Rethinking Leadership, Work, and Human Connection in the Age of AI | The Curiosity Shop

1. 0:00 – 1:00

   Welcome to The Curiosity Shop

   1. AGAdam Grant0:00

      Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Curiosity Shop. I finished my intensive teaching and I'm excited to do an ask me anything. I posted a, just an open what do you wanna know, what do you wanna hear me talk about on a couple different social media platforms, and pulled some of my favorite themes and questions. We've got a series of questions about leadership and careers. We have some about AI, got a bunch of questions about rethinking, and some questions about personal writing practices and productivity habits as well. So I'll tackle as many as I can. I'm gonna spend more time on some questions than others 'cause they're more complicated, and, uh, I hope this is interesting for you as I think out loud in real time. I reserve the right to rethink anything I say today, as always, and if I do, I think that will be a sign of growth, and if I don't, I'll be glad that I didn't completely miss the mark on everything. So let's dive in. Here we go. [upbeat music]

2. 1:00 – 5:55

   Making Employees Feel Heard

   1. AGAdam Grant1:00

      All right. The majority of the questions were about leadership, so let's begin there. There's a great question from Mykola that I wanna kick off with. The question is, "How can leaders restore a credible connection between speaking up and being heard without creating the expectation that every suggestion will be adopted?" I love this question. I think it's such an important question both from a leadership perspective, but also from an employee perspective, around how you can speak up without losing faith or becoming cynical. I, I first started thinking about this question years ago when I had a PhD student, John Sumanth, who did his dissertation on the question of whether it's possible to be too inclusive as a leader. Um, and what he found was that, as you would expect, there are many benefits to seeking out ideas from other people, to being a great listener, but leaders who are seen as receptive to all of the ideas all of the time really struggled to prioritize what they wanted to act on, and ultimately ended up getting less done. And since then, I've seen this dynamic over and over again in organizations. I think leaders bend over backward to tell people they have a voice, and then they can't possibly put all of the suggestions they get into practice, and at that point, people start to get s- discouraged. I think the mistake that many leaders are making in those situations is they're not being clear about what it means to have a voice. There's some classic research on this by McFarlane and Sweeney that has really stuck with me, where they point out that people want to have a say even if they don't get their way, and I think that's the missing message that more leaders need to emphasize. To say, "Look, I'm gonna consider every suggestion that gets raised. Ultimately, I am not gonna be able to implement all of them. I've got to apply a filter, which is, number one, what's most relevant to our mission and our values? Number two, what's strategically doable? Number three, what's actually affordable for us?" And I think that conversation is a critical one to have. I think once you collect ideas and suggestions, the next step then is to clarify what criteria you're actually using to evaluate them. Ideally, this is done upfront, but [laughs] it's not always feasible to do that, or you're not always sure what you're looking for at the beginning of the conversation, but once you've, whether you're doing a, a poll or a survey or a series of speed dates with your employees, once you've done that, the next step for leaders is, is really to sit down and say, "Okay. Here's, here's the screen that I applied. Here's what I'm looking for, and here's why I adopted some ideas and not others. And, and for those of you whose ideas were not adopted, that doesn't mean I don't like you. It doesn't mean that your idea wasn't good. It meant that I ran into a roadblock around whether it was feasible or whether it was a top priority right now. And please keep the ideas coming, and I'm gonna keep looking for opportunities to apply as many of them as I can." I think that's a, that's a really valuable conversation. It's possible for leaders to be, quote, unquote, "too inclusive," but what I worry about much more is leaders who aren't inclusive enough, who end up silencing voice as opposed to welcoming it, who shut down ideas and dissent instead of taking it seriously. Those are leaders who are choosing not to learn. They're also leaders who leave their employees feeling devalued. And guess what groups are most likely to be silenced, ignored, and shut down? They are groups of people who lack power and status. It may be because they're not in the gender majority or the racial majority of the organization. It may be because they're not in the functional m- majority of an organization. I've seen this, for example, in workplaces that are engineering dominated. Often the salespeople are seen as second-class citizens. It may be just because they are the most junior person in the room. And I think the basics of leader inclusion, this is some work that was done by Kathy Phillips and Robert Livingston, start with just making eye contact with everyone on your team. What they show is that people who lack power or status in the team, when the leader just even glances at them, they're more likely to speak up and be heard because they [laughs] literally feel seen. This is obviously harder to do in a virtual environment, but one of the ways that I like to navigate that personally is I'll use the chat window and say, "Hey, I noticed you've been a little quiet," or, "I think it would be really important for the team to hear from you." Or I, you know, I'd actually, "I'm working on making sure we hear from people whose voices often go overlooked, and so here's a preview of where I'm going." Uh, or my personal favorite, uh, "I don't think we have enough productive disagreement and challenge in this team, so can I just, can I just invite you to object to a point that I'm making and challenge me on it? And not only do I wanna learn from your point of view, but I think it'll be a great opportunity to model for the rest of the team what a, a healthy challenge or confrontation actually looks like." All right, our next leadership question came from Andrew.

