Top 90 Adam Grant Quotes

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

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.

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

The mark of higher education isn’t the knowledge you accumulate in your head. It’s the skills you gain about how to learn.

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.

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

Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it’s easy to thwart.

When making decisions about people, stop confusing experience with evidence. Just as owning a car doesn’t make you an expert on engines, having a brain doesn’t mean you understand psychology.

One of the signs of a bad coworker is a pattern of persistent undermining – intentionally hindering a colleague’s success, reputation, or relationships.

Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it’s easy to thwart.

By admitting your inadequacies, you show that you’re self-aware enough to know your areas for improvement – and secure enough to be open about them.

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.

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.

If you want to be a generous giver, you have to watch out for selfish takers.

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 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.

Originals are nonconformists, people who not only have new ideas but take action to champion them. They are people who stand out and speak up. Originals drive creativity and change in the world. They’re the people you want to bet on.

I’m not a fan of being inauthentic.

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

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.

The most promising ideas begin from novelty and then add familiarity.

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.

Creativity is generating ideas that are novel and useful. I define originals as people who go beyond dreaming up the ideas and take initiative to make their visions a reality.

To make sense of bossiness, we need to tease apart two fundamental aspects of social hierarchy that are often lumped together: power and status. Power lies in holding a formal position of authority or controlling important resources. Status involves being respected or admired.

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

The most promising ideas begin from novelty and then add familiarity.

Agreeable people are warm and friendly. They’re nice; they’re polite. You find a lot of them in Canada.

We all have original ideas. Even if we don’t see ourselves as supercreative or as wild nonconformists, we have insights every day about how the world around us could be better. It might be a better way of running meetings in your office that would be less mind-numbing. It might be a little twist on a product or a service.

When young women get called bossy, it’s often because they’re trying to exercise power without status. It’s not a problem that they’re being dominant; the backlash arises because they’re overstepping their status.

Power frees us from the chains of conformity.

From a motivation perspective, helping others enriches the meaning and purpose of our own lives, showing us that our contributions matter and energizing us to work harder, longer, and smarter.

Some of the greatest moments in human history were fueled by emotional intelligence.

In the conversation about women in leadership, male voices are noticeably absent.

If an organization values innovation, you can assume it’s safe to speak up with new ideas, leaders will listen, and your voice matters.

No one wants to hear everything that’s in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth.

The mark of higher education isn’t the knowledge you accumulate in your head. It’s the skills you gain about how to learn.

I have two rules for a great book: make me think and make me smile.

From a relationship perspective, givers build deeper and broader connections.

Agreeable people are warm and friendly. They’re nice; they’re polite. You find a lot of them in Canada.

When you procrastinate, you’re more likely to let your mind wander. That gives you a better chance of stumbling onto the unusual and spotting unexpected patterns.

No one wants to hear everything that’s in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth.

Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in nonlinear ways, to make unexpected leaps.

I have lots of micro-goals of trying to get things done, whatever the amount of time available.

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.

It’s ironic that when you go through a tragedy, you appreciate more. You realize how fragile life is and that there are so many things to still be thankful for.

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.

Being a nice person is about courtesy: you’re friendly, polite, agreeable, and accommodating. When people believe they have to be nice in order to give, they fail to set boundaries, rarely say no, and become pushovers, letting others walk all over them.

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.

When takers talk about mistakes, they’re usually quick to place the blame on other people. Givers are more likely to say ‘Here’s the mistake I made; I learned the following from it. Here are the steps I’m taking to make sure I don’t let people down in the future.’

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.

Bragging about yourself violates norms of modesty and politeness – and if you were really competent, your work would speak for itself.

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.

One of the signs of a bad coworker is a pattern of persistent undermining – intentionally hindering a colleague’s success, reputation, or relationships.

Geniuses don’t have better ideas than the rest of us. They just have more of them.

In the conversation about women in leadership, male voices are noticeably absent.

When young women get called bossy, it’s often because they’re trying to exercise power without status. It’s not a problem that they’re being dominant; the backlash arises because they’re overstepping their status.

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

If an organization values innovation, you can assume it’s safe to speak up with new ideas, leaders will listen, and your voice matters.

I believe that the most meaningful way to succeed is to help other people succeed.

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

Some of the greatest moments in human history were fueled by emotional intelligence.

For years, I believed that anything worth doing was worth doing early. In graduate school, I submitted my dissertation two years in advance. In college, I wrote my papers weeks early and finished my thesis four months before the due date. My roommates joked that I had a productive form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

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

A resilient culture has a certain amount of resistance embedded in it. Not so much to capsize it, but enough so that it doesn’t atrophy.