0:01

Ted Audio Collective.

0:07

I'm Mo Rocca, and I'm excited

0:09

to announce Season 4 of my

0:11

podcast, Mobituaries. I've

0:13

got a whole new bunch of stories to

0:16

share with you about the most

0:17

fascinating people and things

0:19

who are no longer with us. From

0:22

famous figures who died on

0:24

the very same day to the things

0:26

I wish would die, like buffets,

0:29

all that and much

0:31

more. Listen to Mobituaries

0:33

with Mo Rocca wherever you get your

0:36

podcasts.

0:41

Hey, WorkLifers, it's Adam Grant. Today

0:43

is the launch of my new book, Hidden Potential.

0:46

It's for anyone who's ever felt underqualified

0:49

or underestimated. To celebrate

0:51

it, I have something special for you. A live

0:54

show I recorded last night with Malcolm

0:56

Gladwell in New York City.

1:04

Thank you. Thank you all for coming. Adam,

1:07

thank you for coming to New York.

1:10

You know, we have done this many

1:12

times. We have, and this is, it's usually

1:14

on my turf, not yours. This is what I was about

1:17

to say. I was going to ask you what is different this time around.

1:20

And you, that's exactly right. You have

1:22

finally come to my house. And

1:24

I was reflecting on this,

1:26

and I was wondering, what kind of an idiot

1:28

am I

1:30

that I have agreed to go to your

1:32

turf like seven times in a row before

1:34

demanding that we return the favor? This

1:37

is like, you know, in basketball, this is like someone

1:39

ceding, you

1:41

know, home territory and

1:43

saying, oh, let's just do it at your arena. I

1:45

will say, though, you once invited me to your actual

1:47

house where we had dinner and you cooked.

1:50

That's true. Do you remember this? Yeah, I wouldn't

1:52

say that was necessarily to your advantage if

1:54

I was cooking. Well, it definitely

1:56

wasn't because I've never told you this. But

1:59

do you remember what you did?

1:59

cut? No. I

2:02

think it was tilapia. Really?

2:04

Or it was something that swims and I

2:06

don't I don't eat seafood. But

2:10

I didn't want to hurt your feelings so I ate it. Oh, I

2:13

feel like we're even. Adam, that's

2:16

very touching. You took

2:19

tilapia for me. I wanted

2:22

to start, we're gonna be discussing your book Hidden

2:24

Potential, but

2:25

I'm looking at the blurbs on the back. I just want

2:27

to

2:28

not read the blurbs but just talk

2:31

about who has blurbed your book. Okay,

2:34

so the first blurb is from

2:36

Serena Williams, right? World's

2:39

greatest hands-per.

2:40

The second blurb is from Mark Cuban,

2:43

the famous owner of the Dallas Mavericks,

2:46

the guy who was on Shark Tank. The

2:48

third quote is from Malcolm Guevo,

2:51

me. The fourth quote

2:53

is from Yo-Yo Ma, world's

2:55

famous cellist. And the fourth quote is

2:57

from US Navy Admiral William

3:00

McRaven. Okay, now

3:03

what's the theory

3:05

behind the order? Why

3:09

does Serena, did she

3:11

say I'll give you a blurb if you put me first?

3:14

Like what, how does, who decided she

3:16

goes first? Did Cuban

3:18

say I'm willing to go second to Serena

3:20

but not, if I'm behind

3:22

the label, I'm, you're

3:25

not getting a, what happened, how'd that work? I didn't

3:27

choose the order. It's not alphabetical.

3:31

Wait, are you, are you trying to argue for a higher

3:33

placement than third? No. Is that what's happening?

3:36

No, no, I don't, I'm not sure, I'm not

3:38

sure I belong third. I think, I don't know why I'm

3:40

ahead of, why would I be ahead of Yo-Yo Ma? Yo-Yo Ma

3:42

in every way is more culturally significant than

3:44

I am. I will be, I will be dead and forgotten

3:47

that people will be listening to Yo-Yo Ma. Okay,

3:50

William McRaven defends this country.

3:53

And you have a blast? Like, whoa, where

3:56

are your priorities, by the way? This is how you

3:58

treat a guest in your home. Well,

4:01

I mean, we have a history of me feeding you tilapia.

4:04

So, all right, let's talk

4:06

about your book. Which

4:08

I like a lot, by the way, otherwise it would not have blurbed

4:10

it. You're interested in character,

4:12

which is sort of an interesting

4:15

twist, isn't it? You would think an organizational

4:17

psychologist would be someone who would be interested in structures

4:20

and procedures and those kinds

4:22

of things. I'm a psychologist first, and

4:24

I happen to do a lot of my work on people

4:26

at work. But what I care about is people, and

4:29

the quality of their lives, and how much they get

4:31

to grow. And so, if you

4:33

happen to do that in an organization, great. But I

4:36

could care less about the org chart, but

4:38

I'd care deeply about helping people reach

4:40

their potential. Yeah, I wanted to make an

4:42

additional observation about your

4:45

books as a group. And

4:48

that is that they're fundamentally

4:50

about character, as you say, which

4:52

you're also very interested in sort of interrogating

4:55

our intuitive ideas about character.

4:58

I'm always reminded, and you will know this, didn't

5:02

Lee Ross write a famous paper, which

5:04

was all about how our intuitions about psychology

5:07

are wrong in the main. And

5:11

it seems to me a lot of what you're doing

5:13

in your books, is this a fair summary of

5:15

them? Is you are continuing on that path

5:17

of kind of interrogating our intuitive

5:20

notions about psychology. Some

5:22

would call that Gladwellian. No,

5:25

I don't think, I think you're

5:27

deflecting now, Adam. You

5:30

literally just deflected. I don't.

5:33

No, no. Is anyone else watching this happen? His

5:36

deflection is accusing me of deflection. It's

5:39

better deflection. It's not, no.

