant on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Adam Grant said on the Knowledge Project that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
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.”
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: 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: 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 …”
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…”
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…”
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.”
Grant: Givers are overrepresented at the best and worst performance extremes
“And, you know, I finally, as I took a closer look at the data, I found that, you know, for salespeople, for engineers and even medical professionals the givers were overrepresented on both extremes of the success spectrum. They made up a disproportionate numbe…”
Grant: Helping others equals core task performance in average evaluations
“We know, for example, that if you look at the meta-analyses that Podzikoff and colleagues have published, that the amount of time you spend helping others is as critical to your job performance as how well you do your actual tasks. They carry about equal weigh…”
Grant: Teams need matchers to protect trusting givers from takers
“They would. But if you have strong matchers who really believe in, in fairness and justice over compassion and generosity, Then you have much, much more foolproof sort of taker detection and defense mechanisms. Because, you know, again, givers tend to be too t…”
Grant: The most highly original innovators are consistently extremely risk-averse
“The most original people among us pretty consistently are extremely risk averse. So they really like sort of real clarity and maybe even certainty about success.”
Grant: Silicon Valley only celebrates failure retrospectively after achieving success
“Silicon Valley is, is well known for celebrating failure. Although, you know, people are usually only comfortable celebrating failure after they've achieved success which is sort of a paradox. Cause then you don't get to see any ordinary people failing or peop…”
Grant: Social science causal effects are usually reinforcing feedback loops
“For the most part, when we have causal effects in the social sciences, they tend to be feedback loops. It's not that in real life X is just causing Y. It's more that, you know, X is boosting Y a little bit, and then Y reinforces X, and they, you know, they sta…”
Grant: Treat personal opinions as hypotheses rather than fixed truths
“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 whether…”
Grant: Group belonging provides a psychological terror management function
“One of the most robust findings in psychology over the past three decades is that belonging to a unique group actually serves a terror management function. That it helps you avoid threats to your own mortality or at least it makes you worry less about what mig…”
Adam Grant: Identity should be anchored in values rather than beliefs
“I think that for me, an identity is not about what you believe, it's about what you value. And so I want to have a set of principles. For me, my highest values are generosity, excellence, integrity, and freedom. And I am completely flexible on the best ways to…”
Adam Grant: Voicing an opinion obligates openness to changing it
“You're entitled to your own opinion. 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 …”
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…”
The other half of the tape: Adam Grant's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 12 times in 8 episodes on the Knowledge Project. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Margaret Heffernan 3Todd Simkin 2Ray Dalio 2Neil Pasricha 1Laurie Santos 1Chris Voss 1Charlie Hoehn 1Aaron Dignan 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 2 mentions in 1 episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2017 2 mentions in 1 episode
Appearances (4)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| TKP Insights: Learning and Thinking | Nov 7, 2023 | 6m |
| #127 Best of 2021: Conversations of the Year | Dec 21, 2021 | 6m |
| #112 Adam Grant: Rethinking Your Position | Jun 1, 2021 | 45m |
| #22 Adam Grant: Givers, Takers, and the Resilient Mind | Sep 21, 2017 | 1h 2m |