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Hey, it's Guy here.And before we start the show, I want to tell you about a super exciting thing.We are launching on How I Built This.So if you own your own business or trying to get one off the ground, we might put you on the show.Yes, on the show.And when you come on, you won't just be joining me, but you'll be speaking with some of our favorite former guests who also happen to be some of the greatest entrepreneurs on earth. And together, we'll answer your most pressing questions about launching and growing your business.Imagine getting real-time branding advice from Sunbum's Tom Rinks or marketing tips from Von Weaver of Uncle Nearest Whiskey.If you'd like to be considered, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. And make sure to tell us how to reach you.
Each week, we'll pick a few callers to join us on this show.You can send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com or you can call 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there.That's 1-800-433-1298.And that's it.Hope to hear from you soon.And we are so excited to have you come on the show.And now, on to the show. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab.I'm Guy Raz.So on this show, I've talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs about how they built their incredible companies and teams.
And almost every single story involves confronting some unforeseen challenge, you know, by learning something new or jumping into an unfamiliar and sometimes even scary situation. Most people aren't really trained on how to tackle the big challenges that come with launching and growing a business.Most of the time, they dig deep within themselves and figure out a way forward.Well, my guest today, Adam Grant, recently wrote a book about this very concept.You may know Adam, in fact, because he's been on the show before or maybe you've listened to one of his podcasts, Work Life or Rethinking. In Adam's latest book, Hidden Potential, he dismantles the myth that you have to be born with innate qualities to accomplish great things.And as we've seen time and again with many of the founders on this show, growth isn't about the genius you possess, but about the character you develop.
SPEAKER_03: What first got me thinking differently about character was this incredible study by Raj Chetty and colleagues, where they show that you can predict your income in your 20s by just looking at how many years of experience your kindergarten teacher had.I mean, that's remarkable.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: More experienced kindergarten teachers end up with more successful students?How could that be?And it turned out that it was not so much an advantage of cognitive skills, you know, the early age in math and reading, but rather a lasting gain in character skills.And there was a set of habits that you learned at age five that stuck with you and then actually explained the success that you achieved in your 20s and beyond.And so you start to think, okay, if a kindergarten teacher can teach character skills that are visible for four, eight years later, and then maybe even decades down the road, there's something powerful there.
SPEAKER_02: I want to double click on this idea for a moment, right?Because as you can imagine, after interviewing 500 or more founders of companies, you see certain character traits.There's some commonalities, but fewer than people imagine, right?What do you see?I'm curious. I mean the sort of the unsurprising ones like resilience and determination and grit.But I mean I think that the main one is a – and I think it's in many cases a developed ability to withstand no. To withstand or to see no in a different way.It's almost like how Wayne Gretzky could see the hockey puck in different ways than other players, which enabled him to be a great player.If you can hear and see the word no as a beginning and a start, then you have a huge advantage as a founder and entrepreneur.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: But I wonder, you know, one of the things I do see in some entrepreneurs and you've seen this in some of your students is they have the ability to just get along with anybody.They're sort of socially comfortable.They're really easy to talk to.They're very likable. And so I wonder whether those kinds of things – I mean we talk about developing skills, right?But is there a limit to how good you can get at something like that?I mean I just give you an example of me.I mean I am an introvert naturally.I have a job which requires me to speak publicly.I know that you also have some introverted skills.
personality traits.And I try to fight against it.I'll go to a party or I'll go to a mixer or an event for parents at the school.And it's really hard for me.And after years and years of doing it, I don't feel like I'm that much better at operating in those situations.You know what I mean?I do know what you mean.Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.I mean, here we are, two writer podcasters who are introverts, who have pushed ourselves out of our comfort zones over and over again.I think here's my hunch.So what you're talking about are social skills. And my hunch is that the reason you've become excellent at podcasting, but not at small talk, is you had specific skills that you were trying to build as a podcaster.But you don't have the same clarity of focus and objective when you go to a party, right?So showing up at, let's say, a cocktail party at a conference, right? My nightmare.Your nightmare and mine too.But guess what?
Once you show up, you feel like you've already done the task.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_03: The goal is just to put yourself in the situation.And that makes that a counterproductive goal.Because what you should be doing is saying, okay, I want to work on making the transition from small talk to deep talk. And so, you know, maybe it's a little aggressive to walk in and say, like, right after meeting someone, so tell me about one of the defining moments in your life.Like, nope, that was like fourth date.Too soon.But then to say, okay, well, what happens if I start asking people instead of what do you do? What do you love to do?And I found when I practiced that, that people, they opened up.They came alive.