5:42

Listen, am I, I'm just a flat-out

5:44

contrarian. There's a difference

5:46

between someone who gently interrogates

5:50

what we get wrong as intuitive

5:52

psychologists, and someone like me who just says

5:55

provocatively and usually erroneously

5:58

that everything we think is wrong. I'm

6:02

a bomb thrower. You're not a bomb thrower. Yeah,

6:05

I guess that's, I think that's a parody or caricature

6:07

of your work. But no, I think I think

6:09

I start with really wanting to understand what makes people tick.

6:12

Yeah. And how

6:14

we can improve the quality of our lives. And

6:17

then within that, I want to focus

6:19

on what's surprising and unexpected. So

6:22

yes, I think you're right. Yeah. Which

6:24

causes me pain to admit. Like

6:27

we think again, for example, the idea

6:30

of valorizing humility

6:33

as a kind, as the kind of cornerstone,

6:36

the key, as

6:38

the cornerstone of intellectual growth is

6:41

really interesting. And not one, I

6:44

imagine if you gathered a group

6:46

of people, students, and asked them, what

6:48

did they think, what characters trade, did they think

6:51

was the key to intellectual

6:53

growth? Humility would not be in the top three. No.

6:56

And that's why I wanted to write about it. Yeah. I mean, I

6:58

go to work when we

7:01

used to go to a physical workplace. And

7:04

still, when I go to teach, I walk

7:06

into the classroom and I think, Donald

7:09

Trump and Elon Musk both attended

7:11

this fine institution. What

7:14

would I want the next Trump or Musk to

7:16

learn? And strangely,

7:18

humility is very, very high on that

7:20

list. I

7:24

wonder how you said yes.

7:30

Tell me about the thought process that

7:33

led you to think, okay, the next

7:35

stage in this journey

7:38

through character, I wanted

7:41

to be about hidden potential. How

7:43

did you get there? I went down

7:45

this path because I was once told that I couldn't write.

7:48

Who told you that? The

7:51

Harvard Writing Office, my first week

7:53

of college when they recommended

7:56

me for remedial writing. Yeah. Which

7:58

I was then told was for... for jocks

8:01

and people who spoke English as a sixth or

8:03

seventh language. So, wait, keep

8:05

going. This is interesting. Yeah,

8:07

so I failed the required

8:10

writing test as a brand

8:12

new freshman. It was the first piece of feedback I got from Harvard.

8:15

And if you think I had imposter syndrome before, like

8:18

already worrying, like I'm the one mistake, I don't belong

8:20

here, now I show up, I take the writing

8:22

test and they're like, nope, you must take an extra semester

8:24

of writing and

8:28

you can't explain your thoughts coherently and you don't know how

8:30

to structure an argument. And

8:33

I was like, I think I don't belong here.

8:36

And I think that's the point, right? That's

8:38

why I wanted to write this book, is we make so many judgments

8:40

of other people's potential. And

8:42

so often they're driven by starting ability.

8:45

Do you have the raw talent? Are you a prodigy?

8:49

Do you look extremely capable? And

8:53

if the answer is no, you think you should give up. Because

8:56

you don't have what it takes. And I think that's a huge

8:58

mistake. I think it counts out a ton of late

9:01

bloomers. I think it overlooks many,

9:03

many slow learners. And I

9:05

think it also prevents us from stretching beyond our

9:07

strengths and actually achieving more than

9:09

we believe we're capable of. But so, wait,

9:11

but this is interesting. Because I would, you know, I

9:13

associate you, you're 18,

9:16

can you give us a little more insight into your 18

9:18

year old self?

9:20

You said you had imposter syndrome, why? I

9:22

think I didn't have any sense

9:24

of what it took to be a Harvard student.

9:27

I remember going to my interview, and the interviewer

9:29

was the first Harvard graduate

9:30

I ever met.

9:32

And I just, I thought that was a

9:34

different intellectual league. I didn't know if I was smart

9:36

enough. I didn't have any patents yet.

9:40

I did not get a perfect SAT

9:43

score. But you got

9:45

in. Yeah, but I didn't know exactly

9:47

why or how. And they're just

9:49

evaluating me from a bunch of pieces of paper,

9:52

right? Which is a pretty, it's

9:54

a pretty poor proxy for somebody's potential.

9:57

Yeah. Those of us who didn't get into Harvard

9:59

are all. baffled by those who did get into

10:01

Harvard and profess to have imposter

10:04

syndrome. But

10:08

Adam, so what I'm getting

10:10

at with all these questions about your college years

10:13

is to what extent this book strikes me, each

10:16

one of your books is steadily a little more

10:18

personal. Some of the best parts of this book

10:21

are where you illustrate some of your points of personal stories

10:24

and I'm wondering whether in some

10:26

sense this book is a more

10:28

personal project than your previous book. Yeah,

10:32

it might be. I think I've gotten more

10:34

comfortable realizing I've gotten so much

10:37

reader feedback and also listener feedback from podcasts.

10:40

We like hearing your personal stories. Don't always

10:43

use the data as a crutch. They're not a crutch.

10:45

That's literally what I do. It's how I think. If

10:47

you ask me a question about anything, I'll be like, well

10:49

what is the best randomized controlled trial on that? So

10:53

this is not me avoiding

10:55

sharing. It's that I consider

10:58

systematic evidence to be a better source

11:00

of knowledge than my idiosyncratic lived

11:02

experience. But I realize

11:04

that a lot of people's brains don't work that way and I

11:07

think I've come around the idea that yes,

11:10

if I'm sharing my story in service

11:12

of explaining an idea or

11:15

revealing a lesson, then that's not

11:17

about me. That's actually me trying

11:19

to offer a gift from my life to today's.