3. 5:55 – 9:37

   Changing Organizational Culture

   1. AGAdam Grant5:55

      The question is, "What have you found separates leaders who successfully change an organization's culture from those who introduce good ideas but never get the organization to truly adopt them?" Well, it's almost like Andrew anticipated the previous question because it is the natural follow-up. Um, what does it take to, to speak up and actually get your idea acted upon? I think there are probably three things that I would highlight here from both evidence and experience. The first one is that people who speak up effectively have enough passion to raise their idea and persist in getting it pursued, but also enough discipline and patience to wait for the right time and the right path. This is something I first saw when I was studying emotional intelligence in organizations. Uh, I published a paper years ago on the role of emotion regulation in speaking up. What I found was that people who experience strong emotions were more likely to speak up and less likely to get heard because oftentimes the very emotion that spurred them to act and speak up clouded their judgment about what's the right time, who's the right audience, and what's the most effective way to deliver the message. So let's break down the three key skills here. Number one is deciding to translate your emotion into action, and that requires some ability to say, "Okay, I've got to connect my emotions to my values and understand why is this important to me in the long run?" Not just, [laughs] am I fired up about this now, but why does it matter? What principle of mine is being threatened that led me to feel righteous indignation or moral outrage or fiery passion and say, "I've got to do something about this problem," or, "I've got to get this solution considered"? That's the first step. Okay, so once you've clarified why this matters, the next step is to figure out when is the right moment to raise it. You probably don't want to do it during quarterly performance reviews. You may not want to do it when everybody's headed out for the holidays. Look for a moment when the organization has a little bit of breathing room or when the leader who has the most power to do something about your issue actually has some bandwidth and flexibility. And then I think the third piece, which is probably the most important one, is figuring out how to deliver the message in a way that's gonna get heard. Um, I think the most underutilized strategy for having upward influence is seeking the advice of the people above you. Uh, there's some great research on this by Katy Liljenquist where she shows that when you seek advice, if you're genuine about it and you actually want to learn from the people above you, three things tend to happen. The first one is you flatter that boss, and they just, they think, "Wow, you're a genius. You knew to come to me." [laughs] Secondly, when you seek their advice, you've invite them to take your perspective and walk in your shoes, and that activates cognitive empathy and makes m- it more likely that they see the value of what you're proposing. And then number three, when they start to give you suggestions, they're taking some ownership over them, and together those effects mean that somebody who might've been your adversary is more likely to become your advocate. So what does that look like concretely? It might be a conversation where you say, "Hey, I've got this idea. I'd love to make sure that it gets the attention it deserves, but I know people are busy and distracted, or it might even be threatening to the way we've always done it in some people's eyes. I know you're great at making change happen around here. A lot of people look up to you. Can I maybe get a little bit of your guidance on how to bring this up and maybe what the right audience and the right moment would be?" Best case scenario, that person actually joins you as a champion for your idea. Worst case scenario, you learn something that makes you more effective in your next pitch.