And then I had much more interesting conversation.So to go back to your question, I don't know whether somebody who's in the fourth percentile on social skills is ever going to end up in the 97th percentile. I can tell you that going from the fourth to the 24th is very doable and extremely consequential, both for your success and your well-being.And that it's these kinds of micro goals and personal experiments that seem to teach us the skills we're looking to learn.
SPEAKER_02: You know, one of the things that struck me when I was reading the book was how many times I've interviewed founders who will say something like, I think my advantage was I didn't know anything about the industry.I didn't know anything about cosmetics or I didn't have any experience in food.And oftentimes, it's counterintuitive because you would think, well, without that experience, how can you actually succeed?And I think I've found this particularly with younger founders, millennials in particular. I think my generation, the Gen X generation, is a little bit more cautious and I think to – in some cases to a fault.But one of the things you write about in the book is that you don't have to wait to master something before you go for it.Sometimes you just have to dive in and just do it.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that's true.What happens is a lot of people try something, they struggle at it, and then they think, I'm not good enough at it to put it out there because it's too risky and I might embarrass myself.And what they're overlooking is that the best way to learn something is to do it. I think the clearest example of this was a pair of polyglots I met.So Sarah Maria Hasboon and Benny Lewis both finished high school convinced that they were incapable of learning a foreign language.Benny had, you know, crashed and burned at German.And he's like, I don't have the language gene. Sarah Maria took Spanish, couldn't even get a sentence out despite the fact that her father's Salvadorian and spoke it fluently.And she just assumed she missed the critical period.And yet these two between them speak now a dozen languages plus.
And so the question is, what was the big breakthrough? And the answer for both of them is that you actually have to practice it before you're good at it in order to develop the skill.In both of their cases, they felt like they sounded stupid.So they shied away from ever using the words verbally.They didn't want to say them out loud.They were embarrassed by their accents.They didn't have the vocabulary.They were afraid of putting their foot in their mouth by saying the wrong thing.And I think a lot of people say use it or lose it. I think what I came to realize after talking to these two is use it or you might never gain it at all.
And I think there's something really powerful in that to say we should start using our skills before we feel like we've mastered them.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. You know, one of the things that really resonated with me, you were writing about being a sponge, right?And in that chapter, you talk about ego.And lots of people have talked about this notion of ego as an obstacle.There's literally a book called I Think Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday.Yeah. And I've seen this with the best entrepreneurs.The ones who suppress their egos or don't even worry about it, aren't sort of obsessed with this idea of dignity and pride, tend to be the ones who have the greatest success.We just had an episode on the show with a guy named Isaac Larian who founded MGA Entertainment.You may know him.
They created the Bratz dolls, the first doll to really challenge Barbie.And he came to the United States penniless from Iran in the early 70s. And, you know, early in his career, he had some success as an importer-exporter, but he couldn't... Wait, like Art Vandelay?Exactly.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_02: I love it.But he still couldn't convince people to give him a chance.And he never, if they treated him badly and he heard no, he would keep coming back to them graciously and kindly until they relented.And eventually, you know, today he's a multi-billionaire.And I asked him about... this notion of ego and pride.And I've heard this time and again.It seems to me that that is a trait that many of us have, you know, or it's part of who we are, but that it's important to fight, fight against that or to somehow, I don't know, move past it.Is that sort of fair?
SPEAKER_03: I think you're onto something.I think You know, all this discussion about ego, I think sometimes gives people the wrong impression.And they think, well, I'm going to become a Buddhist and have no ego.Yeah.You've spent a lot of time with highly successful founders.Do you think any of them have no ego?
SPEAKER_02: No, of course not.Of course they know.
SPEAKER_03: Me neither.I think the difference is that the ones who especially manage to have repeat success are and bounce back and forward from failure and keep getting better are the ones who invest their egos in their future growth as opposed to their present comfort.And that's a really critical distinction. I've worked closely with a founder for a long time who one day was told by a junior person, I give your performance today a D minus.And what most of us do is we can't take that from an ego perspective.So it's almost like we become champion grade grubbers. And we start trying to make the case that, no, in fact, I deserved an A and let me tell you why.And the law professor and conflict mediator, Sheila Heen, taught me something really valuable about this.She said, that's your first score and it's already been determined.
