0:14

Pushkin Hay

0:18

Slight Changers, It's Maya. Before

0:21

we get to this week's episode, I wanted to let

0:23

you know that I'm launching a newsletter. It's

0:26

a place where I can update you about the podcast,

0:28

my life, and other exciting news. If

0:31

you'd like to sign up, you can visit the link in our

0:33

show description or go to Maya

0:35

Shunker dot com. That's m A y

0:37

A s h A n k a r dot

0:40

com.

0:41

Thanks.

0:54

So much of learning requires us to put ourselves

0:56

in uncomfortable situations because that's where

0:58

the challenge lies. But the fear

1:00

of embarrassment holds us back, and

1:03

so we end up making these tiny little

1:05

adjustments instead of big leaps.

1:07

Author and podcaster at A Grant

1:09

is back on a slight change of plans,

1:12

and he's got a new book full of ideas

1:14

for how we can unlock our hidden potential.

1:17

One of his tips is to think differently about

1:20

how we learn from others.

1:22

A lot of people think being a sponge is

1:24

about just absorbing as much information

1:26

as you can seek infinite amounts

1:29

of feedback. Engage all of your critics,

1:32

not so much. Not all critics

1:35

are thinking critically, and I

1:37

think a huge part of being an effective sponge

1:39

is being proactive, not just about what you take

1:41

in, but also what you expel

1:44

out.

1:48

On today's episode, how to Unlock

1:51

Your Hidden Potential, I'm

1:56

maya Shunker and this is a slight change

1:58

of plans, a show about who we are

2:00

and who we become in the face of a

2:02

big change.

2:15

Adam is an organizational psychologist

2:17

and a professor at the Wharton School at

2:19

the University of Pennsylvania. He's

2:21

also the author of a bunch of bestsellers

2:24

and a repeat visitor to the Ted stage.

2:26

I'm pretty sure after one more Ted talk

2:29

he can turn in his punch card for free

2:31

sandwich. Adam's

2:33

new book is called Hidden Potential, The

2:35

Science of Achieving Greater Things, and

2:38

as you'll hear, this is one of my favorite

2:40

topics to discuss and spar

2:42

with him about. I started

2:45

our conversation by asking Adam why

2:47

he's so interested in the topic of hidden

2:49

potential.

2:51

I think there are so many reasons to be interested

2:53

in it. I mean, how many times have you met

2:56

somebody who didn't live

2:58

up to the potential you saw in them because

3:00

they didn't see it in themselves, or because

3:03

they weren't lucky enough to have a coach or a mentor,

3:05

or a teacher or a parent who saw

3:07

it in them. And I think the fundamental

3:09

mistake we make can we make this mistake when we're judging

3:11

other people and when we're evaluating ourselves,

3:14

is that we assess potential by where

3:16

we start, and if something's

3:18

easy for us, if we have a natural

3:21

talent for it, then we assume

3:23

there's a very highest ceiling on our potential. And

3:25

if we struggle early or if we fail,

3:28

we think this is not for me. And

3:30

what we overlook is that growth is not

3:32

determined by where you start. It's about

3:35

the distance you can travel. But we can't

3:37

see that distance yet, right. We don't have a crystal law

3:39

to look into the future, and so we end

3:41

up missing out on a great deal

3:43

of possibility that I think goes unrecognized.

3:46

Yeah, and one thing I loved reading about in your book,

3:48

as you say, the things that you're most proud

3:50

of aren't the domains where you've

3:53

gotten to the highest heights. It's actually where you started

3:55

off at the lowest point but made

3:57

a ton of progress along the way. So can you share

3:59

a little bit more about that.

4:01

I really loved sports growing up, and

4:04

after failing to make the middle

4:06

school basketball team and the high school

4:08

soccer team, I turned my attention

4:11

to springboard diving, which I had sort

4:13

of caught the bug for late as a teenager.

4:16

And it was abundantly clear that I did not have

4:18

the physical talent to be a great diver. My

4:20

teammates called me Frankenstein because I didn't bend

4:22

my knees when I walked, which

4:24

was ironic because in order to touch my toes

4:26

I had to bend my knees. I wasn't flexible, I

4:29

didn't have the grace or explosive power, and

4:32

I was also afraid of heights, so

4:35

not exactly set up for success. And

4:38

I had an extraordinary coach, Eric Best, who

4:40

said on day one of practice, I will

4:42

never cut anyone who wants to be here, and

4:46

if you know, if you focus

4:48

your energy on this, I believe you can be a state

4:50

finalist by the time you're a senior

4:53

in high school. And thanks to Eric's

4:55

coaching, I made the state finals as a junior in high

4:57

school, and I got nowhere

4:59

near the Olympics. Let's be clear, I could

5:01

not have qualified for Olympic trials if

5:03

my life depended on it. But I

5:06

got a lot better than I ever expected. I ended

5:08

up qualified for the Junior Olympic Nationals

5:10

twice, and I made the All American list and ended up

5:12

getting recruited a diving college.