4. 9:37 – 14:11

   Developing Transformational Leadership Habits

   1. AGAdam Grant9:37

      The next leadership question came from Christina, who wants to know, "Looking at people who eventually become transformational leaders, what's the habit they develop years before they're ready for the role?" Christina, this is such an important question. I was actually just talking with our students about it at Wharton. My biggest frustration in the work that I do with leaders is when they say, "Oh, wow, I wish I paid attention to this stuff when I was in business school or earlier in my career." And I think that's, that's kind of the cardinal error of developing leadership skills is saying, "You know what? What I need to do to build my career is I need to work on my technical skills, my functional skills. I need to get better at operations or marketing or finance," and overlooking the fact that leadership development is a lifelong practice. The earlier you commit to it, the better your trajectory of growth becomes. I think one of the best examples of this was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. If you look at his "I Have a Dream" speech, he's 34 years old when he delivers that speech, and every time I watch it, I'm both moved and daunted, thinking, "What am I doing [laughs] with my life?" And knowing I will never be that good no matter how many decades of practice I get at public speaking. But if you actually roll back time, what you see is that MLK started practicing his public speaking skills when he was 15 years old, entering competitions, joining debates. The year that he gave the speech at the March on Washington, he gave over 300 talks, and so he was constantly riffing, practicing, and developing his ability to both deliver an urgent message and also inject the right emotion into it. And I think that's something that too few leaders do, right? Actually thinking about leadership as a skill that we should work on long before we assume the mantle or have the responsibility and authority to have people following us. I think that's a skill we, we can start working on from the very beginning of our careers. I don't think leadership improves in a vacuum. I think we need to practice the skills in places where we get feedback, where we have small groups of people following us and let us know what's working and where we can grow. And so in an ideal world, I would say starting from the day you finish school and get your first job, maybe even earlier during school, you've got a challenge at work, a, a core group of people who are letting you know when you're at your best and maybe what areas you need to consider developing further. We know that practice is not effective in a vacuum. We need feedback to know whether we're actually making productive changes. So I think the key habit to develop if you wanna become a more transformational leader is actively seeking feedback. One of my mentors, Sue Ashford, has spent her whole career studying feedback seeking as a form of proactivity, and she finds that the people who grow the most are the ones who are most consistently asking, "What's the one thing I can do better?" I think any time somebody follows you, they're a potential coach, they're a potential teacher, they're a potential source of feedback. And committing to the regular practice of asking every single week that you work with other people, even if they're your peers and you're leading them informally, even if they're people above you and you're trying to influence them, if you commit to the weekly habit of asking, "What is the one thing I can do better?" And then maybe even inviting those people to hold you accountable for continuing to adopt that habit, I think that is a big step in the right direction, and probably a head start when it comes to becoming more transformational. [upbeat music] Support for the show comes from Mint Mobile. Summer's coming to a close, but you can still take advantage of Mint Mobile's summer sale. If you're looking to save on your monthly bill, they've got your back. They're offering premium wireless plans for only $15 a month for new customers for their initial term. All of Mint Mobile's plans come with high-speed data, plus unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. They make it super simple to sign up as well. You can do it totally online, and you can even bring your current device and phone number when you switch. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/theshop. That's it. There's no catch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month, $90 for six-month, or $180 for 12-month plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. Okay, our next set of questions is about rethinking: questioning assumptions, evolving beliefs, maybe even reversing course. And I think Rathi set the tone for this perfectly with the question, "I

