Achieving greater things with Adam Grant

“Growth is not about the genius you possess—it’s about the character you develop.” That’s what organizational psychologist and podcast host Adam Grant believes, and he offers a new framework on how we can elevate ourselves and others in his latest book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. This week on How I Built This Lab, insights on what great entrepreneurs have in common and the steps anyone can take to develop these skills. Plus, redesigning workplace systems to foster greater collaboration, and cultivating untapped potential in the generations to come. This episode was researched and produced by Carla Esteves, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Neal Rauch. You can follow HIBT on X https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2 a.m. kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan,

• 0:46Guy Raz?

  build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

  Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems. But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands, on the table in rewards you never earned, money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now, you're earning 3% cash back

• 2:16Guy Raz?

  on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever,

• 3:00Guy Raz?

  new Delta SkyMiles Reserve American Express Card members can earn two Delta Comfort Round Trip flights for travel within the 48 contiguous US states, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands. Plus, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles towards your next getaway. And who doesn't appreciate an elevated airport experience? Delta SkyMiles Reserve Card members get access to the Delta Sky Club, your pre-flight oasis to recharge, with 15 visits and four one-time guest passes each medallion year when flying Delta together. That's up to $950 in annual value. Value estimate based on $50 per visit rate to purchase additional visits

• 3:45Guy Raz?

  or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the car that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talk to on this show, because the best

• 4:27Guy Raz?

  ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile regular gas in port fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary. Visit mobilefuels.com for details. Hey, it's Guy here.

• 5:12Guy Raz?

  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 sunbums Tom Rinks, or marketing tips from Fawn Weaver of Uncle Nearest Whiskey. If you'd like to be considered, send us a one-minute message that tells us about

• 5:57Guy Raz?

  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 [email protected], 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.

• 6:39Guy 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

• 7:24Guy Raz?

  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.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  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 edge in math and reading, but rather a lasting gain in character skills.

• 8:11Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  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, OK, 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.

• 8:34Guy Raz?

  I want to double click on this idea for a moment, right? Because as you can imagine, you know, after interviewing 500 or more founders of companies, you see certain character traits. There's some commonalities, but fewer than people imagine, right?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  What do you see? I'm curious.

• 8:53Guy Raz?

  I mean, the sort of the, you know, 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, right? To withstand or to see no in a different way. It's like, 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.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:26Guy Raz?

  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. To, 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, you know, we talk about developing skills, right? But is there a limit to how good you can get at something like that? And I mean, I mean, I, you know, I'll 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 personality traits, but, and I try to fight

• 10:11Guy Raz?

  against it. You know, 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, in those situations. You know what I mean?

• 10:28Speaker 01

  I do know what you mean. Yeah, I mean, here, here we are, two writer podcasters who are introverts, who have pushed ourselves out of our comfort zones over and over again.

• 10:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  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, when you go to a party, right? So showing up at a, let's say, a cocktail party at a conference.

• 11:08Guy Raz?

  My nightmare.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Your nightmare, and mine too. But guess what? Once, once you show up, you feel like you've already done the task.

• 11:14Guy Raz?

  Yes.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  That the goal is just to put yourself in the situation. And that, and that, 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, maybe it's a little, it's a little aggressive to walk in and, and say, like, right after meeting someone, so tell me about one of the defining moments in your life. Like, nope, that was, that was like, fourth date. Too soon.

• 11:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  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 conversations. So to go back to your question, I don't know whether, you know, 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.

• 12:26Guy Raz?

  You know, one of the things that struck me when I was reading the book was how many times I've interviewed founders who'll say something like, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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 know, you don't have to wait to master

• 13:11Guy Raz?

  something before you go for it. Sometimes you just have to dive in and just do it.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  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.

• 13:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  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 Hasbun and Benny Lewis, both finished high school convinced that they were incapable of learning a foreign language. Benny had 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

• 14:08Speaker 01

  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. You know, 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, you know, 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.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  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.

• 15:00Guy Raz?

  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, this notion of ego as a, an obstacle. There's literally a book called, I think, Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:21Guy Raz?

  And, and I've seen this with the best entrepreneurs, the ones who suppress their egos or don't even worry about it, you know, aren't sort of obsessed with this, this idea of dignity and pride, tend to be the ones who have the greatest success. You know, 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, in the early seventies. And, you know, early in his career, he had some success as an importer exporter, but he couldn't.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Wait, like Art Van der Ley?