It happened in the past.The performance is over.The judgment has been made.You can't change the first score.The best thing to do is to try to ace the second score. which is to say, I wanna try to get an A plus for how well I take the D minus.And that, I think, is what a healthy ego response looks like, is to say, yeah, I'm really motivated to prove myself to this person who thinks I suck.And I know the best way to prove myself is to show that I'm willing to improve myself.
SPEAKER_02: We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, more from Adam on the significance of the people around us and how they can either hinder or help unleash our hidden potential.Stay with us.I'm Guy Raz.You're listening to How I Built This Lab. Successful companies don't happen overnight.It takes an awful lot of grit, determination and teamwork.Our sponsor Atlassian knows this better than anyone.Their team has spent over 20 years creating software that powers collaboration for teams around the world. By creating software like Jira and Confluence to improve companies' workflow, Atlassian is on a mission to make impossibility a reality.And now they're ushering in the next era of teamwork with Atlassian Intelligence.
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Pick up a case of Smart Energy today at Costco.C4 Smart Energy.Stay focused. Welcome back to How I Built This Lab.I'm Guy Raz.Here's more from my conversation with Adam Grant, the author of Hidden Potential. All right.So we learned that cultivating strong character skills has a huge impact on growth.Right.But, you know, sometimes as humans, we get stuck.
Right.We need help.And in the second part of your book, you you really dive deep into this idea of teaching in order to learn and then also enlisting other people for help rather than just trying to master something alone.Right.Can you can you tell me a bit more about that?
SPEAKER_03: All right, so one of my favorite findings in psychology is it comes out of birth order research.One finding that's pretty robust is that firstborns slightly outscore their younger siblings on IQ tests.As a firstborn, I was delighted by this evidence.My sister did not like it so much.So we know that's not a genetic advantage.What is it that birth order is doing? It turns out that firstborns spend more time teaching their younger siblings things.And that experience of teaching makes them better students.It's called the tutor effect.And one of the ways we know it is if you have more younger siblings, you get to do more teaching and you get a little bit more of an IQ edge.
So I think the lesson here is that one of the best ways to learn something really is to teach it.You remember it better once you've had to retrieve it, and you also understand it better once you've had to explain it.
SPEAKER_02: I'm curious, and I think many of us have this problem where we have that really... just loud and disruptive negative sort of voice that you know that cartoon devil on our shoulder you know sort of shouting things in our ears like you're you're complete screw up you know and i wonder why why i mean you write about this in the book that that we are often really bad at recognizing our own potential it it often requires other people to point it out to us i mean i i've i've been in that situation i i once taught a session for air force generals and colonels
SPEAKER_03: where afterward the comments were so brutal that I wanted to quit.And I mean, that was devastating.I do not belong in front of a classroom was the overwhelming voice in my head.I certainly should not be teaching anything to leaders about leadership.And, you know, I was really lucky to get some coaching from my dissertation chair who watched one of my presentations and and said, Adam, you've got to unleash your inner magician.And Jane knew that I had performed for years as a magician.I guess it was the first thing I did to come out of my shell as a 12-year-old.And she reminded me of two things.Number one, that I had some latent unused skill in connecting with an audience.
And two, that... It was hard to believe her, but I also realized in that situation, okay, Maybe she's not overestimating me.Maybe I'm underestimating myself.And Guy, this is one of the things I've come to believe about imposter syndrome is it's often a sign of hidden potential.If other people have higher expectations for you than you do of yourself, it means they've seen a capacity for growth in you that's not visible to you yet.And if multiple people believe in you, it is time to believe them. So I took that and I went back to the Air Force audience the next week.The first one bombed.I only had a week then to reboot for the next group.
I couldn't rethink all my content.I'd already poured everything I knew into it anyway, so I didn't have anything else to add. All I could do was unleash my inner magician.And I decided to do that by walking in and changing my introduction and trying to surprise and entertain the audience, just like I would have done if I were performing a trick.So the previous week, I was in my mid-20s.They were in their 50s and I was trying to prove myself to them, so I had talked about my expertise and my credentials, and I threw that out the window.And I should say, they all had Top Gun-style nicknames.So I looked out at the room, and I saw Gunner and Striker, and I looked right at Sandoon.And I said, I know what you're thinking right now.
What could I possibly learn from a professor who's 12 years old? And then I heard a voice pipe up and say, that's ridiculous.You got to be at least 13.And everyone burst out laughing and it broke the ice.And the content I covered was the same, but the rapport and the relationship was different because I had taken myself off a pedestal.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious as a, I mean, this all happened recently. in a different context before you were a best-selling author and you were known as who you are known today.Now, in this moment in your life, when you write books that are really designed to give people a framework to think about their own lives, Does it apply to you?Or are you able to be Adam Grant to yourself?Like, well, you know, according to my research and the things I've written, I know that I am doing X, Y, and Z. Like, are you able to observe yourself?Or do you think that's impossible for virtually most humans?Yeah. Sometimes.