5. 14:11 – 18:45

   Failing to Follow My Own Advice

   1. AGAdam Grant14:11

      would love to hear from you examples of where you haven't followed your own suggestions." Hypocrisy alert, I have never, ever been inconsistent. Okay, maybe I have. Maybe I'm even doing it right now. My, my career and my life is full of [chuckles] moments when I haven't followed my own suggestions, and often I don't discover it until I'm teaching or writing or podcasting [chuckles] and I realize that I'm, in the moment, not adopting the very thing I've been advising others on. But one of the moments that's just burned into my brain was early in my career. I was an avid student of organizational psychology. I'd read extensive evidence. I'd done an undergraduate thesis. I had worked on multiple research projects. And I was working part-time as a manager. My job was to hire salespeople, and there was a job that needed to be filled immediately, so I, I basically interviewed everyone who applied. And there was one resume that just did not fit. It didn't make any sense at all. The guy was a math major, and he built robots in his spare time. And I took one look at that resume, and I said, "Yeah. [chuckles] Not a fit for sales. There's no way this is gonna work." But we were desperate to hire, so I brought him in for an interview, and sure enough, just completely unqualified. And I had a weekly meeting with our president where I had to review all the candidates, and I, I got to that one and said, "There is no way, no way that this guy is ever gonna be a successful salesperson." We had a 45-minute interview, and he didn't make eye contact once. Now, this was long before I knew anything about neurodivergence, but our president looked at me and said, "You know this is a phone sales job, right?" And I mean, just the embarrassment was, was overwhelming. Here I was judging somebody on a cue that was literally irrelevant to the job, and I had no awareness of it whatsoever. I had failed to follow the very practices that I'd already been studying, which involved identifying the criteria before looking at the candidates, figuring out what are the, the capabilities, values, and motivations that are most important for success in the job, and then assessing all the candidates on those. I had utterly failed at that. So I knew what I had to do. I had to go back to the drawing board and change the way that I was vetting candidates. A colleague and I ended up sitting down and saying, "Look, we've got to gather a work sample. Instead of having people talk about how they'd do the job, we're gonna give them a chance to show how they can do the job." We decided to make it fun, and we also wanted to level the playing field so that people who had more experience in a given industry didn't have an advantage over anyone else. So we invited every candidate to sell us a rotten apple, figuring [chuckles] if you could sell that, you could sell anything. And I will never forget one candidate who came in and said, without even skipping a beat, "Look, this may, this may look like a rotten apple, but it's actually an aged antique apple. You know the saying, 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away'? Well, because of the nutrients in the aging process, you only have to eat one of these a week, and then you can plant the seeds in your backyard and grow an apple tree." Now, I had some concerns about ethics and honesty after that [chuckles] but I ended up hiring him, and he was the top performing salesperson in our company, and he was a math major who built robots for fun. I learned a great lesson from that experience. Not only did I need to follow the evidence that I had already been studying, but I needed to give candidates a do-over. I didn't know this at the time 'cause the data didn't exist, but there's brand-new research from the, the US Army showing that if you wanna predict somebody's trajectory of performance and growth on a job, it's not how they do in the first interview that matters, it's the progress they make from the first interview to the second interview, the distance that they travel. That reveals not just their ability, but also their agility, their motivation and capacity to learn. And I think we live in a world where that's increasingly important. So how great would it be if every single job candidate got a do-over? I know in some ways a do-over sounds impractical. You're not gonna call back every candidate you've rejected [laughs] and say, "Hey, just, just kidding. We wanna give you a second chance." I've found that it's actually efficient and effective to do that in the middle of an interview, to just pause and say, "Okay, we're halfway through the interview. Is there anything you'd like to retake? Or is there anything you did that you felt didn't represent you m- best? Let's, let's give you another shot at that and see how it goes."

6. 18:45 – 20:30

   Rethinking a Long-Held Belief

   1. AGAdam Grant18:45

      Okay, here's another rethinking question from Karina. The question is, "What's a belief you've reversed on, and what changed your mind?" I, I've actually completely reversed in my stance on tradition. I, I was for a long time, and I still am, a big fan of the saying, it's actually become a meme, "Tradition is peer pressure from dead people." What I love about that meme is I find it so frustrating to see people and organizations cling to the way we've always done it just because it's a tradition, not because it actually serves a purpose. And I think that's one way that we get stuck in the past and end up having best practices that were built for a world that no longer exists. Um, and if we're not careful, if we cling to tradition for tradition's sake, our knowledge, our skills, our habits can quickly become obsolete. What shifted my thinking on this was writing my new book, Vibe. I wanted to look at what makes families strong. How do you build collective solidarity, um, in not just a, a core family unit, but also in an extended family or a chosen family? I came away from that research, reading, and writing with a very different view. I think traditions are vital. I don't think they're just peer pressure from dead people. I think that mindless routines are [laughs] maybe peer pressure from dead people. But I think that a well-defined tradition is what allows us to both symbolize and strengthen our values. It tells us what we stand for together. It's how we build cultures, not just in families, but in teams, in workplaces, even in friend groups. And so I think I've become a fan of thoughtful tradition and an ongoing critic of tradition for its own sake.