5:14

And it was such a pivotal experience

5:17

for me to realize just because

5:19

I start with a lack of talent doesn't

5:21

mean I can't overcome many

5:24

of the obstacles on my path.

5:25

Yeah, yeah, I resonate with your story.

5:28

I truly think there's nothing that I enjoy

5:30

more in life than witnessing

5:32

progress. Well maybe a really good Indian meal

5:35

cooked by my mother, but second to that, I

5:38

love witnessing progress. And so I think my

5:41

version of Adam as the diver is

5:43

I began learning Mandarin about

5:46

six years ago or so because

5:48

my husband's Chinese and none

5:50

of his relatives speak English, and so I thought, oh,

5:52

this would be a really nice way to connect

5:55

with his family and you know, try to show

5:57

them that I, you know, really love Jimmy and

5:59

I really you know want to fit into the family.

6:02

And talk about a low

6:04

starting point, Adam, I took the

6:06

cake there, I promise, But

6:08

the joy of improving

6:10

at a language that I found so challenging

6:14

has been intoxicating, like truly.

6:16

So I remember there was this one day where

6:18

I got into a lift and it was

6:20

clear that driver was a little bit uneasy because

6:23

he didn't speak English. And then I looked at

6:25

his phone and I saw Chinese characters, and

6:27

I was like, this is my moment, and so I

6:29

filt of all this courage and I spoke to him

6:31

in broken Mandarin and he understood

6:34

what I was saying. And after I got out

6:36

of that lift, I called Jimmy and I was squealing.

6:38

It was literally like the best day of

6:40

my year. And so yeah,

6:43

and that starting point again was so low that when

6:45

you witness the potential that you

6:48

had in a space where you really underestimated

6:50

yourself, it's just so satisfying.

6:51

That's amazing. I had no idea that you learned Mandarin.

6:54

Where have you been hiding this secret?

6:55

Well, learning I inng It

6:58

is a works in progress. So this

7:00

is what's really interesting because this, I

7:02

think hits on another theme in your book, which is

7:05

my decision to pick up a new language of all

7:07

things in adulthood was never

7:09

something that I thought would happen. And that's because

7:12

I historically just sucked at learning

7:14

foreign languages. So in high school

7:16

I took Spanish. In college I took

7:18

Hi the terrible at both of them, and

7:21

so I was pretty hesitant to give a

7:23

foreign language a go, especially in my thirties.

7:25

This is so fascinating. Okay, I have a bunch

7:27

of reactions. So first of all, can

7:29

we just pause to mark the moment

7:31

when the world learned that there was something

7:34

that Maya Shankar was not good at?

7:36

Okay, Adam, that's.

7:38

Because I mean, I think everyone admires

7:40

what a natural you are at so many things you

7:43

know, from your

7:45

music virtuoso childhood to your

7:47

mastery of cognitive science to your ability

7:50

to have a conversation with anyone about anything

7:52

and make their complex ideas understandable.

7:55

I think it's reassuring

7:57

to the rest of us that there are things that you two

7:59

struggle with. Would be my first reaction.

8:02

Secondly, I'm thinking about I guess

8:04

the common arc of saying, well, I'm not a

8:06

foreign language person, I lack this skill,

8:09

and then realizing that it was actually not

8:11

skill that you lacked entirely. It sounds

8:13

to me like you had a different kind of motivation.

8:16

In your thirties, one hundred percent.

8:18

You were one excited intrinsically to learn,

8:20

which maybe you were less so in

8:23

high school. And two you also had

8:25

a really strong pro social purpose here, which

8:27

is you're trying to connect

8:29

with Jimmy's family, and I think that probably

8:31

made the language learning a lot more meaningful.

8:34

Yeah, the root of your motivation matters

8:36

so much when it comes to learning. So

8:38

when I was in high school, it was like, Okay,

8:41

just got to get through that language requirement, try

8:43

to get the A because I want to get into a good college,

8:46

like blah blah blah. Right, And then similarly

8:48

in college, I think Hindy was just a way of checking

8:50

the box on the foreign language requirement. And

8:53

what happened with Mandarin, like you said,

8:55

is it took on this hugely emotional

8:57

quality to it, right, which I wasn't expecting.

9:00

And on top of feeling like

9:02

I was going to be able to connect with Jimmy's relatives, what

9:04

I didn't realize is that so

9:07

much of culture is baked into language,

9:09

and so when I was learning it, I was learning

9:11

about this fundamental humility

9:13

that exists within Chinese culture, and like how much

9:16

I love that? And so it's really it's

9:18

been so charming to learn about

9:20

those elements, and I would have ignored them

9:22

entirely in the context of like a high school class

9:24

right where I didn't understand how it's going to play out.

9:27

Yes, and I wonder, okay. So the other thing is you

9:29

talk about using it in the cab. So

9:32

one of the things I learned while researching basically,

9:35

how do you become better at getting better?

9:38

So what's the science of improving at

9:40

improving? One of the things that holds a lot

9:42

of us back is we're reluctant to put ourselves

9:44

in uncomfortable situations. And

9:47

nowhere is this more clear than learning a foreign language.