11:22

I think this book is a personal project because

11:25

I've realized

11:27

over the course of writing it that all

11:30

my achievements that I'm actually proud of were

11:32

things that I started out bad at. And

11:35

I thought most of my life the opposite

11:37

was true. I thought what I was supposed to be proud of were

11:39

the things that came naturally to me. So this

11:41

is really interesting and I want to dig into many

11:44

parts of this. But I want to start with we

11:46

were talking earlier about a kind

11:48

of hidden project in many

11:51

of your books is interrogating our

11:53

kind of lay notions about

11:56

psychology that are incorrect. And I'm

11:58

curious about this. The

12:01

lay notion this book is to you just point

12:04

just made the lay notion this book is focused on

12:06

is we have this kind of veneration

12:09

of innate ability. But in

12:11

fact, the what the evidence

12:13

suggests is that many

12:15

of the most important accomplishes accomplishments

12:18

we have are not

12:20

about what we start with, but what we acquire

12:23

along the way. And what I want to know

12:25

is what I'm curious about is, why do

12:27

we have in this specific respect

12:30

a lay notion that's

12:32

so clearly at odds with the

12:34

facts? Why

12:38

would we venerate innate ability if innate ability

12:40

is not nearly as important as like

12:43

what's the reason for that? Such an interesting

12:45

question. Off the top of my

12:47

head, I think there are a couple of things going on. Number

12:50

one, how many parents do you know that

12:52

are living vicariously through their kids? I

12:57

mean, your kids are two in less than a year. So

13:00

sorry, it's already started. A

13:02

lot of people, whether it's wanting

13:05

their kids to be highly intelligent

13:08

or accomplished in their careers or great

13:11

athletes or incredible musicians, whatever

13:14

dreams people have unrealized, they

13:16

often impose on their kids. And

13:19

I think saying I didn't have the natural ability

13:23

is a convenient way to say,

13:25

you know what, maybe

13:28

I didn't waste my potential. I

13:30

didn't squander an opportunity, which

13:32

is a lot of cognitive dissonance to live with, to

13:35

say maybe I could have been great and I just didn't

13:37

have the right approach to learning or the

13:40

right level of discipline or the right coach.

13:43

That's unsettling to think about. So I think

13:45

just kind of blaming a

13:49

lack of progress on raw

13:52

talent, it lets us off the hook a little bit, would be one

13:54

thought. I think the second thought

13:57

is that when we see

13:59

natural talent, talent. We're just blown away by it. You

14:02

know, if you've ever watched a four-year-old

14:05

play Mozart, you know,

14:07

it's mind-boggling. And you realize

14:10

that is a human that's cut from a different

14:12

cloth than me. And so it's

14:14

hard to ever see yourself in that person.

14:16

I remember, actually, I'll give you a personal example

14:19

on this since you invited me to talk

14:21

more about my chair. So this

14:24

is about to become the Adam Grant show. Are

14:26

you ready? Yes. All right. I

14:29

remember when I, so you

14:31

know I'm an introvert. I'm shy.

14:33

I was extremely afraid of public speaking. And

14:37

when I decided I wanted to do it, I said,

14:40

okay, I have to go and learn from great speakers. So

14:42

the first thing I did was I watched videos

14:45

of MLKs, I Have a Dream speech. It

14:48

was completely demoralizing. I

14:51

mean, I watched this, I'm like, I will never, no matter

14:53

how hard I work at this, I will never get that good.

14:55

I'm like, I might as well quit now. And

14:59

I think that, I mean, it just, it

15:01

feels unfathomable, right? When

15:03

you see that the innate ability differences between

15:06

you and someone else could be that great. It

15:08

just seems impossible for you. And so you

15:10

assume then that that is what is required. What

15:13

you're doing with MLK is you're assuming that what you're

15:15

observing is an innate, in fact, he's

15:18

practiced, he grows up in an oral

15:20

culture in the, he grows up watching

15:23

his father and others preach

15:25

sermons. I mean, he's surrounded

15:28

in a world that is, you know, is

15:30

speaking in that vein. It's

15:32

like he's the, he's actually not

15:35

the right person to look at and see evidence

15:37

of that's exactly right. But we don't know

15:39

it. You watch someone as good as Martin

15:41

Luther King Jr. And you think that's got

15:43

to be a God given gift. There's no

15:45

way he was ever bad at speaking, right?

15:47

He's too good. It's impossible. What

15:50

we don't see is the history you're describing.

15:53

We admire people at their peak. We don't get to

15:55

see the distance they've traveled. We

15:57

don't see the fact that he started entering public speaking

15:59

competition. when he was 15 years old, that

16:02

he had 20 years of deliberate practice under

16:04

his belt, that the year he gave the dream speech alone,

16:07

he gave over 350 speeches, which is probably as

16:11

many speeches as you've given

16:13

in your career, I would imagine. I

16:16

think we have unfortunate access to

16:18

greatness. We see people

16:21

at their peak, and we assume

16:23

that they started far ahead of us. But

16:27

is this a universal affliction or an American

16:30

affliction? Because I say that, I

16:32

bring it up because one of my favorite chapters in this

16:34

book is you have a chapter on talking

16:37

about the educational system in Finland,

16:39

and how much it differs from the American system

16:42

and its sort of assumptions about learning.

16:44

And it doesn't sound like the Finns, at least as

16:47

is expressed in their educational system, hold

16:51

to a notion of innate ability. And

16:54

so what are we dealing

16:56

with here? Is there something

16:58

uniquely American about this idea? There

17:01

may be, to some extent. I think when

17:05

I think about what we do culturally

17:08

in the US, it's different from other parts of the world.

