Adam Grant Quotes
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When writing 'Give and Take' and 'Originals,' the predominant emotion for me was curiosity.
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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.
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When people are depending on us, we end up finding strength we didn't know we had.
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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.
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Power frees us from the chains of conformity.
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As more women 'lean in' and we collectively continue to fight sexism, there's another barrier to progress that hasn't been addressed: Many men who would like to see more women leaders are afraid to speak up about it.
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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.
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When you develop a reputation for being responsive and generous, an ever-expanding mountain of requests will come your way.
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If we want girls to receive positive reinforcement for early acts of leadership, let's discourage bossy behavior along with banning bossy labels. That means teaching girls to engage in behaviors that earn admiration before they assert their authority.
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The culture of a workplace - an organization's values, norms and practices - has a huge impact on our happiness and success.
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I spend a lot of my time trying to help leaders build cultures of productive givers.
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Agreeable people are warm and friendly. They're nice; they're polite. You find a lot of them in Canada.
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I'm not a fan of being inauthentic.
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Tweeting has taught me the discipline to say more with fewer words.
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When trying to innovate, most people stop after 10-15 possibilities, failing to recognize that their first ideas are usually the most obvious ones.
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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.
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One of the signs of a bad coworker is a pattern of persistent undermining - intentionally hindering a colleague's success, reputation, or relationships.
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To get real diversity of thought, you need to find the people who genuinely hold different views and invite them into the conversation.
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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.
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Procrastinating is a vice when it comes to productivity, but it can be a virtue for creativity.
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Recognize that dissenting opinions are useful even when they're wrong, and go out of your way to reward them.
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Negative feedback can make people feel inferior.
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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.
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When medical students focus on helping others, they're able to weather the slings and arrows of long hours and devastating health outcomes: they know their colleagues and patients are depending on them.