• 15:56Guy Raz?

  Exactly. Right?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 15:59Guy Raz?

  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, it's important to fight, fight against that or to somehow, I don't know, move past it. Is that sort of fair?

• 16:38Speaker 01

  I think you're on to 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.

• 16:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  You've spent a lot of time with highly successful founders. Do you think any of them have no ego?

• 16:58Guy Raz?

  No, of course not. Of course, they, they, they, no.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Me neither. I think the difference is that the ones who especially manage to have repeat success 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, 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,

• 17:46Speaker 01

  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 want to 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.

• 18:30Guy Raz?

  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.

• 18:45Guy Raz?

  Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting, and a CMS built in, so the work is production-ready from day one. And you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. AI agents and humans work together.

• 19:27Guy Raz?

  The agents bring speed and scale, and people bring taste, judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities. It's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on.

• 20:12Guy Raz?

  NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization and how to position In your business to prosper from it.

• 20:57Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Stripe is built for whatever comes next because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies, and new expectations for speed, reliability, and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow, and operate globally. From payments and billing to fraud protection and cross-border payouts,

• 21:41Guy Raz?

  Stripe is built to support the new pace of commerce. They're trusted by the companies building at the frontier, from 86% of the Forbes AI 50 to global leaders like Salesforce and OpenAI. In fact, more than 1.6% of global GDP flows through Stripe, with Stripe's users processing a combined $1.9 trillion last year. So if you're already thinking about what's next for your business, see what's possible at stripe.com.

• 22:24Guy Raz?

  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.

• 22:32Guy Raz?

  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.

• 22:42Guy Raz?

  And in the second part of your book, 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 tell me a bit more about that?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  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.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  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.

• 23:55Guy Raz?

  I'm curious, and I think many of us have this problem where we have that like 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 a complete screw up, you know? And I wonder why, why, I mean, you write about this in the book that we are often really bad at recognizing our own potential. It often requires other people to point it out to us.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  I mean, I've been in that situation. I once taught a session for Air Force generals and colonels 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 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, as a 12 year old.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  And she reminded me of two things. Number one, that, you know, I had, I had some latent unused skill in connecting with an audience.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And two, that it was, it was hard to believe her. But I also realized in that situation, okay, maybe, 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.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  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, you know, I was, I was in my mid twenties. They were, they were in their fifties and I was trying to, to prove myself to them.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  So I had talked about my expertise and my credentials and I threw that out the window. And I should say, they, 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 Sandun 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 gotta be at least 13.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 27:21Guy Raz?

  So I'm, I'm curious as a, I mean, this, this all happened. In a different context, before you were a bestselling 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? Do you, or are you able to be Adam Grant to yourself? Like, do you, are you 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, do you think that's impossible for virtually most humans?

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Sometimes, and other times, like, I need to take my own advice. I am not doing the thing that other people told me. No, I mean, look, this, this, 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.

• 28:39Guy Raz?

  Right. I think you advised, take a break, or try just do something entirely different, right?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I didn't do any of those things because I had a goal. And I'm a goal-oriented person. When, like, 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.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  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 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 as like looking directly into the sun. I can't do it anymore.

• 29:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 30:17Guy Raz?

  Right. I mean, you write about being an imperfectionist, that actually the data suggests that people who are prepared to make mistakes and to keep moving forward, even if something is flawed, tend to perform better. The outcomes are better, which makes sense.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  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've accepted that nothing I write will ever be perfect. And I'm willing to make mistakes and fail.

• 30:52Guy Raz?

  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 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 in the teams were less narcissistic.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that was especially true if if your point guard was a narcissist, the 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, you know, in games one, but also in the number of of assists that are completed. And, you know, 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 know, 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, you know, as the longtime Mavericks owner.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  And he said, "Listen, you can have one knucklehead on a team, but you can't afford two." And that's almost exactly what what you see in the data is that, you know, having having one person in a 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.

• 32:25Guy Raz?

  It's 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, you know? People who who behave that way are often celebrated and and, you know, and venerated or beyond. And, yeah, I mean, I don't want to cite any specific examples, but I think you know, you can imagine who I'm talking about.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Yes, you do.

• 32:46Guy Raz?

  Yes, you're right, I do.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  We know who you are, yeah.

