By Allen Haynes • September 2, 2024 Listen to the episode. Andy Stanley (00:03): Hey everybody. Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed to help leaders go further faster. I’m Andy Stanley and I’m so happy to announce that Adam Grant is back with us today, and you are going to love this conversation. But before we jump into today’s content, I want to tell you about a special offer from our friends at vallay. If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re invested in growing as a leader. But we all know leadership doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when we’re honest with the person in the mirror and intentional about investing our time and attention in the right things, not everything. That’s something this month’s sponsor Belay understands and wants to help. All of us with BELAY is passionate about helping busy leaders find the help they need to grow their leadership as well as their organizations. With a belay, virtual assistant or accounting professional, you can stop spending time on tedious tasks that drain you and start focusing on what matters most and why you got into this to begin with. (01:02): So if you find yourself overwhelmed with administrative or accounting tasks that aren’t the best use of your time, BELAY can help you find the right hire right now. This is the last month, the last month to take advantage of a special offer exclusively for our podcast listeners. Belay is giving away a free leadership toolkit to help you delegate the details, unleash your productivity, and take your leadership to the next level. Just text the word Andy to 5 5 1 2, 3 for your free copy. That’s a and DY to 5, 5 1 2, 3 to get intentional about your leadership with help from Vallay. And now let’s jump into today’s content. So Adam Grant is probably not a stranger to most of you in our audience. Adam is an organizational psychologist. He’s regarded as one of the world’s top influential management thinkers. He’s recognized in Fortunes 40 under 40. He’s a number one New York Times bestselling author of six books that have been translated into 45 different languages. (02:01): Currently he’s a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He hosts the TED podcast, rethinking and the TED Podcast Work Life. If you don’t follow him on social media, you should. His Insta posts are gold. Now, Adam was with us back in 2022 when we had an opportunity to discuss his bestselling book. Think Again. The response to that episode was amazing. If you missed it, you really need to go back and listen and we will include a link in the show notes. But today he’s joining us to discuss his latest book, hidden Potential, the Science of Achieving Greater Things. It became an Instant number one, New York Times bestseller as well. Adam, welcome to the podcast. Adam Grant (02:41): Thank you, Andy. What a treat to be back. Andy Stanley (02:43): Well, it’s our treat. You’re super busy and making time for this, and I know we’re talking about your book, which you probably love to do, but still you have a lot of people who want to talk to you about your books of plural. So I want to jump right in on page four, but that’s on my Kindle, so I don’t really know what page it actually is about page four in your book to get us started, you write, everyone has Hidden Potential. This book is about how we unlock it, and then you finish that paragraph with this, my goal is to illuminate how we can all rise to achieve greater things. So that’s two big promises. And to our podcast listeners, this book definitely delivers on those two promises primarily because you delve into the science behind achieving great things, which none of us ever think about. So to get us started, if you don’t mind quickly, how did you get interested in the topic and then maybe just a brief overview of the book. It’s divided into three parts and there’s so much to talk about. So as much or as little of that as you want to do, and then we will get into the details. Adam Grant (03:45): Well, thank you Andy. As always, you’re too kind. I think of hidden potential as the capacity for growth that’s not yet visible. And I got interested in this topic in part because I’ve lived it. Probably my first experience with it was trying to join the diving team as a high school freshman and being the worst diver in this school. I was so stiff when I walked that my teammates called me Frankenstein, (04:16): And if I had judged my potential by my natural ability, I would’ve quit. But I was really lucky to have a coach, Eric Best, who saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. And he told me that if I poured my energy into this sport by my senior year, I could become a state finalist. And thanks in large part to Eric’s coaching. I hit that goal as a junior and ended up making the All-American list and qualifying for the Junior Olympics twice. And I couldn’t believe it, and I don’t think I thought about it at the time, but it really, I guess it impressed upon me the importance of not judging where we can land from where we start. Andy Stanley (05:02): And what a perfect segue to go from the diving and where we start and where we land. I don’t know if you did that on purpose, but I should. It was really good. You should use that. Yeah. Well, parents should read this book. In fact, Susie, our producer who is listening in, when