SPEAKER_03: And other times, I need to take my own advice.I am not doing the thing that other people told me.No, I mean, look, this happens all the time.I remember, look, the worst part of writing Hidden Potential was I'm writing the chapter about stagnation and getting unstuck.And I got stuck.And I went through a whole month of questioning whether I was going to be capable of writing this chapter. And I didn't do any of the things that I advised other people to do and that I know from the evidence.
SPEAKER_02: Right.I think you advise take a break or try just do something entirely different.Right.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.And I didn't do any of those things because I had a goal and I'm a goal oriented person when I had a plan that I was going to finish the chapter and it wasn't working.And so I felt like I just needed to put more effort into it. And then I started beating myself up for, what's that meme that I saw years ago?It's like, when you start a creative project, it's like, ooh, this is fun.And then, uh-oh, this is tricky.And then, ugh, this is crap.And then, I'm crap. And I was in the crap zone.Right between this is crap and I'm crap.
And it took one of my writing coaches to say, this is definitely not the draft, but you're going to figure this out. To then say, okay, yeah, I've gotten stuck before as a writer.I've faced writer's block.I know that's actually a thinking block.And what I need is a fresh perspective or a new stimulus.And so I need to put this away.I need to go and read some things and have some conversations without... Staring at the problem is like looking directly into the sun.I can't do it anymore.And I think I really struggled with self-compassion.And I was just... It's ironic because I'd already written the chapter about how...
You know, when you fall short of your expectations and you beat yourself up, it doesn't make you stronger.It leaves you bruised.And yet here I am treating myself as a punching bag.
SPEAKER_02: Right.I mean, you write about being an imperfectionist, that actually the data suggests that people who are prepared to make mistakes and to – To keep moving forward, even if something is flawed, tend to perform better.The outcomes are better, which makes sense.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.I mean, I think it's been a hard lesson for me to internalize, though.And I aim high on things that are important to me, but I have accepted that nothing I write will ever be perfect. And, you know, I'm willing to make mistakes and fail.
SPEAKER_02: Right.One of the things you write about in the book is that and I didn't know about this study, but it's fascinating study that you cite where essentially a group of psychologists studied tweets by basketball NBA players and found essentially that I guess the ones that were the most narcissistic, they found that those teams actually didn't perform as well as teams where the tweets by players, the starting players, the teams were less narcissistic.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and that was especially true if your point guard was a narcissist, the main ball handler.Your team is especially likely to stagnate over the course of the season, as opposed to getting better at playing together.And you can see that in games one, but also in the number of assists that are completed.And it's so funny, if you look at these tweets, what is a narcissistic tweet?One player tweeted... When I look in the mirror, what I see staring back at me is greatness.And you can imagine, I remember I did a podcast not too long ago with Mark Cuban, who I think you've also had, right?And I was curious about his take on this as a longtime Mavericks owner.And he said, listen, you can have one knucklehead on a team, but you can't afford two.And that's almost exactly what you see in the data is that
Having one person in a position of influence who's more interested in being the star than making the team successful undermines everyone's ability to harness the collective potential of the team.
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting because we tend to reward that kind of behavior in our culture, right?I mean, you see it in social media all the time.People who behave that way are often celebrated, right? and venerated or beyond.And I mean, I don't want to cite any specific examples, but I think you know, you can imagine who I'm talking about.But at the same time, I mean, all of the research that you cite shows that teams that work collectively, it's like a great rowing team that can all move in sync. they have their better outcomes.They're more likely to succeed.How do you, I mean, and I'm sure you're asked this all the time when you consult with business leaders and corporations, how do you incentivize people to work collaboratively when the incentive structures are often designed to reward individual achievement?
SPEAKER_03: Well, I always start by asking, what does it mean to be a superstar in this team or this workplace?And if the answer is only individual results, you've already failed. If it's possible to be a toxic superstar, if it's possible to be a high performer who's selfish, then your definition of performance is too narrow.My definition of a star is not only somebody who achieves great individual results, but also someone who elevates the performance of the people around them. And so you see this, for example, in the research on salespeople.The people who get promoted tend to be the individual rainmakers.And the better you are at individual sales, the worse you tend to be as a manager.Your teams actually achieve poorer performance.How do you know whether somebody is going to be a good manager? it's actually the way that they collaborate.