7. 20:30 – 22:45

   Understanding Political Allegiance

   1. AGAdam Grant20:30

      All right, one more rethinking question. This one comes from Jay Nolt. The question is, "Why do people make their political allegiance so much a part of them that they aren't willing to rethink the decisions of a party? They make their political ideology so important that they can't criticize party decisions." So I originally wrote about this in Think Again, and I've learned a lot since the book came out five years ago. I think there are three core reasons why people tend to internalize political ideologies to the point where they struggle to question them. One is discomfort with uncertainty. Uh, we've talked about this a lot on The Curiosity Shop. Brené has, has spoken eloquently about the challenges people face wrestling with uncertainty. In times of turbulence, people cling to stability. They search for coherence, and a political ideology is, is a very, very robust source of that. Second is belonging. People wanna feel like they're part of a group, and given the energy and the polarization that exists around politics, it often seems that if you're not with your own side, you're actually against them. And so people end up, I think, falling victim to a phenomenon that social psychologists have documented for decades now, which is called group polarization, which is a group of people who might be moderate get together, and if they are similar in their views, they will on average all come out more extreme than they were coming in because of the echo chamber they put themselves in and the desire to really exemplify what the group stands for, which means being not just somebody who's committed to the group, but somebody who goes above and beyond to represent the principles of the group. And then I think the third factor is a misguided sense of loyalty. People think that if they change their minds, they're being disloyal to their group, and I think that's a misunderstanding of what loyalty is about. I think our highest loyalty does not belong to people or to parties. It belongs to principles. And so if you wouldn't accept an idea from, quote-unquote, the other side, you should not accept it from yours either. I believe that integrity is the highest form of loyalty. You're showing fidelity to your own principles that way, and integrity means upholding your values even if your own group violates them. I would love to live in a world where more people understand that view of integrity. All right, let's go to a few

8. 22:45 – 23:14

   Practicing Magic

   1. AGAdam Grant22:45

      quick personal questions. Ramin wants to know, "Do you still practice magic?" Practice is a strong word. [laughs] I still perform occasionally, usually when a group of students twist my arm or when I've got an audience that says, "Hey, we've got a little extra time. Can you show us a trick or two?" I have not learned a new magic trick in probably a quarter century. Uh, cards are probably my, my best skill. You cannot count on me to do a coin trick or a stage illusion if my life depended on it.

9. 23:14 – 23:30

   Favorite Foods

   1. AGAdam Grant23:14

      Um, okay, next question. Okay, Italian Ice Sunshine wants to know, "What is your favorite food?" For me, I'm torn between Cotton Candy Blizzard from Dairy Queen and the cornbread souffle that my wife Allison makes. It is heavenly. Highly recommend, five

10. 23:30 – 24:36

    Choosing Books to Blurb

    1. AGAdam Grant23:30

       stars. Lisa wants to know, "How do you decide which books to blurb?" Okay, I've had to get much more thoughtful about this as I've gotten a, just an overwhelming number of requests for, "Can you please recommend or endorse my book?" So I have five criteria that I, I try to weigh the decision on. Number one, is the book evidence-based? Number two, is it engaging? Number three, is it practical? Number four, does it say something new? And number five, can I add unique value here, either because I know the author well or because they're a first-time author who's really centrally in my space of organizational psychology where I think my voice carries more weight than it would elsewhere? Uh, I think those are, those are the major factors that I consider. Occasionally, I just love the book so much that I wanna shout [laughs] about how great it is from every rooftop that I can. And other times, a book checks all those boxes, but I just don't have time to read it in enough depth to feel comfortable and confident endorsing it, and I hope those authors understand. Okay, there were,

11. 24:36 – 24:56

    The Biggest Scientist Alive

    1. AGAdam Grant24:36

       there were a couple interesting questions about role models. Liav wants to know, "Who's the biggest scientist alive?" I think when it comes to influence and impact, it would be hard to argue with Jennifer Doudna. If you haven't read the Isaacson biography, it goes into depth on why her research has been so pathbreaking, but also how she does it, and I think that's a great p- place to start.