we first started talking about this, we both started talking about our sons. So as parents, there’s so much application. I don’t want to get into that until later. Maybe tell a story if there’s time. But if I could, one of the big surprises to me in the book is in the first section of the book, you talk about the role that character development plays in the process. In fact, you devote three chapters to this. And when I first saw the titles, I’m like, what does character have to do with potential? (05:47): Because when we think of potential, we think of grit and determination and discipline and on and on and on, all those things. But this, I don’t know this part of the book, we could stay here the whole time essentially. And I loved your definition then I’ll let you talk, I promise you define character as character is the capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts. And again, even the illustration you just gave about diving, your instincts were probably, this isn’t going to go anywhere. And then you write this, you said, if personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day. So will you take a minute and just connect the dots between character and potential? I think this is one of the most valuable things I’ve read in a long time. Adam Grant (06:28): Oh, well thank you. I think that frankly, it was another struggle that really crystallized this perspective for me. So I am a shy introvert. I was afraid of public speaking for a long time and I had an incredible professor, Brian Little, who changed the way I saw the world and I wanted to pay that forward. But I had a little bit of a challenge to overcome, which is I didn’t want to stand in front of a crowd. I didn’t even want to talk in front of a seminar of seven or eight peers. And I felt a real conflict between my personality, which told me do not go near a stage, whatever you do, and my principles, which said, you love sharing ideas and you’re passionate about psychology. And I decided that the person I wanted to be was the person who didn’t avoid the discomfort of putting myself in that situation where I might fail. And so instead of dipping my toe in the shallow end, I just dove into the deep end head first. I started volunteering to give guest lectures in my friends’ classes. And after every guest lecture, I collected feedback forms on all the things I could do better. And the comments were brutal. (07:52): I remember one of the early forms saying, you’re so nervous, you’re causing us to physically shake in our seats. One student wrote that I reminded them of a Muppet and never even told me which Muppet. And then I ended Andy Stanley (08:08): Up, maybe that’s best. Adam Grant (08:09): I mean, yeah, I don’t think I want to know even now. But as I got a little bit more comfortable, I started getting invitations to speak in front of more senior audiences. And pretty soon I found myself in front of a room of Air Force generals and colonels, and one of them wrote on their feedback forum, I gained nothing from this session, but I trust the instructor got useful insight. Andy Stanley (08:35): Oh gosh. Adam Grant (08:38): I mean I wanted to forget quitting. I wanted to become an actual bear and hibernate for the whole winter. Andy Stanley (08:49): Okay, so can I stop you? This is so important. So I think most people listening pick up on this, but I want you to state that the tenacity, it went just beyond, Hey, I’m going to show ’em there’s a thread of your character or your desire to demonstrate character in this. Will you tease that out just a little bit more? This is so important. Adam Grant (09:07): Yeah. So this is where I was really faced with a choice at that moment. Am I going to take the easy road and avoid putting myself in a situation like this again, because I was in my mid twenties, I had just finished my doctorate. I was looking at a group of Air Force leaders who looked like they were right out of top gun. They had thousands of flying hours, they had multiple medals on their uniforms, they had billion dollar budgets and they were twice my age. And I just felt like I didn’t belong. But I felt like there was a little voice in my head saying, this is something you took on for a reason. You believe you have something worth sharing and you believe this is an audience worth helping. So are you going to be a wimp or are you going to rise to that occasion? (10:00): And that was a test of character. It was a test of saying, look, it’s easy to walk in front of a room of people who are excited to learn from you and that you already have a strong connection with. But the hard moment was, I’m going to go up in front of a group of strangers with very high standards who don’t think I’m any good and I’m going to learn from them to get good. And so Andy, the character decision for me in that moment was to say, I’ve got some critics in this room and I want to turn them into my coaches. So I started asking them, what could I do better next time? And this was such a pivotal question for me because before I had only asked for feedback, which told me what I did wrong last time. And I now know there’s research showing that it’s actually more helpful to ask for advice than feedback because advice is forward looking. (10:50): It tells me what I can change, not just what I screwed up. And when I asked for advice, when I said What