So how much are they supporting their fellow salespeople?How much do they support their colleagues?How many referrals do they give to their coworkers?And so you have to be actually indexing.Are you undermining or enhancing the success of the people who are on your team, to know who should be in charge.And if you put a leader in charge who tends to be more of a giver than a taker, who puts the mission above their individual glory, lo and behold, you start to change the incentive structure.
SPEAKER_02: We're going to take another quick break, but when we come back, more from Adam on redesigning systems to uncover the hidden potential in both ourselves and our successors.Stick around.I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab. Audible is the home of storytelling, and it lets you enjoy all of your audio entertainment in one app.You'll always find the best of what you love or something new to discover.As an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases.In fact, I've been really into thrillers and true crime lately, and I just got back from a long car trip where I was listening to the latest zombie fallout book, Bridging the Gap. And I swear, I had to keep checking the backseat for any glowing eyes as I drove home on that deserted highway.In fact, on so many of my journeys, Audible is there for me, with comedy, bestsellers, history, exclusive originals, and more.New members can try Audible free for 30 days.
Visit audible.com slash built or text built to 500-500.That's audible.com slash built or text built to 500-500. We've all been there.Maybe we used one or two misleading words in a shared document, and then the whole team spends a lot of wasted time trying to get on the same page.But we don't need to make those mistakes.Grammarly is a trusted AI writing partner that saves your company from miscommunication and all of the wasted time and money that goes with it. Thank you for watching. everything gets better.Teams that communicate better with Grammarly report 52% less time spent writing sales emails and 66% less time spent editing marketing content.Join 70,000 teams who trust Grammarly to work faster and hit their goals
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab.My guest today is Adam Grant, author of Hidden Potential.Here is more of our conversation. All right.So, Adam, in the third and final part of your book, you talk about systems, right, and how organizations can foster more collaboration.And I'm often asked about this by people in, like, financial services and law offices and sales, you know, where employees are judged by the business they bring in or their P&Ls.And my answer is often, you know, is a version of, well – create a different incentive structure.Reward, literally reward people for being collaborative.But it's still very rare.
It's still not that common, especially in, you know, things like financial services or consulting or other areas.Yeah.So what do we do about that?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.Well, I think the first thing you do is you disincentivize the worst taking behaviors. So you make it very clear that people cannot get promoted if they hoard knowledge, if they dump grunt work on others, if they refuse to mentor junior people.And then, you know, I think we could be more creative on this.I went to give years ago a keynote at Corning.They made the Gorilla Glass for the iPhone and the iPad, of course.And they had this really interesting program where you could be named a Corning Fellow and you would get a job for life and a lab for life. which is like a better version of university tenure.And what a lot of companies would do if you were gonna identify those people is you'd say, all right, let's take, they're all about innovation.So let's say you gotta be the lead author on a patent that's worth at least 100 million US dollars.
And we're done, right?If you're that much of a genius, we want to lock you up for life and throw away the key before you jump ship to Apple or Google or whoever else. And Corning said, no.We're worried that competent takers will pollute the culture.And also, once we give them permanent job security in their own fiefdom, their contributions will dwindle over time.So they added a second set of metrics, which included, are you a supporting author on other people's patents?Wow. Guy, I think this is ingenious because in their world of glass, it might take eight, nine years to get a patent.There are not a lot of selfish people who are sitting around thinking, let me pretend to help Guy for the next decade in the hopes that he will reward my faux generosity by making me the 34th author on the patent. It's the people who are day in, day out, sharing their knowledge, solving problems, helping out that earn those later authorships.
But Corning said, importantly, you got to do both.You have to show you can lead your own success and also that you can enhance the success of others.And so the question I always want to ask of founders, but also people at any level is, what is your equivalent of later patent authorship?Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: One of the things you suggest is ask for advice rather than feedback, because feedback also generally, depending on the context, can set you up to hear some some pretty harsh criticisms, because I think a lot of people feel like feedback is only helpful if you poke holes in a thing that you're being asked to evaluate.
SPEAKER_03: I think there is no more effective way to grow than to learn from other people. But the way we do that is broken.And this is my beef with feedback.You're right that when you ask for feedback or when people even think about giving feedback, by definition, it's backward looking.So you have cheerleaders who applaud your best self or critics who attack your worst self.And none of that is actionable.Tell me what I did well and poorly yesterday.Great.Now, what do I do with that?I don't know.