9:50

If you look at why so many people struggle in high

9:52

school to learn a language, it's not necessarily that

9:54

they lack the language gene or they missed

9:56

the critical period, and if only they had learned it

9:58

younger, they had an aptitude that's gone. It's

10:01

that they're afraid to use it because you don't want

10:03

to sound like an idiot. Absolutely, we

10:05

don't want to embarrass ourselves, and that's totally reasonable.

10:08

But the only way to learn to speak a language

10:11

is to talk it out loud and to use

10:13

it as you're acquiring it, whereas

10:15

most people expect that they can master it,

10:17

that they can commit the entire vocabulary

10:19

and grammar to memory, and only then

10:22

are they ready to speak it. I wonder

10:24

if you were that person earlier.

10:26

I was so anxious about speaking in a foreign

10:29

language, especially Chinese, where you

10:31

might say a tone with a slightly different inflection,

10:34

and you've now set a completely different sentence, because

10:36

it's like ma versus ma, right, those mean

10:38

totally different things. And yet I think

10:41

what happened in the car that day and

10:43

where I found the courage was he

10:45

doesn't speak English. He's clearly feeling

10:47

anxious. I'm clearly feeling anxious

10:49

that I can't communicate with him, and

10:52

so that I like dig within myself. I have to like excavate

10:54

courage, like it's so deep inside of my body,

10:56

and I pull it out and I communicate

10:59

with him. And I thought to myself, Wow,

11:01

talk about a emotional return on investment,

11:04

Like I communicated with a human that I would not

11:06

have been able to communicate with had it not

11:08

been for the skill building. And so sometimes

11:10

it takes situations like that to

11:12

allow yourself to engage with the thing you're

11:15

not very good at before you achieve mastery.

11:17

I literally could have written about you in chapter one

11:19

of the book. You're embodying

11:22

the very principle I was trying to unpack. And

11:25

I feel like so much of learning requires

11:27

us to put ourselves in uncomfortable situations,

11:29

because that's where the challenge lies. Yes,

11:31

but the fear of embarrassment, of feeling

11:34

incompetent, of looking stupid

11:36

holds us back, and so we end up

11:38

making these tiny little adjustments instead

11:41

of big leaps.

11:42

Yeah, And I mean discomfort carries

11:44

the illusion that we're not making progress, right,

11:46

And I mean, from a neuroscientific

11:49

perspective, the best way to boost

11:51

brain plasticity is to fail at things,

11:54

because when you fail, those

11:56

errors signal to the brain that something's

11:58

wrong. In turn, it triggers

12:01

the release of this beautiful cocktail of

12:03

neurochemicals that help reshape the brain.

12:06

It's only when you tell your nervous system, hey,

12:08

buddy, the current setups not good enough

12:11

that it starts making the relevant changes, right,

12:13

And so maybe we can channel some of that when we get

12:15

frustrated.

12:16

Exactly. Yeah, that's a great way to describe

12:18

it.

12:20

Okay, let's now shift to the ingredients

12:23

to the toolkit for unlocking our potential.

12:26

You talk about the importance of character

12:29

or what's otherwise known as soft skills, and

12:32

can you please first share the origin story

12:34

of the term soft skills because

12:36

I absolutely loved it, and I feel like soft skills has gotten

12:38

such a bad rep for so long, and I feel

12:40

like you're redeeming it. So on behalf of all people

12:43

who enjoy soft skills and enjoy cultivating

12:45

them. Thank you, sir.

12:47

Yes, anytime I think of character

12:49

skills as learn capacity is to put your principles

12:51

into practice.

12:53

You know.

12:53

At some point I got curious about where the term came from,

12:56

like, why do we call these vital behavioral

12:58

skills? Why do we call them soft?

13:00

That sounds weak. Well, if you trace

13:03

the history, it turns out that the

13:05

term originated from the US Army

13:08

when they were trying to classify different skills

13:10

for soldiers and basically

13:12

measure competencies to go and defend

13:14

national security. And they

13:17

had a list of hard skills, which were

13:19

literally the capabilities to work with machines.

13:21

Machines were made out of metal that's hard, and

13:24

so operating a tank or a gun was considered

13:26

a hard skill, and so then everything

13:28

else leadership collaboration

13:32

was lumped in this soft skills bucket,

13:34

which they didn't think was unimportant. They just

13:36

meant you're not using a

13:38

piece of almost unbreakable equipment.

13:41

Yeah, exactly. So

13:43

I think obviously that did a great disservice

13:46

to this category of skills. And I

13:48

actually really wonder if we had called

13:50

those behavioral skills, if they had been called leadership

13:53

skills, would they be branded differently

13:55

today. The study that really

13:58

blew my mind was a study that roz Chetti

14:00

led where he found that we could

14:02

predict your income in your twenties, how much

14:04

money you make from the number of years

14:06

of experience your kindergarten teacher had.

14:09

Wow, unreal.

14:12

I could not believe this when I read this research.