could I do differently next time? I got very specific actionable concrete tips. I remember one of the Air Force leaders saying, everybody can tell that you’re a kid. You might as well call out the elephant in the room. And I went, actually, part of the reason I’d like to say, yeah, this was a great moment of character for me, but I had committed to do a second session a week later and I just felt it would’ve been a violation of integrity to walk out that late. So I knew I had to do another one. And I got this advice and I realized I’d made this fundamental mistake before, which is I had come in and I had tried to explain my credentials and demonstrate my expertise. I talked about all the research I’d done and the degrees I had and that didn’t impress this audience. So I took the advice I got and said, alright, I’m going to call out the elephant in the room. And I walked in front of a group of Air Force leaders. I remember looking at their nicknames on their name tags. There was Gunner and Stryker and Sand Dune. (12:01): And I looked at them and I said my first words to them, I know what you all are thinking right now. What could I possibly learn from a professor who’s 12 years old? They were not amused until one of them jumped in and said, that’s ridiculous. You got to be at least 13. And it broke the ice. And I covered a lot of the same content, but we had a different kind of relationship. And I think what I was trying to send there was a character message, which is, I know I’m not on a pedestal. I want to have a discussion where we can learn from each other. And I hope the combination of your experience and my evidence will actually lead to some new insight. And the comments I got afterward were much better. And it was a great lesson for me. Andy Stanley (12:49): Well, I had some questions about that I wanted to get to in a minute, but let’s just go ahead and talk about this. This is so important because, and use your own language around this. I tell our communicators all the time, really any of our young leaders, I’m like, look, part of being a leader is having the character. This is why I love these chapters. It requires character to step into a role you’re not prepared for, you’re not adequate for, you’re in over your head. And whenever leaders are put in that situation or step into it, you really have one of two choices you can pretend and posture. And everybody sees through that in about 30 seconds, especially mature people. Or you step into it and you own your inadequacy and you realize that being the leader here isn’t about making all the decisions. It’s about making sure the decisions are right, which means you have to be a learner. (13:36): But those are really the only two options. You pretend or you embrace it. And what you just illustrated, and again, this goes to an issue of it’s somewhat personal security, but we can all reach beyond our insecurity. That is a statement of personal character. And I just think this is an extraordinary.to connect with hidden potential. One other quote you write, becoming a creature of discomfort, which is what you just illustrated, becoming a creature of discomfort, which is a choice can unlock hidden potential summoning, this is so great. Summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill. I just got to read that again. Summoning the nerve. Cause I want you to talk about this. Summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill. Can you unpack that a little bit? I know we’re kind of stuck on this, but I just think it’s so important. Adam Grant (14:27): No, I think what you said, Andy is really beautiful and I think it underscores this point that I was taught to think about character as a matter of will not skill. I mean, whenever we talk about virtues, we think about, well, it’s a value, it’s a motivation, it’s something I want. But the science here has really shifted my thinking and led me to realize that being a person of being willing to say, I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m trying to learn here and accept a little bit of did that discomfort, that’s as much skill as it is will. And I think the evidence that started to shift my thinking on this was actually the research on the classic marshmallow test. So I think you’re familiar with the Walter Michelle work here where basically preschoolers are put in a Andy Stanley (15:18): Room, delayed gratification. Adam Grant (15:20): Exactly. Andy Stanley (15:20): Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Adam Grant (15:21): Yeah. The short version of the experiment is you’re offered a marshmallow and you’re told if you can wait a little while to eat it until I come back, I’m going to give you a second marshmallow. And so the test is can you delay the gratification of eating the one now to wait for the two later? And the striking finding was that the longer kids waited for the second marshmallow, the longer they could delay gratification, the better their grades and SAT scores about a decade later. And so there was seemingly something about willpower that allowed them to override temptation and short-term pleasure for long-term growth and gain. But if you take a closer look at those experiments, one of the things you see is not extraordinary willpower, but just basic skill power. The kids who end up resisting the temptation of the one marshmallow are not