I think what we want are future-oriented suggestions.We want tips for how we can improve.And there's a growing body of evidence showing that if you want specific, useful tips, you should ask for advice rather than feedback. Because when you give other people advice, you are zooming out and focusing on just the big picture, what's important to them.Whereas when you try to think through a problem yourself, you're stuck in the weeds.You're looking through a microscope.And that makes their guidance more specific, more constructive, more actionable.Because what you're doing then is saying, look, I don't need a cheerleader.I also don't want a critic.I'm looking for a coach, somebody who sees my hidden potential and helps me realize it.
And it's also, I mean, the other nice thing about advice seeking is it's very flattering to the other person.Yeah, of course.Feedback sounds like a chore.And I think people are just much more willing to give advice and also better at doing it than they are feedback.
SPEAKER_02: Something that struck me as a parent, you write that we worry about making our parents proud when we should be focused on making our children proud.The idea being that we should be improving the conditions for our successors and not focusing on legacy, I guess, so much.Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it, actually.So the reason that I think this is an important distinction is we end up inheriting our parents' dreams much more often than we would like.And if you spend all your time thinking about how to make your parents proud... what you're doing is you're basically trying to substitute for their failure to realize their hidden potential.Too late.And the things that your parents wanted are not necessarily aligned with what motivates you.Your parents' mixes of strengths and weaknesses, even though you have a lot of their nature and their nurture, are not a replica of you.And so if instead you think about making your kids proud, it turns you toward realizing your hidden potential. And it also reminds you that part of that is, you know, is not just the success that you achieve.It's also the contributions that you make.
SPEAKER_02: Do you feel like every single person, I mean, maybe it's impossible to say every single person, but that most people have a hidden potential that they are unaware of?
SPEAKER_03: I think everyone has hidden potential.And yes, that's a big generalization, but I believe it in part because this is one of those should have said moments.If I were rewriting hidden potential today, I would do a section on this exercise called the reflected best self portrait. Laura Morgan Roberts and Jane Dutton and colleagues created this tool that started from the premise that we don't always know our own strengths and capacities for growth. And I've done it with founders.I've done it with senior leaders.I've done it with undergrads and MBA students.It is one of the only activities I've ever done that no matter how senior you are or where you come from is a moving, meaningful, and sometimes life-changing experience for the participants. And what happens is it really makes your hidden potential visible to you by allowing the people who know you well to hold up a mirror.So all you do in the exercise is you go to, the original version is 15 to 20 people who know you well in different walks of life.
Some family, some friends, some colleagues.And you ask them to tell a story about a time when you were at your best.And that's it.And you collect these, you get them by email.It's the best inbox you will ever experience. Like, wow, I'm amazing.But then you have some work to do.You have to analyze the stories and identify the common themes, not only for what your strengths are, but also what activates them.And then you end up composing a self-portrait of who you are at your best using the input from other people.And I love it because I remember doing this and people telling me I had strengths that I was not aware of.
And there's hidden potential that I haven't unleashed yet.And I see the same reactions from students, from founders, from leaders.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.I mean, that could be really informative.You know, part of it is, and I think you probably experienced this as well, which is you focus on what you do and you focus so intently on it and you spend so much time making it that you don't take much time at all to reflect on it. And so it's – I always say this to people when they say, oh, I love the show.Thank you for doing it.It's amazing to hear because I don't interact with people enough to hear that very often.Introvert alert.Yeah, yeah.It's like some athletes don't read any media about their performance because they don't want to believe the hype and they don't want to be distracted by the criticism.And I think that makes – that can be helpful in a lot of cases.
SPEAKER_03: I think it can.I think it's helpful as long as the reason it works for athletes is they have coaches and trainers who are literally there full time to help them develop their potential.And I think that's a scary mantra if you don't have a built-in coaching system.If you're a solopreneur, you have to read the reviews.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.And the good and the bad and figure out how to adjust and to cope with when it's painful and to improve when you need to.Yeah.And Grant, thank you so much.Thank you, Guy Raz.
SPEAKER_03: Pleasure as always.I'd say we should do this more often, but let's face it, we're both introverts.Right.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.Yeah. That's Adam Grant, organizational psychologist and bestselling author of Hidden Potential. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Chris Massini, J.C.Howard, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Seifer, Malia Agudelo, Neva Grant, and Sam Paulson.I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This Lab. If you like how I built this, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com survey.
SPEAKER_03: Find Rethinking wherever you get your podcasts.