14:14

And by the way, listeners, Rod Shetty is

14:16

like a natural experiment genius, so he

14:18

has controlled for all of the relevant variables,

14:21

I assure you. Anyway, continue, Yeah.

14:23

He's a world class economist and the

14:27

finding is very robust. And

14:29

the big question is, well, what are these experienced

14:31

kindergarten teachers doing that sets kids

14:34

up on a different trajectory. And my assumption

14:36

was cognitive skills, like

14:39

they're giving you an edge and reading and math,

14:41

and then you get to carry that with you. It is

14:43

true that the more experienced teachers are

14:45

better at teaching math and reading, but

14:48

that advantage dissipates over the next few years and

14:50

other kids catch up. Where

14:53

kids get a lasting advantage from an experienced kindergarten

14:55

teacher is in character skills. In

14:57

fourth and eighth grade, the kids who

14:59

happen to have a more experienced kindergarten teacher

15:02

randomly assigned ended up getting

15:04

rated higher by their later teachers

15:07

in being proactive, pro

15:09

social, disciplined, and determent,

15:12

and those skills are almost

15:15

two and a half times more important for predicting

15:17

future success than cognitive

15:19

skills.

15:20

I'm wondering if we can explore some of the mechanisms

15:23

by which character skills lead to better

15:25

outcomes. So, as I'm thinking about

15:27

it now, it seems like, okay, determination kind

15:29

of a clear one. It means you're practicing maybe

15:31

more deliberately, you're practicing harder, etc. It's

15:34

also possible that when

15:36

you build character skills, you're more

15:39

likable, and so you're more likely to draw

15:41

in mentors and peers

15:44

and teachers and to

15:46

attract the attention of employers, And so there might be

15:48

this virtuous cycle where character

15:50

certainly is making you better at honing the craft,

15:53

but having character skills

15:55

makes other people in your orbit more

15:58

likely to want to work with you and help make you

16:00

better.

16:01

I think that's right. I do wonder how much

16:03

of growth is about character

16:06

skills elevating your individual learning versus

16:09

attracting people into your orbit who build

16:11

the scaffolding to help you climb.

16:14

So, speaking of character skills, I mean, you're

16:16

just one of my favorite people to intellectually spar with. But

16:18

we were chatting last week about the degree

16:21

to which we think character skills are valuable.

16:23

I tend to lean more nature

16:26

versus nurture in that debate, and so,

16:28

yeah, I guess my question here is do

16:31

we have encouraging evidence that adults

16:33

can improve their character skills in a

16:35

persistent and meaningful way. And,

16:37

by the way, I would love for you

16:39

to be right here. I want to be wrong because

16:42

I really do want these skills to be valuable

16:44

and mutable, and so I have

16:46

no pride around my current point of view.

16:49

Well, there's no one easier to persuade than

16:51

somebody who's already invested in believing.

16:53

The case hereabouts exactly.

16:56

Well, no, honestly, I'm not here to make an argument.

16:58

I don't want to persuade you. What I want to do is

17:01

share with you some of the evidence that's really shaped

17:03

my thinking on this and see if you find

17:05

it compelling. So let's start with the evidence

17:07

in the book. I was quite

17:10

taken with the experiment

17:12

that Francisco Campus and colleagues

17:14

did on entrepreneurs in West Africa.

17:17

So you take in this experiment, you

17:19

take fifteen hundred small business owners,

17:22

You randomly assign them to a control

17:24

group, a cognitive skills training group or

17:27

a character skills training group, and

17:30

the character skills training group sees

17:32

their businesses grow almost

17:34

three times as much over the next two years as

17:36

the cognitive skills training group. Now,

17:38

these founders are mostly in their forties and fifties,

17:41

so it's quite late to be learning character

17:43

skills.

17:44

Yeah, you're not in any kind of critical period, you

17:46

know. Yeah,

17:48

exactly.

17:49

And the training program is not rocket science.

17:51

It's a week of practicing

17:54

being proactive and disciplined

17:56

and determined, and then thinking about

17:58

how those skills apply to your business. The fact

18:00

that randomly assigning people to just practice

18:02

honing those skills for a week at midlife,

18:05

mid career, then you

18:07

know, dramatically increases their revenue you

18:09

looking at both sales and profits. That

18:12

to me is pretty persuasive. So

18:14

tell me why that didn't persuade you or why

18:16

it wasn't enough.

18:17

Yeah, okay, So let me tell you what

18:20

I think would persuade me. Just

18:22

conceptually and embarras me, I'm thinking about this

18:24

out loud. What I hear in the study

18:27

you mentioned from Africa might be

18:29

explained by the following. There are

18:32

capacities that lay dormant in many

18:34

of us, and we simply don't know that

18:36

they're useful to recruit in any given

18:38

setting. And so what you've done in this intervention

18:41

is you've simply made salient to these entrepreneurs

18:44

that things like proactivity and

18:47

determination, whatever the other soft skills are

18:49

are going to be helpful to them in their business

18:51

pursuits. So it's less about them

18:54

growing and seeing improvement in their

18:56

character skills as much as knowing to access

18:58

them in the first place. Fascinating,

19:02

fascinating, and because it's week long, I'm

19:04

kind of like that could be an alternative explanation,

19:06

and that's still valuable right to alert

19:08

people in certain disciplines that that

19:10

matters.