the ones who just have this superhuman capacity to stare at the marshmallow and say, I am not going to eat that. No matter how delicious it looks, what they do is they find little tricks to make it less tempting. There’s one kid who literally hides the marshmallow so he doesn’t have to look at it. There’s another who rolls it up into a ball and starts bouncing it. And at that point it’s gross. You don’t want to eat it. And what I’ve realized through watching these videos is these kids have very basic skills that make the uncomfortable task less uncomfortable. And I think that’s a big part of character. Andy Stanley (16:57): I love it. Stepping into that discomfort. So my quick illustration, my son Andrew, he’s our oldest of three, had a finance degree, got a great job right out of college, two years in, tells me he wants to write comedy. I’m like, I can’t help you with that. Introduced him to a friend who introduced him to a friend who said, if you’re going to write it, you got to do it. You got to go do standup comedy. Okay, this is extremely introverted. If you’ve given us a list of a hundred things he was going to do when he grew up, this wouldn’t even be on the top 100. But he’s an extraordinarily disciplined person. He has always taken instruction well. He’s always been very coachable. And so he did what this coach instructed him to do. That was way outside of his comfort zone. I mean, it’s the whole diving illustration. (17:41): You gave an illustration from your life. I want to get to at the end of our interview that I just think is a great way to illustrate all this. Anyway, so he marches down and does his two and a half minutes of comedy records. It does it again, again, again. Anyway, all these years later, full-time, standup comedian booked busy as he can possibly be and extremely funny. But we never saw this coming and talk about hidden potential. It was so hidden. I can’t even begin to explain how hidden this was. He wasn’t the class clown, he wasn’t funny, but it really was his coachability, his teachability, his character, just that thing in him that we saw manifested in multiple other ways, but not within the context of standup comedy or standup anything. And so when I read this, I just thought, there it is. And who knows what’s locked away in our kids or grandkids or obviously in ourselves. That’s why you wrote this book. What a story. Adam Grant (18:39): I love that. Andy Stanley (18:40): Yeah. Adam Grant (18:41): So what did you learn from watching your son unlock his hidden potential as a standup? Andy Stanley (18:46): Well, it’s exactly, I’m going to go back to this quote. He was willing to become a creature of discomfort. Is there anything more uncomfortable than standing up in front of 20 people who don’t know you and don’t care and you have two and a half minutes and they expect you to be funny and you have to be funny? I’m trying to think of something more uncomfortable other than physical pain. I mean, you and I do public speaking, that’s just still the thought of. It’s terrifying to me. So anyway, he was willing to become a creature, a discomfort, and that discomfort is what unlocked his hidden potential. So we could just stop there, but we’re not. That’s why I love these first few chapters in the book. So we got to move on a little bit, and you talked about this a little bit so we don’t have to spend a lot of time here, but in chapter two, it’s entitled Human Sponges. (19:35): And it reminded me, Susie and I, both of something we talked about when we interviewed you about your book Think Again, which is still one of my favorite books. In that interview, you explain why it’s important for leaders to have a challenge network or trusted people who can push us and challenge our assumptions and have healthy debates. That’s why we’re able to change our mind, but in hidden potential. You talk about the same idea when it comes, as you mentioned a minute ago to feedback, and as you just said, you said we should stop asking for feedback and begin asking for advice, and you gave an illustration of that. But I would love for you to talk just a little bit more about that because in my role, I am more in the coaching role with our communicators and leaders and pastors and our network of churches. (20:18): And we use the word feedback all the time, feedback, feedback. But when I read this, I thought, oh, this is such a better approach, and I’m going to have them read this section of the book. They’ll probably read the whole book once I force them to read this section. And what I’ll do, I’ll buy ’em all the books. So you only want you to read this part, but good luck stopping there because to the degree that I’m willing not just to receive, because we receive feedback, because people give us feedback all the time, but to ask for advice from people, and I think this is important to ask for advice from people who don’t know as much about what we do as we do. That is not intuitive, right? I mean you think No, no, if I’m going to ask for advice, I need to ask experts. And I think what you allude to here is the opposite of that, and it’s so powerful. So sorry I did all the talking, but go ahead and talk a little bit more about advice versus feedback. I think this is great. Adam Grant (21:11): Yeah, no, I think that there are a couple of interesting nuances to capture here. So the first