Adam M. Grant

Once again, Adam Grant releases a book that solidifies him as one of my favorite psychology writers. I didn't really know what this new book was about before it launched, but I love Grant's writing. Once I started reading it, I ended up binging the book in a day. This book is all about one of my favorite subjects, which is intellectual humility. In Think Again, Adam Grant challenges us to become alright with not knowing, being wrong, and rethinking our own conventional wisdom. Our egos hate show more when we do this, so it takes effort, but through psychological research and relevant stories, Grant explains how we can all begin working on this issue.

One of the other great features of this book is that Grant spends a couple sections explaining why it's so difficult to get through to other people. In this day and age with people who are anti-vaxxers or there are those who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent despite a lack of evidence, I'm glad Grant helps explain how to have conversations with these types of people. As a recovering drug addict who worked in a treatment center, I appreciate how he highlighted the benefits of motivational reasoning, which is a powerful tool to help others rethink their beliefs. I can't give this book enough praise, and I hope everyone grabs a copy. I can definitely see myself reading this book again. show less

Well, gosh. I feel guilty for the 2.5 I gave this book because it's such a personal account of the author's wrestling to develop resilience in the face of grief and loss. It is well-written and it was - for me - way more relatable than Lean In (which I didn't like, but that's another review for another time).

There is some good to be gleaned from Sandberg's account of her personal experience. It is helpful to understand through her eyes how to connect with and what to say (or what not to show more avoid and not to say) to someone who is grieving and/or kids who are grieving, how to support a widow who's dating again as they come to love someone else. It's hard to come away from this book without a little more general empathy for people and that's good.

Where this book fell short for me, was its similar sensibility to what I disliked intensely about Lean In. The data tie-ins from Grant are supposed to counter this as are asides from Sandberg herself about how if she's having this much trouble X (where X is usually some version of holding it together at work or with her kids) how much more are those without her resources. Of course, I realize that who she is is exactly why she got a book contract.

She seems to have nothing but good intentions - there's no motive to patronize. And she's been through a terrible and tragic blow--no minimizing of her pain.

But, ugh.

One Amazon reviewer shared her own story--her husband died, it cost $12K to bury him which she'll be paying off for a decade, she has no celebrity friends and colleagues to turn to, and she can't afford to lose her job by crying at work. What advice does Sandberg have for her?

I can tell you: with the best of intentions, it's crickets.

Some reviews gush about how this book "changes the national conversation about grief." I'm sorry, but that's hogwash and giving this book and Sandberg/Grant way too much credit.

I hope it was cathartic for her to write this book, but although it provides some datapoints that could be used to tee up some very important national conversations. People dealing with grief and loss with less access to resources, still don't have them and don't have anyone with anything near Sandberg's platform to advocate for them.

Sandberg sees Facebook as part of the solution and therein lies the problem - lots of well-intentioned talk, precious little making-a-difference-in-the-trenches action. show less

Summary: Proposes that many of the most successful people are givers who have learned how to give without being doormats and without expectation of return and explores why such giving is so powerful.

It is common to think that robust success in any field requires a "winner take all and devil take the hindmost" approach that zealously pursues one's own interests. Psychologist Adam Grant's research has led him to a very different conclusion. For one thing, he identifies three styles of show more relationship styles: givers whose predominant approach is giving without expectation of return, takers who tend to get far more than they give, and matchers, who balance giving and taking. Not surprisingly, he found out that the givers were the least successful. The surprise was that those who were most successful, most productive, were also givers. Takers and matchers fell in between.

This book explores why some givers are so successful, and what distinguishes them from the givers who are not. He begins by distinguishing between givers and takers who are good at looking like givers. The contrast he offers is between Ken Lay, who presided over the demise of Enron, who seemed to do favors for the rich and powerful but built a company that served his interests and was focused around him, and Adam Rifkin, a shy Silicon Valley entrepreneur with over 3000 LinkedIn connections, and the most connections of anyone to those on Forbes' most powerful people list. Both were networkers, but the difference was that Rifkin gave far more than he received, and without expectation of return. It is from Rifkin that we learn about the 5-minute rule that he zealously pursued: “You should be willing to do something that will take you five minutes or less for anybody.” Rifkin also teaches us the practice of not writing off our "dormant" networks, the people we once knew.

Givers are good collaborators. Grant profiles George Meyer, a comedy writer whose impact far exceeded the number of credits he received on The Simpsons. Meyer would often generate ideas and give them to others, and elevated the whole team of writers, contributing to the long-running success of the show. Perhaps his most famous contribution is "meh"--a new word for boredom or apathy, a contribution he didn't even remember until other writers jogged his memory! Again, Grant offers a contrast, this time with Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, whose least successful period was when he worked alone, and yet who hogged credit from his apprentices.

Givers look for potential in people and create self-fulfilling prophecies, often recognizing diamonds in the rough. At the same time, when things don't work out, their identity is not tied up in the decisions in the same way it is for matchers or takers. They more quickly help people move on when they need to.

Givers learn the power of powerless communication. Instead of trying to win their way by wowing others, they take more modest approaches that give others the space to come to the conclusion one hopes they will come to, often by questions or more tentative approaches.

The last part of the book focuses on the distinction between unsuccessful and successful givers. Successful givers figure out how not to burn out. They learn to be "otherish" givers rather than selfless. They find ways to give to causes they care about, and then end up giving more. Grant talks about the chunking principle--that giving works best when done in chunks rather than sprinkled through one's schedule. Givers who devote at least 100 hours over a year to their cause find more satisfaction. Effective givers also learn to identify and focus their giving efforts on other givers. As they lead organizations, they foster cultures of giving by their own active giving, by encouraging a "pay it forward" attitude. In these situations, even matchers and takers learn how to act like givers, further enriching the organization. He features organizations that set up "reciprocity rings" like Freecycle. Grant concludes the book with a list of "actions for impact."

This was a fascinating and challenging book for me to read from my faith perspective as a Christian. My faith is grounded in the extravagant love of a giving God who even gives his Son for humanity's redemption. It leads to an ethic of grace, of generous giving without expectation of return, of forgiveness without payback. Grant's book, without referencing faith, raises the question: am I a giver, taker, or matcher? Also without referencing faith, he offers evidence that giving is the ground of healthy and flourishing relationships and organizational cultures, defying the apparent common sense of a cutthroat ethic. Most of all, his diverse selection of examples suggest that this is not exclusive to the non-profit world, but rather touches on something that is fundamental to the better angels of our nature.

I also like the challenge to actively give. I think I'm going to start with Adam Rifkin's five minute rule. It actually sounds kind of fun to see where that will lead! show less

When we think of “smart people” we often think about someone who “knows a lot of things”, someone who has put in the time to learn - either through schooling or the “school of hard knocks”. Intelligent folks, we think, are those who have the demonstrated ability to learn.

Adam Grant wants us to think about the importance of “unlearning” - the ability to rethink what we know in the light of new ideas or new evidence. Too many of us cling to our convictions about how things are, show more rather than acting like scientists and keeping an open mind, ready to take in new information and change our convictions accordingly.

This book takes us through the importance of rethinking and “unlearning” in our own personal lives, and in the work environment. In the middle of the book are a couple of chapters on “depolarizing our divided discussions”, which is really why I picked up this book. How do we handle conversations with folks who have different convictions than ours - political or otherwise - without having those conversations devolve into name calling or hurt feelings, but no changed convictions?

Perhaps not surprisingly the key to “depolarizing” is listening and being open to finding areas of agreement that we can build on to come to a common understanding. We need to be willing to negotiate to find the “win-win” rather than approaching conversations as “for me to win you must lose” situations. show less