19:12

Yeah, okay, that's very interesting. Yeah,

19:14

I find that totally plausible. I

19:16

would still say that, you know, what's happening

19:19

is they're activating a set of

19:21

dormant capacities and turning them into

19:23

useful skills, and so in that

19:25

sense, they're still learning.

19:27

I agree with that. But if say these

19:29

things exist in their dormant and you unlock

19:31

them over the course of a week, you might go

19:33

from like zero to four in terms of

19:35

like how much you know. And what I'm arguing

19:38

is, in the absence of a longitudinal

19:40

study that shows that a person can

19:42

go on the Proactivity scale, for example,

19:44

go from zero to seventy five, I'm

19:47

not certain about how much room

19:49

for growth there is within that particular

19:51

character trait, and so

19:54

I'm unclear as to how again malleable

19:56

it is. So we know they can unlock it in the first place,

19:59

we know they can maybe inch a little forward over the

20:01

course of the week, But how possible

20:03

is it for two people pull out of a random

20:05

sample to both get to seventy five

20:08

with the right tools.

20:09

Yeah, that's a very good question. I think

20:11

it's an empirical question that I have not

20:14

seen a good answer to.

20:16

After the break the case for imperfectionism

20:19

from a fellow recovering perfectionist,

20:22

and we'll hear about a technique to unlock

20:24

our hidden potential. It comes

20:26

from a sea creature that's

20:29

up next. On a slight change of plans,

20:48

I want to start with your suggestion that

20:50

we try and be more

20:52

like a sponge, and like a literal,

20:55

living sea sponge. We're not talking about like

20:57

a kitchen dish sponge situation. So

20:59

can you tell me a little bit more about this metaphor,

21:02

and then I will tell you why I'm obsessed with it.

21:05

So when I was interested in proactivity, I was interested

21:07

in being proactive to absorb information

21:10

that helps you grow. And we've known for a long

21:12

time that this is an important driver of

21:14

reaching potential. I was looking

21:16

for insight about that, and people kept

21:18

saying as I talked to people who had achieved

21:20

extraordinary growth or coach others to do the

21:22

same, they kept saying I was like a

21:24

sponge, she was a sponge. He

21:27

was a human sponge. And eventually

21:29

it hit me that this might be more than a metaphor. So

21:32

I started reading about sea sponges and

21:34

I learned that the yeah, I mean,

21:36

that's in the job description. Obviously, any

21:39

self respecting social scientists has to take

21:42

the sea sponge.

21:42

Yes, there's the sea sponge part of the textbook.

21:45

Right, Yeah, du Never. I

21:47

didn't know a thing about them. I learned a lot, and one

21:49

of the things that I learned was that

21:52

they're not just adept at taking

21:54

in nutrients, they also have finely

21:57

tuned filters to expel harmful

21:59

particles. And I

22:01

think why this resonated with me is a

22:03

lot of people think being a sponge is

22:05

about just absorbing as much information

22:08

as you can seek infinite amounts

22:10

of feedback, engage all of your critics.

22:14

Not so much. Not all critics

22:16

are thinking critically, not all critics

22:18

are speaking constructively, And

22:21

I think a huge part of being an effective sponge

22:23

is being proactive, not just about what you take

22:25

in, but also what you expel

22:28

out.

22:29

Yes, I mean, I love this concept

22:31

about filtration because I think it's so crucial

22:34

and it's interesting.

22:36

I mean, you talk in the book about the perils of having

22:39

an ego based filtration system, So that's where

22:41

you're pushing out a lot of the bad

22:43

stuff that you hear and you're just kind of

22:45

absorbing all the like, Oh, you're great, and this speech

22:48

is great, and there's no room for improvement, right. I

22:51

have the underfiltration problem

22:53

that you described, and it's been a journey

22:55

over time. So if I rewind

22:57

the clock a bit, I mean, starting from the time that I was a

23:00

little kid playing the violin, I

23:02

was always someone who sought out an enormous

23:04

amount of feedback. But the problem that

23:06

I have is I've let

23:09

too much feedback in and at times

23:11

assigned equal importance to all of it than

23:13

would have been helpful. And the way

23:15

that I rationalize this, that I've justified this

23:17

is, Okay, I'm a person with a lot of blind spots.

23:20

There's a lot of people out there who know a lot more than I

23:22

do about any given thing, and I want to improve

23:24

as much as possible, and I don't want to be prideful

23:26

in these pursuits. But it's taken me

23:29

a lot of time and a lot of confidence

23:31

building to recognize

23:35

what feedback better serves

23:37

the thing I'm working on and what doesn't.

23:40

And that's a really hard it's

23:42

really hard to fine tune this

23:44

filtration system.