one is I think what happens to a lot of people when they ask for feedback is they only have cheerleaders and critics in their lives. The cheerleaders are the people who just applaud their best self, and the critics are the people who attack their worst self. And neither of those things is entirely helpful. What you want is a coach who sees your hidden potential and helps you become a better version of yourself. And that’s what asking for advice opens up. It encourages people to think about how you can close the gap between where you are today and where you’d like to get tomorrow. And when you think about who to ask when you’re looking for advice about how to grow, you just previewed something that surprised me as well, which is I always thought you should go to the highest performer, the best expert, the biggest superstar, right? Andy Stanley (22:04): Exactly. Adam Grant (22:05): Turns out that the people who know the most are rarely the best at teaching what they know. Andy Stanley (22:11): They are usually terrible coaches. And part of it is they are generally so talented. They don’t know how they do what they do. That’s been my experience. Adam Grant (22:21): It’s a huge problem in psychology. That’s called tacit knowledge. They can do things intuitively on autopilot, but they don’t know how to explain it, and sometimes they’re not even aware of it. And then there’s another challenge too. Sometimes they didn’t get there via natural talent. They got there through a combination of motivation and opportunity, but they have gone so far past where you are right now that they don’t remember what it’s like to be in your shoes. And so the person I want to go to for mentoring is the person who’s one or two steps ahead of me, not the person who’s 20 steps ahead of me because they know exactly how to get past the point where I’m stuck Andy Stanley (23:00): And they remember it. It wasn’t that long ago. Right, Adam Grant (23:04): Exactly. Andy Stanley (23:05): Yep, yep. The way I say that in our leadership culture is I say, look, your responsibility is not to fill anybody’s cup, but you do have to empty yours. So the minute that you think, oh, I’m not an expert, why am I here? No, no, no. You’re not required to be an expert. You are responsible to make sure the people that you are leading or speaking to know everything that you know about this. So empty your cup. Empty your cup, that takes all the pressure off, but flipping it around to this conversation, those are generally the people we learn the most from because they’re again closer to the tension. So that’s just amazing. So just switching that up from feedback to asking for advice. Anything else on that before we move on? Well, Adam Grant (23:46): I’ve noticed that sometimes people are reluctant to give advice and it becomes harder and harder to get people to tell you the truth as you rise. I know you’ve lived this as well. So one of the things I’ve found is that it’s helpful to criticize yourself out loud if other people aren’t willing to critique and give advice to you. So I often apply this after I give a speech. The first question I ask of anybody I see backstage is, what’s the one thing I could do better next time? Sometimes they give me a tip, other times they just say, oh, it was great. I’m like, great, how does that help me? Andy Stanley (24:21): Yeah. Adam Grant (24:23): So what I’ve learned to do is say, well, actually, I have some notes for myself. I thought I could have used one or two more examples that were specific to your industry. And I thought I was a little long-winded on these two answers in the q and a, and then all of a sudden they realize I’m not just claiming that I want advice, I’m actually proving that I can handle it, and they become much more forthcoming. And so I think if people aren’t giving you useful advice, I think giving yourself advice out loud is a great way to open that door. Andy Stanley (24:57): And again, to the point of the first section of this book, that’s a character issue. The person that feels like, I don’t want to know because I don’t want to know what I don’t already know and I want to get better, but I want to do it on my own. That all goes back to character. And we never get better without that kind of feedback. So we do generally two church services every Sunday morning, and everybody who works around me or for me or with us in our network knows this between services. You go backstage, you sit down with about eight people, and we talk about how do we make it better? That’s just built into the orchestration, evaluation, orchestration, evaluation. And to your point, I’ve learned, I have to start that off. I have to start off by saying I lost my train of thought right there at the beginning. (25:40): The beginning could have been better. And again, you open the door, people will step in and just to our general podcast audience, the larger your organization or the more people that report to you, the more important this is because we all want that to trickle down throughout the whole organization. And if we model it and are transparent, it’s not only an invitation to everybody else, but you kind of feel the weight of it. I mean, if my boss’s boss’s boss starts a conversation by saying, here’s where I screwed up, where else did I screw up? Everybody has to play. There’s an important trickle down as it