Top 116 Quotes & Sayings by Adam Grant - Page 2

I try to get as close as I can to cleaning out my inbox every night.

Successful givers secure their oxygen masks before coming to the assistance of others. Although their motives may be less purely altruistic, their actions prove more altruistic, because they give more.

In the workplace, many people become helicopter managers, hovering over their employees in a well-intentioned but ill-fated attempt to provide support. These are givers gone awry - people so desperate to help others that they develop a white knight complex and end up causing harm instead.

Tweeting has taught me the discipline to say more with fewer words.

To generate creative ideas, it's important to start from an unusual place. But to explain those ideas, they have to be connected to something familiar.

As a man, it is true that I will never know what it is like to be a woman. As an organizational psychologist, though, I feel a responsibility to bring evidence to bear on dynamics of work life that affect all of us, not only half of us.

When trying to innovate, most people stop after 10-15 possibilities, failing to recognize that their first ideas are usually the most obvious ones.

When it comes to landing a good job, many people focus on the role. Although finding the right title, position, and salary is important, there's another consideration that matters just as much: culture.

If you want to find out if someone's a taker, it's not actually that useful to know what they've accomplished. What you want to want to know is how they explain them.

The great thing about a culture of givers is that's not a delusion - it's reality.

Authenticity is a virtue. But just as you can have too little authenticity, you can also have too much.

Teams need the opportunity to learn about each other's capabilities and develop productive routines. So once we get the right people on the bus, let's make sure they spend some time driving together.

We all have thoughts and feelings that we believe are fundamental to our lives but that are better left unspoken.

Takers are self-serving in their interactions. It's all about what can you do for me.

Perhaps gaining power doesn't cause people to act like takers. It simply creates the opportunity for people who think like takers to express themselves.

When writing 'Give and Take' and 'Originals,' the predominant emotion for me was curiosity.

I can't tell you that if you bring in a bunch of weird and different people, then a bunch of good things will happen. But I can tell you that if you hire a bunch of similar people and promote only the ones who are most similar, a bunch of bad things are likely to happen.

People often believe that character causes action, but when it comes to producing moral children, we need to remember that action also shapes character.

Being a magician taught me how powerful the element of surprise can be. In each book, I've tried to work that in - an unexpected twist in a story that reveals an insight, a counter intuitive study that turns your beliefs upside-down.

It's true that every leader needs followers. We can't all be nonconformists at every moment, but conformity is dangerous - especially for an entity in formation.

Frenemies are worse than enemies, and it's not just in the workplace.

If you don't hire originals, you run the risk of people disagreeing but not voicing their dissent.

If we want people to vote, we need to make it a larger part of their self-image.

Recognize that dissenting opinions are useful even when they're wrong, and go out of your way to reward them.

I love discovering compelling new ideas and doing what I can to help spread the word about them.

Kids who evolve into creative adults tend to have a strong moral compass.

In life, there's no such thing as an unmitigated good.

In the eyes of many people, giving doesn't count unless it's completely selfless. In reality, though, giving isn't sustainable when it's completely selfless.

In college, my idea of a productive day was to start writing at 7 A.M. and not leave my chair until dinnertime.

I'm not a fan of being inauthentic.

The opposite of an underminer is a supporter. When colleagues are supportive, they go out of their way to be givers rather than takers, working to enhance our productivity, make us look good, share ideas, and provide timely help.

If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.

You want people who choose to follow because they genuinely believe in ideas, not because they're afraid to be punished if they don't. For startups, there's so much pivoting that's required that if you have a bunch of sheep, you're in bad shape.

Some people are selfish in all of their relationships. Those people are called sociopaths.

If you've ever had a coworker actively interfere with your productivity, try to make you look bad, steal your ideas, or give you false information, you've been the victim of undermining.

If I had the day off and knew everyone else was voting, I wouldn't miss it. It would become a routine part of my responsibility as a citizen - like paying taxes, only less soul crushing.

We have many identities, and we can't be authentic to them all. The best we can do is be sincere in our efforts to earn the values we claim.

Power frees us from the chains of conformity.

I spend a lot of my time trying to help leaders build cultures of productive givers.

When a salesperson truly cares about you, trust forms, and you're more likely to buy, come back for repeat business, and refer new customers.

Good guys are most likely to finish last, but also most likely to finish first.

Negative relationships are unpleasant but predictable.

When you're dealing with an ambivalent relationship, you're constantly on guard, grappling with questions of trust.

Being a giver is not good for a 100-yard dash, but it’s valuable in a marathon.

Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?

Enemies make better allies than frenemies.

Dissenting opinions are useful even when they're wrong. So instead of speaking to highly agreeable audiences, target suggestions to people with a history of originality.

Procrastinate strategically... Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity but it can be a valuable resource for creativity.

Focus attention and energy on making a difference in the lives of others, and success might follow as a by-product.

The most meaningful way to succeed is to help others succeed.

This is what I find most magnetic about successful givers: they get to the top without cutting others down, finding ways of expanding the pie that benefit themselves and the people around them. Whereas success is zero-sum in a group of takers, in groups of givers, it may be true that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The more I help out, the more successful I become. But I measure success in what it has done for the people around me. That is the real accolade.

If we want a better original idea, we must generate our own before we screen others' suggestions.

People tend to have one of three 'styles' of interaction. There are takers, who are always trying to serve themselves; matchers, who are always trying to get equal benefit for themselves and others; and givers, who are always trying to help people.

Most people believe that great leaders are distinguished by their ability to give compelling answers. This profound book shatters that assumption, showing that the more vital skill is asking the right questions…. Berger poses many fascinating questions, including this one: What if companies had mission questions rather than mission statements? This is a book everyone ought to read—without question.

When you put off a task, you buy yourself time to engage in divergent thinking rather than foreclosing on one particular idea.