23:46

Yeah, it's not easy, and

23:49

I think probably I

23:51

would guess that most people are on

23:53

one extreme or another on this. Either

23:55

they pay attention to all the criticism because

23:57

they're so obsessed with learning and they think that's part

24:00

of having a growth mindset, or their

24:03

egos are fragile and being in

24:05

secure means that nothing gets in. Yeah,

24:07

and they don't really learn from criticism,

24:10

and I obviously want to find the

24:12

sweet spot there. So I think

24:14

for me, the key questions looking

24:16

at the research on what makes for useful

24:19

input are one expertise

24:22

is this person credible in the domain? Two

24:25

familiarity does this person know you? And

24:28

three care? Are they actually trying to help

24:31

you get better?

24:31

Yes?

24:32

Yes, And I think it's very

24:34

common to have a critic who

24:37

checks the first two boxes but not the

24:39

third, which means they

24:41

don't necessarily have your best interest at heart.

24:43

Yeah.

24:44

I think a good coach is not

24:47

just attacking your worse self, but actually recognizing

24:49

your hidden potential and trying to help you become

24:52

a better version of yourself.

24:54

And I think to add to that, it's okay to

24:56

not assign equal weight to every piece of

24:58

feedback given to you by someone that

25:00

you admire. So there's a difference between

25:02

admiring a person and

25:04

then accepting all of their feedback,

25:06

and we shouldn't confuse the two. And I

25:08

have a personal example with you on

25:11

this topic, right, So you generously

25:13

gave me a bunch of feedback on my TED talk.

25:15

You really helped elevate it. But crucially

25:19

I didn't accept all your feedback. And

25:21

I remember thinking, wait a second,

25:24

I'm rejecting Adam Grant's feedback.

25:26

And this man literally holds the world

25:29

record for like the most TED talks given

25:31

by like any human. But

25:33

then I thought to myself, what would Adam

25:35

tell me about whether or not to reject

25:37

this feedback? And I heard you in my head. I

25:39

heard you telling me on the phone, Leya, I'm

25:41

just one person. It's one person's feedback. Just

25:44

reject this feedback if this doesn't apply to you

25:46

or feel constant with you and your personality

25:48

type and the kind of TED talk you want to give who

25:51

cares like. Don't accept feedback just

25:53

because it's someone's feedback. Accept it

25:55

because it resonates with you. And that

25:58

was growth for me because I think back

26:00

in the day right, Like ten years ago, I would have

26:02

been like, accept it all, no filtration

26:04

process. But I appreciate you being

26:06

that voice in my head along the way.

26:09

Well, I'm sorry that I didn't say it more explicitly

26:12

right off the bat. If you get a

26:14

comment just from one person, that may just

26:16

be their idiosyncratic taste or their subjective

26:18

reaction, and you don't have to pay attention to

26:21

it just because someone that you like or respect said

26:23

it.

26:23

No, exactly. And I think actually the root

26:26

cause of this, and I'm just I'm going to be working on the skill

26:28

over the course of my whole life, is that it

26:30

is very very easy for

26:32

me to see another person's point

26:35

of view. And I don't want to rid

26:37

myself of this trait altogether, because I really

26:39

do value my open mind and I think it makes

26:41

me a better person overall. It's just

26:43

that I see that there are some downsides.

26:45

I agree, and I think this would be an example

26:47

of what psychologists would call a strength

26:49

overused.

26:50

Oh that's really nice.

26:51

Yeah, So you don't want to eliminate the

26:53

strength. You want to make sure you're

26:55

not using it excessively or misusing

26:57

it by applying it in the wrong situations.

26:59

Yes, exactly. But I

27:01

also think from a developmental perspective,

27:04

is really natural and healthy when

27:06

we're young to allow in a bunch of feedback

27:08

and to test out because we're still

27:10

figuring out who we are, like, what

27:13

we care about, what we value, what

27:15

we prize when it comes to giving a talk

27:17

or writing a song or whatever it is. And

27:20

it is through the process of receiving feedback

27:23

and seeing how we respond that we sometimes

27:25

even learn what our preferences

27:27

are in the first place, right, and what we care

27:29

about. And what's so interesting in my own evolution

27:32

is that I assumed with age that this

27:34

would become easier, right, Filtering would become

27:36

easier, and it absolutely has overall.

27:39

But I do feel like

27:41

when I enter a new domain,

27:44

so podcasting for example, or giving

27:46

my first head talk, I go back

27:48

into that developmental stage of mind where

27:51

I open the floodgates and I let all this

27:53

feedback in and I again have

27:56

to fine tune those filtration

27:58

skills to figure out, you know, where I want

28:00

to go. So it can be a process, right.

28:02

Yeah, I think it's better to err on the side

28:04

of being too open than too closed, because

28:07

it's much easier to turn on the filter than

28:09

it is to suddenly absorb

28:12

information that you don't have access to

28:14

anymore because people have learned that

28:17

you're not receptive to it. And I

28:19

love the research showing that we're better

28:21

off asking for advice than feedback.