12. 24:56 – 27:18

    Leadership Lessons From Athletes

    1. AGAdam Grant24:56

       Then Nathaniel asked, "What athletes impress you from a human perspective, and what leadership lessons can we gain from them?" Okay, this is gonna be a controversial take. Tom Brady. I know that people have very mixed opinions of Tom Brady, but I'll just say a couple things. Number one, the guy ran a faster 40-yard dash when he was 40 years old than when he was 20 years old. Who does that? Now, I realize the floor was pretty low. Maybe, in fact, it was so low that [laughs] given how slow he was when he was 20, there was nowhere to go but up. But I think the, you know, the grit and discipline that he showed was, was obviously impressive. To go from being drafted the 199th pick to becoming the greatest quarterback ever and, and seven Super Bowls, you cannot help but admire that, full stop. But secondly, if you haven't read it, Tom Brady and Nithyananda, who's the former dean of Harvard Business School, wrote a surprisingly great article in Harvard Business Review about the leadership lessons from Tom's career, and I, I think that's worth reading for anybody who wants to make a team better or anyone who wants to become a more effective leader.

    2. SPSpeaker26:09

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13. 27:18 – 28:55

    Jobs AI Will Struggle to Replace

    1. AGAdam Grant27:18

       All right, and then we had a bunch of questions about careers, especially in the age of AI. One question from Veronica is, "If you get tired of people asking you about AI [laughs] and wanna go away from it, what kind of job would you do?" I think I would definitely recommend becoming a magician. Very low AI use in that career currently, although who knows if that will change. No, I think there, there actually is a serious point there, which is live experiences, entertaining other people, serving other people, building connection with other people, I think those are the hardest for AI to substitute for. Yeah, you can do low-level online service, but we are a long way from robots that seem anywhere near human, and I hope, I hope we never get there, um, because I think that, that human connection is the, the most important thing we have in this world. I think, I think we're probably gonna see a lot of shifts in the service sector in the coming years as people figure out what kinds of tasks can be outsourced or automated and which ones really rely on human creativity, on judgment, on the ability to, to make others feel seen and form a, a connection using tone of voice, using body language, not just with the content of the message that you're delivering to other people. And so I would think about the jobs that, that require the most connection. I would think about, f- uh, I would obviously think about healthcare. I would think about education, teaching. I would think about coaching. Uh, anything that has a direct impact on other people that either brightens somebody's day or where other people would be worse off if humans were not doing this job, I think is, is probably a good bet. Tarif has

