Adam Grant Quotes

the higher the psychological safety in a unit, the fewer errors they made. Why? In the units that lacked psychological safety, health care professionals hid their errors, fearing retribution. As a result, they weren’t able to learn from their mistakes. In the units with high psychological safety, on the other hand, reporting errors made it possible to prevent them moving forward.

Generosity is not a loan to repay or a debt to settle. It's a gift to appreciate. You reciprocate a favor by paying it back. You honor an act of kindness by paying it forward.

The more you value achievement, the more you come to dread failure.

A coach sees your potential and helps you become a better version of yourself.

Research reveals that the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you are to fall for stereotypes, because you’re faster at recognizing patterns. And recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are, the more you might struggle to update your beliefs.

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. — George Bernard Shaw

It’s a sign of wisdom to avoid believing every thought that enters your mind. It’s a mark of emotional intelligence to avoid internalizing every feeling that enters your heart.

psychological safety — the belief that you can take a risk without being penalized or punished.

Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.” Albert Einstein

I might add that it doesn’t become the truth just because you believe it. It’s a sign of wisdom to avoid believing every thought that enters your mind. It’s a mark of emotional intelligence to avoid internalizing every feeling that enters your heart.

confirmation bias: seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias: seeing what we want to see.

Many communicators try to make themselves look smart. Great listeners are more interested in making their audiences feel smart.

The best way to be heard is not to speak louder. It's to develop a message worth hearing.

Volume captures attention in the moment. Substance shapes thought over time.

The world doesn't need more blaring ignorance. It needs more quiet wisdom.

If originals aren’t reliable judges of the quality of their ideas, how do they maximize their odds of creating a masterpiece? They come up with a large number of ideas. Simonton finds that on average, creative geniuses weren’t qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality. “The odds of producing an influential or successful idea,” Simonton notes, are “a positive function of the total number of ideas generated.

When we dedicate ourselves to a plan and it isn’t going as we hoped, our first instinct isn’t usually to rethink it. Instead, we tend to double down and sink more resources in the plan. This pattern is called escalation of commitment. Evidence shows that entrepreneurs persist with failing strategies when they should pivot, NBA general managers and coaches keep investing in new contracts and more playing time for draft busts, and politicians continue sending soldiers to wars that didn’t need to be fought in the first place.