17:11

There is a tendency to make the fundamental

17:13

attribution error more in

17:16

the US. But you should define

17:18

that. Yeah, the tendency to attribute people's

17:21

actions and station to

17:24

their innate characteristics as opposed

17:26

to their situation and affordances

17:28

and opportunity and circumstances. An

17:31

idea that you thoroughly decimated in Outliers,

17:34

I will point out. But

17:36

we still do it a lot in the US. We're

17:39

an individualistic society. What we like

17:41

to do is we like to say, okay, you,

17:43

you are where you are because of the things that

17:46

are inside of you. And

17:48

I think you're right. I think in Finland, I think

17:50

in Estonia, I think we could probably make a

17:52

whole list of other countries. There's

17:54

a stronger sense that every

17:56

child has hidden potential. And it's

17:58

the job of parents and... teachers and coaches

18:01

to realize it in two senses of the

18:03

word. One to recognize it, and then

18:06

two to develop it. It seems

18:08

to me fundamentally paradoxical, and no one's properly

18:10

explained to me why it

18:12

would be the case that a culture

18:14

like the United States, which is the highest achieving,

18:18

you could argue it's the highest achieving culture in the world

18:20

on a number of metrics, should

18:22

have a notion about achievement that is

18:25

fundamentally wrong. It just doesn't make any

18:27

sense. In fact, if you said to me that America

18:29

was the one place where people recognize

18:32

that hard work,

18:34

that everyone has a lot of potential and

18:36

that it's revealed in

18:38

hard work practiced over your life and

18:41

that trying to judge someone on the basis

18:43

of their performance at 12 is fool's

18:45

errand. If someone

18:47

said that is a distinctly American view, I would

18:49

have said that makes sense. It

18:52

doesn't make any sense at all that we

18:54

should have it backwards of all cultures. I

18:57

think part of the problem is our country

18:59

feels too big to invest in everybody. And

19:02

so what we often do is we say, OK,

19:04

well, we're going to create gifted

19:06

and talented programs and we're

19:09

going to build a winner take all system

19:11

so that the kids with the true promise

19:14

are going to get to rise to the top. And

19:17

that allows us to believe in the notion

19:20

of meritocracy. It

19:22

allows us to feel like we've earned all the

19:24

success that we've achieved as opposed to partially

19:26

looking into it. And so I think there

19:28

is a function there. Right. It allows us to think that

19:31

America like when we when we talk about

19:33

the American dream and we say that anybody

19:35

can live the American dream, this is the land of

19:37

opportunity. We are justifying

19:39

our system. And I think that serves a soothing

19:42

function for a lot of people. Yeah.

19:45

Another one of my favorite chapters in this book is about

19:47

perfectionism. And

19:50

it's sort of your critique

19:53

of where perfectionism leads

19:55

us. What it costs us. And

19:57

you start with a.

19:59

really interesting discussion of your time

20:02

as a diver in high school and

20:04

how you were a perfectionist. Can you talk

20:07

a little bit about how your perfectionism

20:09

manifested itself and how you came to believe

20:12

it was self-defeating? Yeah,

20:14

I actually, at first I didn't know I was a perfectionist

20:17

when I started diving. And then

20:19

at some point

20:21

it crystallized and I thought it

20:23

was a big advantage because in diving, I mean,

20:25

you've all heard Olympic announcers say

20:27

perfect tense. And I thought, okay, in

20:29

a sport that's judged on perfection, aiming

20:31

for perfection has got to be the way. And

20:35

it was such a liability for me, more

20:37

than an asset. There

20:41

were a whole bunch of things that I did that were counterproductive.

20:44

One was I just wasted a lot of time trying

20:46

to perfect easy dives as opposed

20:48

to learning harder ones, which limited my degree of difficulty.

20:52

I actually got an award one year from

20:54

my teammates. It was the If Only

20:56

Award. And there was

20:58

a little drawing of me on a paper plate with

21:01

a cartoon that said, if only

21:03

I had pointed my left pinky toe on that dive, I would have

21:05

gotten an eight and a half instead of an eight. And

21:09

that's not what mattered. I should have been stretching so

21:11

I could actually touch my toes without bending my knees.

21:13

That would have made me a better diver. I

21:16

think not only did I focus on the wrong things,

21:18

I ruminated a lot. I beat myself up a lot.

21:21

And I was constantly shaming

21:23

my past mistakes as opposed to trying

21:25

to sort of educate my future

21:27

self from those lessons. And

21:30

that was not helpful. Probably

21:32

the worst thing that I did, though, was the bocking,

21:35

where diving, when you're going

21:37

to take off forward, you walk down the board and then jump

21:39

to the end. Well, if my hurdle,

21:41

if my takeoff, if my approach wasn't perfect, I would

21:43

just stop and start over and stop

21:45

and start over. And then there's a two-bock

21:48

rule. And then I have to get off the board. And then

21:50

I'm not doing dives all practice because what's

21:53

the point of... Yeah. If you stop and start

21:55

again more than twice, you have

21:59

to... to dismount from the... Well,

22:02

that was the rule that my coach, Eric Best, had

22:04

to institute because otherwise I would just bock

22:06

all practice. So,

22:09

but I... What's going on

22:11

inside your head? Are you enjoying

22:14

being a diver? Yeah,

22:16

I loved it.

22:17

I loved it, but I was really frustrated,

22:19

feeling like I couldn't get it right. I

22:22

couldn't get it right. I was really bad. And then,

22:24

when did you start reflecting on the experience

22:27

and kind of... I

22:30

think there's a reason I asked this question is, forgive

22:33

me, Adam, if I could play Dr. Freud for

22:35

a moment. And if you'd like to recline.

22:40

I feel there's a lot more, there's

22:42

a lot more of, your books are a lot more of

22:44

a personal project than you let on. And

22:46

this one in particular, I was reading a story and

22:48

you had these little moments when you started talking about diving. And

22:51

I think, you know, if I was a psychoanalyst, I

22:54

would say, Adam, this book is really

22:57

about you trying to make sense of the

23:00

mistakes that little Adam made and the experiences

23:02

that little Adam had. Is

23:04

that not fair? I mean, I wouldn't frame

23:06

that in Freudian terms because I think

23:08

he set psychology back a century.