14. 28:55 – 32:16

    Remote Work and Career Development

    1. AGAdam Grant28:55

       an interesting and timely question about remote work. The, the gist of the question is we've seen lots of satisfaction and retention benefits, and sometimes even performance benefits, or at least no performance costs when people work from home. But Tarif is worried we're underweighting learning, and one of the, the lessons that came during COVID was that remote education comes with a real cost to learning outcomes, so why would we assume that work is different? Tarif goes on to say, "Especially early in a career, a huge amount of learning happens through observation, overheard conversations, informal feedback, and simply being around more experienced people. If we wouldn't casually sacrifice that in a university setting, why should we in the workplace where the employer is paying not just for output today but also to build capability for tomorrow? Could work from home be beneficial in the short term while reducing long-term learning and development?" I think the answer is a qualified yes. So I'm not suggesting that anybody should work remotely all the time if they wanna maximize their growth and development. When I highlight evidence on the benefits of remote work, what I'm talking about is a hybrid structure, and Brené and I have, have talked about this extensively, including in one of the first episodes of The Curiosity Shop, where if people are in the office together three to four days a week, the other one to two, they do not need to be co-located. That's actually when they're doing a lot of deep work, reflection, finding flow, independent learning even, then which makes them less vulnerable to groupthink. Which is, by the way, exactly how well-designed education systems are structured. We don't expect all your learning to happen in the classroom. We give you reading. We give you reflection exercises. We ask you to practice and write essays and solve problems on your own and then regroup. I think that's how learning and development is best designed in a workplace as well. And there's some interesting evidence on this from Raj Choudhury and colleagues, where they show that if you're a remote intern and your manager even just schedules a, a regular 30-minute unstructured check-in with you, that is enough to boost your performance trajectory. And there's some real informal learning that happens when you have that time together on a regular basis. But again, it's not necessarily all the time, and it's not always on site. I think when it comes to learning, we should also not overlook the fact that certain aspects of remote work make it easier rather than harder. You can only be in so many different physical rooms in a given day, right? Especially if you're in an organization that operates in multiple cities or multiple countries or multiple continents. But with access to Zoom or Teams, you're now in a position to be able to parachute into the meetings of four different leaders or a whole series of different mentors and be a fly on the wall in places that you just couldn't go otherwise. And so I don't think that's a substitute, obviously, for the in-person time that allows us to absorb tacit knowledge and to get on-the-spot mentoring and coaching, but I also think we should be thoughtful about creating opportunities for people to, to observe others working and to learn from their role models in situations that they just otherwise wouldn't have access to, 'cause we're not gonna send everybody to travel to every place or every meeting. Okay, the last question I wanna take on comes from actually several people, who ask

15. 32:16 – 34:58

    Rethinking “That’s Not My Job”

    1. AGAdam Grant32:16

       different versions of, "What do you do when people are resisting change by saying, 'But that's not part of my job description?'" My answer to that is to look to the research that my colleagues Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton spearheaded around what they call job crafting, which is the active process of becoming an architect of your own job, as opposed to just passively receiving the job description that wasn't written for you personally in most cases. Um, what Amy and Justin Berg and I have found, along with several other colleagues, is when you take the initiative to craft your own job, you can boost your happiness without compromising your performance. And I'm not suggesting [laughs] that everybody should reinvent their job tomorrow. We still have to figure out how it aligns with the organization's mission and how it fits in with the work of the rest of your team. But on the margins, people can often make choices about what tasks they wanna concentrate on or projects that would actually serve the team or the organization that were not originally dreamed up as part of their job, um, that they might be excited to do. They often have strengths that they're not using that could be brought into play, and I think that is the answer to the "that's not my job," is to say, "Hey, we're not an organization that believes in permanent static job descriptions. We want your job to be customized to you. We want it to evolve, and our ultimate goal here is to build an organization where you align what you do every day with what's good for the organization and what's interesting and worthwhile for you." And obviously, I think that that requires leadership and management support. I think that, that bad bosses keep people stuck in one dead-end job description. I think good bosses end up developing people so that they can evolve their job descriptions and responsibilities. I think great bosses develop people even if it means moving them out of their team or out of their organization, and I sure would love to see more bosses who are so committed to their employees' growth and development that they're willing to let them evolve their job description even if in the short run it means losing their talent. Because in the long run, they've invested in building that person up and helping to bring out the best in them, and that's just intrinsically rewarding. But also, for those who are worried about any performance risks of that, we know that that kind of investment in a person makes it more likely that they boomerang. When they leave our organization, they discover, "Hey, you know what? The grass was not actually greener elsewhere." And they're more likely to refer other people to wanna join our organization as well. So I think the answer to "that's not my job" is, "But could it be your job [laughs] , and how do we make it a version of the job that's good for you and good for us?"

16. 34:58 – 35:25

    Final Thoughts

    1. AGAdam Grant34:58

       All right, that's a wrap on the Ask Me Anything. Thank you all for the questions. I enjoyed reflecting on them and digging in on them, and I'm excited to have Brené back next week. Until then... [upbeat music]

    2. SPSpeaker35:09

       The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brené Brown Education and Research Group and Grant Ed Productions. You can subscribe to The Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app.

    3. AGAdam Grant35:19

       We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

Episode duration: 35:25