28:23

Yeah, tell me more about that, because

28:25

when I read that in the book, I was like, aren't they kind of the same

28:27

thing.

28:28

So when you ask for feedback, the other

28:30

person rewinds to the past and

28:32

tells you what you did wrong or what you did right,

28:35

and that can lead you to ruminate about

28:37

all of your mistakes. Yeah, and then

28:39

it's really hard to carry that forward

28:41

to what am I going to do differently tomorrow. It

28:43

can also if it's positive feedback, it can

28:45

lead you to say, all right, I'm good, I don't

28:47

need to change anything. And when

28:49

you ask for advice, people actually

28:52

look ahead and they say, well, here's the thing I might

28:54

adjust next time, And then you

28:56

can immediately think about, Okay,

28:58

next time I'm in this situation, what do

29:00

I want to try? And that's less

29:03

threatening. You're not defensive. You don't have

29:05

to claim that you actually were perfect

29:07

last time. It's a little bit more optimistic

29:10

because you have an opportunity to improve it. So

29:13

I've actually stopped asking for feedback. I used to

29:15

do every talk, I would get off stage and say, what

29:17

feedback do you have? Now I say, what's

29:19

the one thing I can do better?

29:21

Yeah?

29:22

So, on the topic of coaches, how

29:24

is it that we find good coaches

29:26

and mentors? And there's a somewhat counterintuitive

29:29

finding in your book that I'd love you to talk about when

29:31

it comes to searching for these people. Yeah.

29:34

I think what most of us assume is that you want

29:36

to learn from the best, So find

29:38

the most accomplished musician, the greatest

29:41

athlete, the genius scientist,

29:43

whatever your field is, you want to learn from the expert.

29:46

The empirical evidence does not support

29:49

that as the best idea. My favorite

29:51

demonstration being that if you take an

29:53

intro class with an

29:55

adjunct professor or a lecturer

29:58

as opposed to somebody who's tenured

30:01

or tenure track in that field, you actually go

30:03

on to get better grades in your next class

30:05

than that subject. In other words,

30:07

the person with less expertise is a better

30:09

teacher. Why would that be? I

30:12

think there's evidence for a couple of mechanisms.

30:15

One is that sometimes

30:17

experts are too far from where you

30:19

are to actually remember

30:21

what it's like to be in your shoes, so they

30:24

can't teach the basics. Einstein

30:26

was an awful intro physics

30:28

teacher. The second

30:30

challenge is that the process of gaining expertise

30:34

can make people worse at communicating what they

30:36

know. So it's not just that they forgot,

30:38

it's that they've been doing a lot of it on autopilot,

30:40

and they tend to take much of the knowledge

30:43

they have for granted. I think oftentimes

30:45

the best mentor is somebody who's just a couple of

30:47

steps ahead of you, and maybe

30:50

not somebody who was a natural, but somebody who struggled

30:53

because they actually had to study how to improve.

30:55

And I guess that has led

30:57

me to say, instead of those

31:00

who can't do teach, we

31:02

should say those who can do often can't

31:04

teach the basics.

31:05

Yeah, I mean, I love this message. And

31:08

then also with that said, you know, I

31:10

did have the amazing fortune of studying with

31:13

It's a Pearlman, who's yeah, widely considered

31:15

the greatest violinist in the world. And

31:17

I will say that Pearlman had a very

31:20

unusual way of teaching that led

31:23

to really great outcomes, and this is what he did.

31:25

So I would be playing some passage

31:28

and rather than being prescriptive about

31:30

what to do and like how I could play

31:32

it better, he would interrogate me

31:35

with a litany of questions around

31:37

how it is that I thought I could make

31:39

the passage better. So it was sort of like a

31:41

maya, you're clearly unhappy with the way that phrase

31:44

is being shaped. What do you think you can do about

31:46

it? And at the time, Adam, I remember being

31:48

like, dude, you're the freakin'

31:50

expert. Why are you asking me? Right?

31:53

My like thirteen year old brain didn't really

31:55

understand the power the gift that he was

31:57

giving me. But what he was training me to

31:59

do was to be a critical thinker.

32:02

I don't want to be a lobbyist for the world experts.

32:04

They don't actually need our help right now. They're doing just

32:06

fine. But I want to argue

32:08

that there's the potential for them to be great teachers

32:10

too.

32:11

I think they have hidden potential. So many

32:13

teachers and mentors think that they're supposed

32:15

to be Yoda and they're

32:18

just gonna they're gonna unfold their wisdom

32:20

for you. And the reality is

32:22

that people are much better

32:24

positioned to learn if you

32:26

guide them to come up with their own answers as

32:28

opposed to just spoon feeding them

32:31

your answers. It sounds like what it's

32:33

like Proman was doing for you is activating the tutor

32:35

effect and the coach effect. So

32:37

the tutor effect is the finding that the best way

32:40

to learn something is often to teach it that

32:42

when you have to, in this case, sort of teach yourself

32:45

and say, well, here's what I didn't like about this

32:47

violin performance. That leads you to

32:49

understand it better because you have to explain it.