23:11

Of course you would say that. But... But... Like...

23:15

I mean, his approach was so unscientific.

23:18

And

23:19

if you disagree with him, well, you're in denial. Like,

23:21

how is that helpful to anyone? Exhibit A. Who's

23:25

in denial here. I

23:28

will say there are some good meta-analyses

23:30

of randomized controlled trials of psychodynamic

23:33

therapy that show that it can have efficacy

23:35

for some people in some situations, but I'm still

23:37

extremely skeptical. Anyway. Adam,

23:41

I will not be paging Dr. Freud. I'm not sure where

23:44

you are. You're in a place called Manhattan and

23:46

you're dissing psychoanalysis. What?

23:49

Why don't... I don't know, Malcolm. An act of self...

23:51

You want people to buy your book afterwards? And

23:54

this is what you're telling them? First

23:56

of all, I think most people here have already bought

23:58

the book. Okay. And

24:00

I also think there's a point at which you stop blaming

24:03

your behavior on Adafins of your

24:05

parents Adam and start taking responsibility

24:07

for your adult. I brought I

24:11

brought this up because I was wondering whether you

24:14

were doing a version of the same thing Which

24:16

was at the edge of how old you know now 42 at

24:19

the age of 42 Still

24:21

working out the problems you had as a swimmer

24:24

in the diver. Oh, don't ever call a diver

24:26

a swimmer Yeah, no, that's

24:28

like me calling you a jogger As

24:31

a runner. I'm sorry. I think there's

24:33

a difference between trying to work out the problems

24:35

of little Adam, which is how Malcolm

24:38

Freud would approach this

24:40

discussion and Trying to

24:42

figure out if there are lessons from

24:44

my biggest struggles and also my greatest

24:47

moments of growth That

24:49

could become teachable moments for me and others. Yeah,

24:52

I'm trying to reflect on You know the fact

24:54

that I really was my own worst enemy

24:56

for a good part of my diving career But

24:58

then I ended up ascending to a much

25:00

greater height that I ever thought possible Yeah,

25:02

I should not have gotten where I got

25:05

as a diver I shouldn't have been as like what

25:07

was I doing in the junior Olympic? Nationals as

25:09

somebody who literally was called Frankenstein

25:12

because I didn't bend my knees when I walked like

25:14

something about this does not add up And so I

25:16

think that juxtaposing those kinds of moments

25:19

with what is the social science tell us is

25:21

really powerful but if you had I

25:23

guess what I'm trying to say is the

25:25

the work that you've done the extraordinary

25:28

work that you've done as an adult is

25:30

in some way we were all beneficiaries

25:33

of some of these struggles you had as

25:36

a if you had been this kind of Non

25:39

nerdy golden boy who was

25:42

a kind of diving prodigy and to

25:44

whom things came easily We don't get this book.

25:47

Definitely not. Yeah to go back to earlier

25:49

point This is another kind of crucial

25:52

flaw in the kind of obsession

25:54

with innate ability

25:57

and the the way in which

25:59

we celebrate

25:59

celebrate,

26:00

we happen to celebrate those

26:03

who achieve things early

26:05

and without apparent effort.

26:08

And that is that we're not thinking about the downstream consequences,

26:11

right? We're not thinking that a lot of what looks

26:14

like struggle at an early age is

26:16

simply kind of raw material in preparation

26:19

for some kind of future better thing,

26:21

right? Struggling as a diver,

26:24

as a freshman, is in the grand

26:26

scheme of things a pretty small

26:28

thing. So it's a little kernel that

26:30

becomes something really interesting when you're 40 and you're interested

26:34

in writing about hidden potential, right?

26:36

It starts to matter then. I think you're

26:38

onto something important here. And

26:41

I think I read a book once they

26:43

called it Desirable Difficulty by

26:46

you. I

26:48

think that, yeah, this is actually

26:50

something that Maurice actually stressed to me

26:52

that I hadn't appreciated. So

26:55

you know Maurice from the book is a chess

26:57

grandmaster and I think

26:59

an extraordinary coach who recognizes

27:03

and brings out the hidden potential in kids

27:05

that nobody else thought had a chance. And

27:08

one of the things Maurice said is he is watched

27:10

in chess over and over again. The biggest

27:12

prodigies young are the ones who have the biggest

27:15

struggles when they're older because it came

27:17

too easily to them at first. And

27:20

they're just, they're used to kind of having this natural

27:22

success. And all of a sudden they

27:24

lose the game and they can't take it. And

27:27

they haven't, I think the fundamental problem

27:30

there if you look at the research is they have not

27:32

built the character skills that are necessary

27:34

to face obstacles. They don't know

27:36

how to embrace discomfort. They

27:40

don't know how to accept the right imperfections

27:42

and say these mistakes are actually part of my growth.

27:45

And so I think that sometimes early success does a

27:47

major disservice to our

27:49

future selves. I

27:51

reminded a couple weeks ago I was

27:54

sitting in a coffee

27:56

shop in Orlando, Florida, long

27:58

story. And I eat. You emailed

28:00

me about that. There's

28:02

two surgeons sitting

28:04

next to me. Of course, I was eavesdropping. And

28:07

one of them had a daughter who was

28:09

at Cornell Medical School. And he was boasting

28:11

about how she

28:14

loved Cornell. Cornell's amazing. She got

28:16

into Cornell. Isn't that fantastic? And

28:19

I emailed Adam, and I was like, how

28:21

did this guy get it completely backwards? Why doesn't

28:23

he boast about his daughter that my

28:25

daughter's having an amazing time in medical school?