• 32:48Guy Raz?

  But but at the same time, I mean, all of the research that you cite shows that teams that work collectively, you know, it's like a great rowing team that can, you know, 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 when the incentive structures are often designed to reward individual achievement?

• 33:20Speaker 01

  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, you know, a high performer who's selfish, then your definition of performance is too narrow.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  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.

• 33:57Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  And the better you are at individual sales, the worse you tend to be as a manager. Your teams actually achieve poorer performance.

• 34:04Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  How do you know whether somebody's 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.

• 34:41Guy Raz?

  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.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Football is back, and PrizePix is bringing out their best offer yet. New users who sign up will get $150 in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. That's right. If you win your first $5 lineup, you'll get $150 in lineups. On PrizePix, you simply pick two to six players, pick more or less on their stat projections, and submit your lineup. Then sweat it out as you watch your picks play out live. It's the best way to get more locked in on game day. Make all the picks you want this football season, all in the same app. And now PrizePix is available nationwide. So what are you waiting for? Lock in for kickoff, because everyone and everything is on PrizePix. What you want?

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Download the PrizePix app today and use code WONDERY, that's code WONDERY, to get $150 instantly in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. PrizePix, run your game.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  College students, get 12 months free of Uber One for Students membership program and get deals on things you're already doing. You're already ordering pizza, why not do it with 10% off Uber Eats? You're already ordering a ride to karaoke. Now you can save on those Ubers even at peak times. And you're ordering caffeine the next morning. Order it with a $0 delivery fee. Save on what you're already doing with 12 free months of Uber One for Students and save on Uber and Uber Eats. 12-month free membership offer for eligible students who aren't members. Available while supplies last or through 12/31/26, whichever comes first. Subject to change or cancellation, revocable due to fraud if not an eligible student.

• 36:39Guy Raz?

  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 in law offices and sales, you know, where employees are judged by the business they bring in or their P and L's. 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.

• 37:21Guy Raz?

  It's still not that common, especially in, you know, things like financial services or consulting or other areas.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so what do we do about that?

• 37:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  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, 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, you know, a lot of, what a lot of companies would do if you were going to identify those people is you'd say, all right,

• 38:15Speaker 01

  let's take, they're, they're all about innovation. So let's say you got to 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, 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?

• 38:51Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Guy, I, I think this is ingenious because in their world of, of glass, it might take, you know, 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. Right? 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, of founders, but, but also, you know, people at any level is, what is your equivalent of later patent authorship?

• 39:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Guy Raz?

  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, in a thing that you're being asked to evaluate.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  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.

• 40:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  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.

• 40:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  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.

• 41:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah, of course.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  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.

• 41:36Guy Raz?

  You, 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.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  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.

• 42:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  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.

• 42:55Guy Raz?

  Do you, um, do you feel like every single person, I mean, I, maybe it's, it's impossible to say everything, single person, but that most people have a hidden potential that they are unaware of?

• 43:08Speaker 01

  I think everyone has hidden potential. And yes, that is a, 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,

• 43:53Speaker 01

  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, 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,

• 44:36Speaker 01

  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 get, I see the same reactions from students, from founders, from leaders.

• 45:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, that could be really informative. You know, part of it is, and, and I think you, 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

• 45:18Guy Raz?

  much time at all to reflect on it. And, and so, you know, it's, it's, 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, you know, very often. So.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Introvert alert.

• 45:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah, yeah. It's like, um, 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.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  I think it can. I think it's helpful as long as the reason it works for athletes is they have coaches and trainers, right?

• 45:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Who are literally there full time to help them develop their potential. And I think that's a, that's a scary mantra if you don't have a built in coaching system. Like, if you're a solopreneur, you have to read the reviews.

• 46:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And the good and the bad and, and figure out how to, to adjust and to cope with when it's painful and to improve when, when you need to.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:20Guy Raz?

  And Grant, thank you so much.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Thank you, Guy Raz. Pleasure as always. I'd, I'd say we should do this more often, but let's face it, we're both introverts.

• 46:28Guy Raz?

  Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's Adam Grant, organizational psychologist and bestselling author of "Hidden Potential." Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of this show. This episode was researched and produced by Carla Esteves, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Neil Rouch. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Chris Messina, J.C. Howard, Kerry Thompson, Catherine Seifer, Malia Agadello, Niva Grant, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This Lab.