The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 57 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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Grant: Overly certain leaders pose risks by clinging to outdated visions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…”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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 …”
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…”
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 …”
Grant: Experts must write long summaries before distilling core insights
“I often find I have to write a longer summary of a study before
Like before I really start to distill what the core aha is or, you know, why I care about it. And that's especially true for the areas that I know really well.”
Grant: Givers Should Avoid Being Givers Toward Takers
“Like if you're a giver, don't be a giver with takers.”
Grant: Giver performance extremes are driven by strategy, not cognitive ability
“And you know, there is a piece of the story that's explained by ability, but even after controlling for cognitive ability tests for various kinds of skill metrics the, you know, sort of the polarization of giver performance held up and it turned out to be much…”
Grant: Research shows takers experience more day-to-day pleasure than givers
“Jennifer Ocker has some data suggesting that, you know, sort of day to day takers experience more pleasure than givers do because they get to make like every choice is exactly what they want.”
Grant: Helping others only improves personal productivity with good time management
“So we know, for example, there's some neat research by Rapp and colleagues, which basically shows that if you spend a lot of time helping other people if you have poor time management skills, that's really bad for your performance or your productivity. But if …”
Grant: Expertise does not eliminate high quality variance in creative work
“Once people achieve expertise, they're still like, they're still going on lots of random walks. And you know, they may have cleared some objective bar of quality where like, you know, like Shakespeare, like Shakespeare's worst play would still be better than m…”
Grant: Juggling a few ideas boosts creativity via subconscious incubation
“The one caveat I want to put on that though, is we also know that, you know, very frequently sort of subconscious thought is more creative than conscious thought. You've probably tracked the Dijkstra house work on this at some point. And you know, I think that…”
Grant: Comparing yourself to strangers sets unrealistic expectations of greatness
“Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that one of the most dangerous things you can do is you can compare yourself to anybody who you don't know. Because, like, you know, they're, you're only gonna have access if, you know, if they've been careful about having pride …”
Grant: Highly creative high schoolers grow up with half a household rule
“If you look at highly creative high schoolers, for example,
On average they had about half a rule in their household, whereas they're sort of, I don't know how that works, but averages are misleading in many ways.
Not just this one.
There you go.
but you know…”