28:28

Isn't it amazing that she's the kind

28:30

of person who can go into an institution

28:33

and find what's meaningful to her

28:35

and flourish? And he

28:37

was focused on Cornell. And he wasn't

28:40

interested in the character traits his own

28:42

daughter had that allowed her to flourish

28:45

and be happy and find meaningful. That

28:47

was just like, there's something about

28:50

parents. What you're describing is, why

28:52

are parents so bad at kind of decoding

28:55

the psychology of their own children? It

28:57

just strikes me as like, why

29:00

are we making these mistakes? Then why on earth are

29:03

we so in love with prodigies? Again,

29:06

I mean, I'm just baffled by this. I

29:09

mean, when psychologists study this, they talk about

29:11

parental over-involvement and over-identification.

29:15

And the notion that, as a parent, like

29:17

we were touching on this earlier, you start to define

29:19

your own success by your children's

29:21

accomplishments. And I just want to sit

29:23

parents down. I see this all the time with

29:26

our students at Penn. I want to sit

29:28

these parents down and say, what

29:30

your children achieve is not a reflection

29:32

of your greatness as a parent. You

29:35

should be much more concerned with who

29:38

your kids become and how they treat other

29:40

people. Being

29:42

a great parent is not about how

29:45

much procedure kids attain in their

29:47

school choices or in their jobs.

29:50

It's not about career success. It's about

29:52

character. I think

29:54

you might have found someone who had not yet internalized

29:56

that message. You say,

29:58

on this subject, if you're

29:59

perfectionism. I want you to talk a little bit more about

30:02

what,

30:04

in general, what precisely

30:06

is damaging about having

30:10

a perfectionistic attitude and

30:13

what do you feel we should have instead?

30:16

Okay, so if you look

30:18

at the current work, which I think is the most comprehensive

30:20

and rigorous to date, what we

30:23

see goes wrong with perfectionists is

30:25

one, they loot the forest in the trees, so

30:27

they tend to focus on small details and overlook

30:30

the big picture. Two, they

30:32

do a lot of the rumination and sort

30:34

of self-shaming as opposed to

30:36

self-compassion that's necessary for learning

30:39

from your mistakes. And

30:41

three, they actually tend

30:43

not to stretch themselves much. They

30:46

want to focus on the things they know they can master as

30:48

opposed to venturing into uncharted territory. And

30:51

by avoiding failure, they actually avoid risk-taking

30:53

and they avoid learning and

30:56

challenging themselves. And that means

30:58

they end up with a static or even

31:00

ever-narrowing comfort zone as opposed to

31:02

an expanding domain of expertise.

31:05

You make the comment in the book that you think perfectionism

31:07

of the sort you've just defined is

31:10

on the rise. Why

31:12

would it be on the rise? So empirically,

31:15

perfectionism has risen in the US, in

31:17

the UK, and the great nation

31:19

of Canada. I think if you look at why

31:21

it's increasing, what everybody does is they say

31:23

social media. It's got to be social media.

31:26

Everybody has a perfect image of themselves on Instagram,

31:29

and that's leading our kids to have unrealistic

31:31

expectations. That may

31:33

be part of the story, but guess what? Perfectionism

31:36

started rising a generation before social

31:38

media existed. It

31:40

started rising when Mark Zuckerberg was in diapers.

31:44

So there's got to be something else going on, and

31:46

my read of the evidence is there are two things

31:48

that seem to be contributing to it, and both of them are

31:51

parental behaviors. One

31:53

of them is rising parental

31:55

expectations for kids, holding

31:59

children to increase. increasingly impossible

32:01

standards. And two is increasingly

32:04

harsh criticism of kids who don't meet

32:06

those standards. Did

32:10

you, so why would, okay, let's take one step

32:12

further. Why would parents,

32:14

I mean, it seems like an obvious question,

32:16

but I don't know that I know the

32:19

kind of good answer. Why

32:21

would parents' expectations have

32:24

risen, so we're talking about the 90s, 80s, 90s. What's

32:27

driving parental expectations

32:29

in that era? So we don't know. I

32:33

think probably the consensus hunch right

32:35

now is that the world has gotten

32:37

more competitive. So, you

32:39

know, however hard it was to get into college

32:42

in the 80s, it got a little bit harder in the 90s, and

32:44

it got increasingly difficult over time. And

32:47

so in a world that feels more and more

32:49

zero-sum, I think

32:51

we've probably seen a lot of talk about how the

32:54

current generation of kids is

32:56

the first in America that might not sort

32:59

of outdo their parents or have a better

33:02

standard of living than their parents. And so when

33:04

you see that world, when you see a world of scarcity,

33:06

you think, I've got to do whatever it takes to

33:08

help my kids succeed. Forgetting that

33:11

the very things you're doing to try to help your kids

33:13

succeed are just turning them into achievement

33:15

robots who one day realize, this

33:18

is no way to live a life and burnout. How

33:20

were you, how did your parents, would

33:22

you think your parents were guilty of that? My

33:25

mom used to tell me, Adam, no matter what

33:27

grade you get, as long as you

33:29

do your best, I'll be proud of you. And

33:32

then she would add, but

33:35

if you didn't get an A, I'll know you didn't do your

33:37

best.

33:41

She said it with a smile, I think she was half kidding, but

33:44

I took it seriously. Yeah, yeah.

33:46

So yeah, I guess there's a little, I didn't get the harsh criticism

33:49

though, but I definitely felt like expectations were

33:51

high. Yeah, the

33:53

last chapter of your book, could you talk

33:55

a little bit about interviews and

33:57

admissions and college admissions and things? And I had a.

34:00

I had some big and some small questions about that. You

34:02

have a very interesting part where you

34:05

talk about what the evidence, social science evidence

34:07

tells us about the success and

34:10

or failure of affirmative action programs.