relates to that. Any thoughts on that? Adam Grant (26:16): I think that’s such a good point. So good in fact that I think you should host a leadership podcast. Andy Stanley (26:23): Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. Adam Grant (26:24): No, you’re right. I think that it’s funny because in the research that I’ve done on this with our takeaway was that when you model your willingness to take feedback and criticism and advice, you create psychological safety for your team and you show them that they’re not going to get punished for speaking up. It’s actually valued. But I think you’ve highlighted something that we missed in our research, which is that also cascades and it can become an active role modeling for other leaders, for other teams, for other levels. I love that. Andy Stanley (26:59): We certainly want it to, and I hope that’s the case. Alright, back to you, chapter three, and we’re not going to go through the whole book, I promise, but these are the huge takeaways. Then we’re going to jump all the way to the end if that’s okay. And chapter three, the imper perfectionist. I wrote down in my notes, this was so close to home, this was hard to even read. I’m an Enneagram one, so I want everything to be perfect, and I am very hesitant to try anything I don’t think I can master immediately. That’s where my personality or temperament actually works against this principle. And I mean, I have to be so intentional because my self-talk is not helpful. I mean, it keeps me not only in my lane, but in a portion of my lane where I feel like I can succeed. And so this whole thing of perfectionism, and if you would, you talk a little bit about this tension between excellence and perfectionism. We want it to be excellent, but perfectionism is an obstacle. It is not an advocate to our unlocking our hidden potential. Just talk about that for a minute. Adam Grant (28:00): Well, let me confess something a little embarrassing. About a year ago, I sat down to write an assessment of character skills to put on my website. I’ve always found that readers to gauge where they are on the things I’m writing about. And as I always do when I write an assessment, I took it and I turned in the book. I was so proud that I had transcended my bad perfectionist habits, and I literally failed the imperfect perfectionist part of the quiz. I was like, no, no, I am still in recovery apparently. Andy Stanley (28:37): Yeah, you failed your own quiz. I’ve never even heard of that before, so I didn’t, you’re in a circle of one anyway. Adam Grant (28:45): Did not see it coming. So I think we suffer from the same affliction. So the basic problems associated with perfectionism are pretty clear. We know that when you expect to be flawless, you stop trying anything where you might fail or struggle. And that means you don’t take risks, you don’t have creative ideas that you’re willing to test. And when you do make a mistake or fall short of your expectations, you start beating yourself up, which you think is going to make you better, but actually just leaves you bruised. And I’ve lived this in every domain, but I actually was really lucky that Eric, my diving coach, saw this early on and he told me, listen, Adam, there’s no such thing as a perfect 10 in diving. And at first I thought he was lying. I was like, no, this is the highlight of every summer Olympics, perfect tens. And Eric said, that’s a misnomer. If you look at the rule book, A 10 is for excellence, not for perfection. (29:48): And what that has done for me is it’s allowed me to say, okay, a 10, A 10 is probably not realistic in most things I’m going to do. And if I were to aim for a 10 in anything, it would come at a major cost to other things that I care about. And so I think more realistic is to shoot for a nine on the things I really care about. So when I write a book, I want every chapter to be a nine, and I’ve got a judging committee who does the ratings and tells me what exactly my score is. And that’s really helpful for calibrating because if they all give me eights, I know that I can start to tinker and fine tune. Instead of doing a major overhaul, which my inner perfectionist wants to do, if they give me three and a halfs, I have to go back to the drawing board. But I need other people to do that calibrating because I am too close to my own work to judge it accurately. And I need somebody who can zoom out and look at it with a little bit of distance and shares my standards and knows what a nine looks like for me to tell me whether I’m in the ballpark or not. Andy Stanley (30:48): And this works both ways because in our strengths, we have a tendency to wing it and never fully exploit our potential because we’re above average already, we’re better than anybody else in our peer group, then we’re not reaching our potential. But then the opposite is true as well. What you just said, one quote in that section, you said that I’m kind of summarizing two ideas that you talk about the danger of perfectionism, why it throttles our potential, and then you have this great statement, it makes our comfort zone smaller. It makes our comfort zone smaller. And I don’t know, that was very convicting. Like I said, I almost didn’t finish that section of the book. Adam Grant (31:28): If you hadn’t, you would’ve just been shrinking your comfort zone. Well, Andy Stanley (31:31): That’s exactly right, because I was so uncomfortable reading about myself. Anyway, anyway, pulling out a little bit for our podcast listeners. I mean, again, we are way down in the details of this book. It is so phenomenal. So anyways, we’ve discussed everything we’ve discussed so far is in the first of three sections of the book. So I’m going to skip all the way to section two, chapter six. You talk about the fact that other people often recognize our potential. This is so great. Other people recognize our potential before we do. And your diving illustrations a perfect example of that. You wrote, we reach the greatest heights when we attach our bootstraps to other people’s boots. If multiple credible supporters. This is so important. If multiple credible supporters believe in us, it’s probably time to believe in them if multiple. And to all of you listening, I just want you to think about what your grandmama said, what the people around you say that just that if you’ve got an inner critic like me that shouts so loud, if multiple credible supporters believe in us, it’s probably time for us to believe in them. Talk about that a little bit. Adam Grant (32:36): Well, what’s funny about the genesis of this is it came out of a conversation I was having with a researcher who studies imposter syndrome, Sima Tu and Sima was finding that people who have imposter thoughts actually end up being more effective at their jobs than people who have them less frequently. Because when you feel like an imposter, there’s this gap between other people’s expectations of you and what you think you can do, and you become really motivated to close the gap. And the steam was mentioning that a lot of people, they were having a hard time believing that they were as good as other people thought they Andy Stanley (33:20): Were. Adam Grant (33:22): And all of a sudden it hit me, this is kind of arrogant. There are six people telling me that I am ready for this role, that I’m up to this challenge, Andy Stanley (33:32): But Adam Grant (33:32): I know better than all of them. And I thought it was not only arrogant, but also ironic that on the one hand you’re saying, I don’t know what I’m doing. And yet on the other hand, you’re saying, but I definitely know that I don’t know what I’m doing. Andy Stanley (33:49): Well, the quote I pull out of the book, it says, if other people believe in you, you should probably start believing them, right? Yeah. If I don’t think I can do this, but other people do well, why would I believe myself when I already have acknowledged the fact that I don’t really know what I’m doing? So if other people believe in you, you should probably start believing in them that we should put that in all of our kids’ rooms. Yeah. Well, Adam Grant (34:11): I think part of the reason this happens is people think, well, I know more about myself than anyone else does. And that is true, right? You have more information about your own trials and tribulations and triumphs than anybody else does, but you’re not neutral about those. You’re biased. And if you are a perfectionist, if you have a tough inner critic, as you were saying, Andy, then you’re going to see the worst in yourself. And that’s when you need somebody or ideally a group of people who independently can make judgments about you. And if you trust their standards and you think they’re viewing you accurately and consistently, then you should discount your own opinions of your capabilities and put a lot more faith in theirs. Andy Stanley (34:54): And the epilogue you write, if you doubt yourself, shouldn’t you also doubt your low opinion of yourself? If you doubt yourself, go ahead and doubt your low opinion of yourself as well, and listen to those people. That’s so great. When I was in probably ninth or 10th, maybe 11th grade, I had a best friend. A lot of our podcast listeners know his name’s Louis Giglio. He’s a super extraordinary leader, leads big organization and evangelical world. And we grew up together and we had a student pastor in our youth group at our church, my dad’s church named Mary Gilat. Mary is over a hundred years old now. She’s still alive, and she’s amazing. And I specifically remember a Sunday, Louis and I just goofing off. We were troublemakers, we were disruptive, everybody. She sent everybody out of the room to go to whatever they were doing. (35:43): She called us back, she sat us down. I still remember where I was sitting. I can remember her face. And she looked at me and Louis and she said, boys, you are leaders. Both of you are leaders and you’re influencers, and I need you to lead. And I remember thinking, I don’t want to be a leader. That was the, don’t put that on me. Don’t put that responsibility on me. I don’t want to be a leader. But she said, you are leaders and I need you to lead. I mean, to this day, Louis, and I just love Mary. And she spoke that into us, but she saw that in us, and that was extraordinary. So this is, again, this is such a big deal. If you doubt yourself, shouldn’t you doubt the low opinion of what Adam Grant (36:27): Example about yourself? I think there’s another lesson in that story too, which is I want the leader who’s reluctant to assume the mantle. Plato said it first, that we should choose the leaders who are likely to be wisest, who are most reluctant to govern because they’re not seeking