34:12

Can you summarize what social

34:14

science tells us about that? Yeah,

34:17

I went in to read the evidence to ask, what

34:19

is the impact of these programs? A lot of people have

34:21

strong ideological positions on them. I

34:23

feel like my job as a social scientist is to look

34:25

at the most careful research that's been done

34:28

and try to paint a picture of what do we know. And

34:31

I think what the evidence suggests is that affirmative

34:34

action programs are a double edged sword, even

34:37

for the very people they're trying to help. So

34:40

on the one hand, they

34:43

do manage to open doors for

34:45

people who have historically been denied opportunity

34:48

by virtue of group membership. On

34:51

the other hand,

34:52

if you enter a university or a workplace

34:54

that is known to have affirmative action, you

34:56

perform worse

34:58

if you are a beneficiary of that program than

35:00

if the program didn't exist. So

35:03

we see this with women. We see it with racial minorities.

35:06

What happens is, and I don't think this will shock anyone,

35:09

people start to doubt whether they really deserve

35:12

that spot. Am I qualified?

35:14

Do I belong here? It's a massive

35:17

version of imposter syndrome and not the healthy kind.

35:20

And then other people question it

35:22

too. And they're like, well, I

35:24

don't think you really got in on your own merit. And

35:28

that self-doubt and constantly being doubted

35:30

by others, that takes a toll. It's

35:33

exhausting to deal with. It's distracting

35:36

to constantly question your capabilities

35:38

day in, day out. And

35:41

so I came away from this evidence thinking,

35:44

I don't know where I stand. I

35:47

think that we're sort of damned if we do and we're

35:49

damned if we don't. I

35:52

do think there's an alternative approach that

35:54

might be helpful to think about. that

36:00

one is why doesn't

36:02

that same logic hold for the

36:04

white beneficiaries of affirmative action? If

36:07

I'm a legacy kid, gets into

36:09

Harvard because daddy went to Harvard, why aren't

36:11

I walking around with a big burden of

36:13

imposter syndrome? I'm only here because

36:16

daddy gave 17 million dollars

36:18

to... does it not work? Do our white

36:20

people exempt? Can we just pause to

36:22

acknowledge the fact you just called legacy admission

36:25

affirmative action for white people? That's what it is.

36:28

I think that's an accurate characterization. I

36:30

think that not only should legacy admission be

36:33

banned, I think that if there used

36:35

to be used by a lot of Ivy League schools as

36:37

a tiebreaker, and I think it should be a reverse

36:39

tiebreaker, if you're on equal footing

36:42

with somebody whose parents didn't go to

36:44

an elite institution, then you

36:46

already had an advantage. So the other

36:48

person should get it. I think, first of

36:50

all, a lot of people don't know who the legacies are. I

36:52

think also there's not the same stigma... historically there

36:54

hasn't been the same stigma associated with legacy

36:57

admission. So affirmative action is seen

36:59

as lowering standards. Yeah. And

37:01

in most cases it's not, right? It's just

37:03

saying we're gonna look at people

37:07

who all meet the qualifications

37:09

and requirements and then we're gonna make sure

37:11

that those whose groups have been historically disadvantaged

37:13

get a shot. But I

37:16

think in the case of

37:18

legacy there hasn't been that stigma. It's

37:20

been assumed, oh, you come from a genius family.

37:22

You belong here. So

37:25

the problem is really not, is

37:27

not necessarily the problem is inherent in the

37:30

notion of, in this case,

37:32

treating a group of disadvantaged students differently.

37:35

It's the narrative we tell around

37:37

the policy that we don't have the same

37:39

kind of, we have a disparaging narrative

37:41

around racial affirmative action,

37:44

but not a disparaging narrative around

37:46

rich people affirmative action. Look,

37:49

we had a Supreme Court ruling that happened as

37:51

the book went to press. And I

37:54

think actually one of the

37:56

ideas that I float in this book is maybe...

38:00

an option now that we ought to take seriously,

38:02

which is maybe we should stop

38:05

defining people by their group membership. Maybe

38:08

instead of assuming that just because people

38:10

came from a particular background,

38:13

that they had the same degree of difficulty and the same

38:16

adversity, we should actually get to know the individual

38:18

students and find out the obstacles

38:20

they faced and then adjust our expectations

38:23

of them according to how much poverty

38:25

did they individually face. According

38:27

to today, did they run into major

38:30

challenges? And I think that

38:32

that seems like a much more fair way

38:34

to give people who have been disadvantaged a real shot.

38:37

Yeah. Wait, I want to, that's a

38:39

very, I mean, there's much to be

38:41

said for that idea. And that's

38:43

a longer conversation. But I want to ask, we're running out of time. But

38:46

I want one last thing I want to say. So this

38:48

is, I'm now, I'm asking you to

38:50

give me some advice, because I'm working on a book

38:52

right now. And this is very, I deal

38:55

with this very question we're talking about in this book. Are

38:58

we talking about the revision

39:00

of the tipping points? Yeah. Or a different book? The revision

39:02

of the tipping point. Are we allowed to say that publicly that you're rereading

39:04

the tipping point? I'm revising the tipping point. And

39:07

I, so I, I was thinking

39:09

opposing the following question. Given what

39:11

you're saying, what advice would

39:13

you give to a

39:16

bright,

39:17

ambitious African American

39:19

student who's interested in STEM,

39:22

wants to be a doctor or engineer or scientist

39:24

of some kind, who has two

39:30

admissions offers, one

39:33

from an Ivy League school and one from an

39:35

HBCU. So one where

39:37

he goes, where she goes with the stigma

39:39

of affirmative action, and one where she goes

39:42

without the stigma. What

39:45

would you tell that student? If

39:48

that's a fascinating question, I'm not sure I'm qualified to

39:50

advise on it. It's my first

39:52

reaction. My second is... You're in a book called Hidden

39:54

Potential. Yeah,

39:57

but I'm trying to

39:59

look at... What works for most of the people most

40:02

of the time, not necessarily assume

40:04

that I know the path that's gonna

40:06

be most effective for a complete stranger. I'd

40:09

wanna see much better data about

40:12

what are the life trajectories of students

40:15

with similar profiles who both have

40:17

the same set of opportunities and then end up

40:20

for a variety of reasons and in one or the

40:22

other. I guess the first

40:25

thing I would wanna do though is I'd wanna know what

40:27

are your goals? Are you trying

40:29

to maximize your status or objective

40:32

career success? Are you trying

40:34

to

40:37

lead a life you can be proud of? Are

40:39

you pursuing happiness or meaning? I

40:41

think there are lots of different outcomes and I think

40:44

the big mistake that I see, I've

40:46

had a lot of students come by office hours with these kinds

40:48

of dilemmas over the

40:50

years, often they're grad school dilemmas or they're job

40:52

dilemmas but sometimes it's high schoolers trying to choose a

40:55

college and the main

40:57

advice that I find myself giving them is

41:00

to say you don't wanna just

41:02

define your success by achieving

41:04

your goals. You should think about success

41:06

as living your values. If

41:10

you have a career target that you hit but

41:12

it requires you to compromise your principles,

41:15

that's not success, that's failure. It's

41:18

the worst kind of failure because you've abandoned

41:21

what matters most to you. So

41:24

why don't we talk about what your values are? Is

41:27

one of your core principles to

41:30

break glass ceilings? Do

41:33

you wanna prove to people that other

41:35

people can follow in your footsteps?

41:38

Karen Nolton is here. Karen

41:40

did some brilliant work on being a trailblazer. Is

41:43

one of your core priorities in life to open

41:45

a door and clear a path for other people? If

41:48

so, you can ask do I wanna

41:50

do this by starting out in an Ivy League school or

41:53

do I wanna go to an environment

41:55

where I might be more supported and

41:59

maybe it's easier to blaze. as a trail later, I don't know, I

42:01

can't predict the future. That's

42:03

the kind of conversation I'd want to have and it

42:05

wouldn't end with advice, it would

42:07

end with me asking what

42:09

have you learned through this conversation about your values

42:12

and which path do you think is gonna help

42:14

you avoid straying from them? Adam,

42:17

that's a beautiful answer

42:19

to the question. You started by saying you didn't think you

42:21

could answer the question, then you gave me a beautiful answer to

42:23

the question. But that's because I didn't answer the question. No, no,

42:25

no, but it goes to, and this

42:27

is actually I think a lovely moment

42:29

to kind of sum up. When

42:33

I read this book, the first

42:37

overwhelming thought I had was we really

42:39

are asking the wrong

42:41

questions about something like

42:44

potential. We're just like our premises

42:46

are all wrong, right? That's what you're getting

42:48

at here. Right, in one

42:51

chapter after another, you're just saying, wait a minute, we're

42:53

starting with this perspective and it's

42:55

just like, why? That

42:59

kind of need to go back to fundamentals

43:03

and re-ask

43:05

some really basic questions

43:08

is what is really wonderful about this book.

43:10

And please

43:13

go and buy Adam's book. Thank

43:15

you all.

43:23

Our team includes Dafne Chen, Courtney Corino,

43:26

Constanza Gallardo, Stan O'Donnell,

43:28

Greta Cohn, Grace Rubenstein, Daniella

43:31

Balorrizo, Ben Ben-Chen, Michelle

43:33

Quint, Alejandro Salazar, and

43:35

Roxanne Heilash. Our fact checker

43:37

is Paul Durbin. Our show is mixed by Ben

43:40

Cheno, original music by Hans Del

43:42

Sault and Alison Leighton Brown. The

43:44

live show is recorded at the 92nd Street Y in

43:47

New York City. Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell

43:49

and Pushkin for hosting. And

43:51

I would be honored if you order a copy of my book,

43:53

Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving

43:56

Greater Things. It's available in

43:58

audio, print, eBay.

43:59

pretty much any format except

44:02

stone tablets.

44:08

You are also a Buffalo Bells

44:10

fan, as a long-suffering Detroit

44:12

Lions fan. Yeah. Which one of us do

44:14

you think feels more pain? We got

44:16

a glimpse, and then God

44:20

stepped in and cruelly ripped

44:23

it away, pushed the ball right,

44:26

and pain that

44:28

I have suffered over my 60 years

44:30

of affiliation with this franchise

44:33

dwarfs whatever

44:35

you went through. If what happened

44:37

to me on Sunday happened to you, you wouldn't

44:39

be here. You'd be curled

44:42

up in a small ball in the closet

44:44

of your upstairs bedroom. You

44:47

are so wrong about this. So, look,

44:49

you're obviously subscribing to

44:52

the sort of close call, counterfactual

44:54

theory of misery, which

44:57

is just like it hurts. You all know,

44:59

I think, that Danny Kahneman studied it. If

45:02

you miss a flight by five minutes, it's devastating. If

45:04

you miss it by an hour, nobody cares. You are

45:06

so close, and you say that hurts so much. Here is my argument

45:09

back to you. Yeah. You

45:11

have had hope in your life as a football fan. Meanwhile,

45:15

I went to one playoff game where I had

45:17

to watch Brett Favre run

45:20

left and throw a ridiculous pass

45:22

right to Sterling Sharp, ruin

45:25

the Lions next 30 years. Barry

45:27

Sanders retires as the greatest running back in

45:30

history, like 30 years old. Like,

45:32

I've never even gotten a taste of joy. So,

45:34

my life is much worse as a football

45:36

fan.

45:38

I rest my case.