power. And then Douglas Adams wrote about it too. And I think whenever the ancient Greek philosophers and the modern British sci-Fi writers make the same point, we ought to listen to them. But we had a PhD student, Danielle now at Buffalo, who showed in her dissertation that a little bit of reluctance can actually contribute to your effectiveness as a leader. Because when you’re not a hundred percent sure that you want that position of authority, you’re a little bit more likely to know that you don’t have all the answers and you become a little better at empowering the people around you. And so I think that that choice of you is not only a lesson around believing the people who can see you from a little bit of a distance, but also don’t let that reluctance stop you from rising into a leadership role. It actually may be a resource to make you more effective as a leader, Andy Stanley (37:38): And somebody sees that potential. So you have a great research around that. So mine is a little more shallow. Remember in the movie Gladiator, Marcus Aurelius wants Maximus to step in and reform and the republic and bring the republic back, and Maximus says, with all my heart, no, with all my heart, no, I am not the person for this. And Marcus Aurelius says, that’s why you must, that’s why you must because you don’t want it. You are the one to do this anyway. No, Adam Grant (38:10): That’s a great example. And of course, you have to be careful about gaming the system. Then if people find out that saying, oh no, I’m not worthy, not me, is a way to get the role, then you have a lot of fake reluctance. Andy Stanley (38:21): Well, I think you can see through that though, and we’ve both seen people with that false humility, and you’re like, ah, I think you believe this. Okay, so as we wrap up, and I hate to wrap up, but as we wrap up, I want to mention something that you divulge in the epilogue of the book. Correct me if I didn’t summarize this correctly, but in the very end of the book, you talk about before classes started at Harvard, everyone was required to take a writing exam and that your grade on this writing exam would determine your placement in the freshmen writing seminar, and then you were worried about it. And a second year student, or I think or third year student assured you, oh, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. This only jocks and international students fail this, and then you failed it. (39:07): So I just want to say to you, and then I’ll let you make some parting thoughts. Hey, on behalf of literally millions of readers who have been helped and inspired by your writing, Adam, thank you for not giving up or shying away from becoming a writer. When that little ding to your confidence, that could have been the thing that’s like, okay, writing’s not for me. I’ve got to shy away and do something else. So your character in that moment is just such a great illustration of the entire book and what you have done in the gift you are to leaders and managers and just readers is remarkable even though you failed the writing test. So anything else you want to add about the book or just anything else as we wrap up? Adam Grant (39:51): Yeah, I appreciate that, Andy. I think I was really lucky to have a great writing teacher that freshman fall, Lisa Ky, who literally took what I thought was a set of skills that I couldn’t learn and showed me, I think the thing I struggled the most with was structure and signposting. I had all these ideas swirling in my head, and I was connecting dots mentally that were just not clear for readers on the page. And a semester of pouring myself into developing that skill with her was hugely valuable. I think that for me, the broader lesson from that story was to say, the imposter in me was saying, I don’t know what I’m doing, and it’s only a matter of minutes until everyone finds out. And a better approach was to think about having a growth mindset and saying, I don’t know what I’m doing yet, and it’s only a matter of time until I figure it out. Andy Stanley (41:00): Oh, wow. Wow. That’s great. Well, that’s all the time we have, Adam. I’m so sorry about that. But I do hope we can come back and talk about some other things that didn’t always have to be about one of your fabulous books. And to all of our listeners, I want to thank you for joining us and invite you to check out Adam’s newest bestselling book, hidden Potential, the Science of Achieving Greater Things. And you can find it wherever books are sold. Before we leave, we do have one ask, and it’s the only thing we will ever ask of you on this podcast, and that is to subscribe. And by hitting follow on whatever app, you listen to us, you help us grow our audience, which helps us improve and bring you great guests like we did today. Also, be sure to visit the Andy stanley.com website where you can download the leadership podcast application guide that includes a summary of our discussion, plus some questions for reflection or group discussion. And make sure you join us next week for our reverb episode where, Adam, I don’t know if you know about this. Susie and I sit down and we talk about you behind your back. So anyway, we explore all the parts of the book that we didn’t get to today. I’ll dig even deeper on this topic right here on the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. Comments are closed.