32:51

It leads you to remember it better because you have to

32:53

retrieve it. And then in the process

32:55

of coaching, normally it would be coaching someone

32:58

else, but in this case coaching yourself out loud,

33:00

you actually discover that you have some of

33:02

the knowledge you already need, and that builds

33:04

your confidence and your motivation. Is

33:07

better to be uncomfortable today and better to maor

33:09

than it is to avoid discomfort today and

33:11

stagnate tomorrow.

33:12

Yeah, Okay, there are limits though,

33:15

right to our desire to get better. Talk

33:17

about imperfectionism and how that can be an asset

33:19

to us when it comes to unlocking our hidden

33:21

potential.

33:22

Yeah, so this is for me, being an imperfectionist

33:25

is about It's not about lowering your standards

33:28

at all. It's about learning to accept the

33:30

right imperfections that are not essential

33:32

to the excellence you're trying to achieve, or that

33:35

are necessary for growth. So

33:37

I'll give you my diving example, because

33:39

this is where I first learned that this

33:41

is a skill. And to be clear, I'm

33:43

still in recovery from perfectionism.

33:46

Yeah, we're both recovering perfectionists, so big

33:48

time, big time.

33:50

But I think in diving, I always

33:53

was trying to aim for a perfect ten. And one day my coach,

33:55

Eric Best sat me down and said, you know, there's

33:57

no such thing as a perfect ten. It's a misnomer.

34:00

In one rule book, a ten is for excellence.

34:02

In the other, it's very good. And

34:05

all of a sudden I realized that

34:07

the time I was spent trying to perfect

34:09

my dives was actually limiting

34:11

my growth. In fact, I've come to believe

34:14

that if perfectionism were medication, it would

34:16

come with a warning label that says warning

34:18

may cause stunted growth.

34:21

You just got yourself a job at the FDA out

34:23

of a nice job.

34:24

I mean maybe, but what I

34:26

lived was exactly what the research shows, which is

34:28

you only work on the things you know you can do well. Yeah,

34:31

if you're trying to be perfect, you avoid anything

34:33

where you might fail. You end

34:35

up missing the forest in the trees and trying

34:37

to tinker with these tiny details instead of

34:39

looking at the big picture, and you ruminate

34:41

a lot and beat yourself up. And I guess the way

34:43

that I've tried to put that into practice is

34:46

I try to calibrate. I

34:49

have, you know, a range of different priorities in

34:51

my life. And when I write a book,

34:53

I'm aiming for a nine because it's

34:55

a huge investment of time and I

34:57

hope there will be a decent number of people who

35:00

read it and benefit from it. But

35:02

I don't treat everything that way, you know, I'm

35:04

very content with a seven when

35:07

I give a speech, no, knowing

35:09

that each audience is a little different and

35:12

each performance is going to be a little different, and

35:15

good enough is actually good enough in that situation. And

35:17

I think this is something we can all do, is to

35:20

pause to ask how high are the stakes

35:22

here?

35:22

Yeah?

35:23

And we aim obviously higher

35:25

when it's more important and we give

35:27

ourselves a little bit more grace and permission

35:29

to be imperfect on

35:32

things that are less consequential. And look,

35:35

no matter how good you get, there are always going

35:37

to be people who don't like what you do, and

35:40

there are always going to be aspects of your performance

35:42

that are going to fall short of someone's standards.

35:45

You cannot please everyone,

35:48

so you might as well decide who you're willing

35:50

to disappoint.

35:51

Can you just say that one more time? I

35:53

need to hear that.

35:53

One you, in particular,

35:56

you as a human cannot please everyone, and

35:59

neither can anyone.

36:00

Okay, and therapy right there.

36:03

So you might as well decide who

36:05

you're willing to disappoint and

36:08

which standards are important to you.

36:10

Yeah, And I'm thinking about

36:12

all the domains where this imperfectionism

36:14

perfectionist mindset is relevant. And I'm

36:16

thinking about all those parents out there that just

36:19

brate themselves every day because

36:21

they don't think they're the perfect parents. And it's

36:23

like, well, what if a nine is every

36:25

day my kids knew I loved them? Like

36:28

what if that was a nine? Like maybe that is

36:31

good enough slash perfection in the

36:33

domain of parenting versus oh, I

36:35

know coach them through the remote. I mean, just so it is a

36:37

huge manual now, right for how it is that

36:39

we should raise our kids. But yeah, it's just

36:41

making me think about how we define

36:43

our north star. Yeah.

36:45

At first I was really reluctant to apply this to parenting,

36:48

Like I don't want parents to be scored.

36:52

Your parenting today was a three and a half. Yeah,

36:55

but you just changed my mind

36:57

because there's no reason why

36:59

we can't clarify. Like, first

37:01

of all, you should not expect to be a perfect parent.

37:04

No one will ever achieve that standard. It's

37:06

impossible. Yeh. Every parent makes mistakes.

37:09

I think that's part of how we grow as parents. I

37:11

think some of my best moments of growth as a parent actually

37:13

have come when I've been really disappointed

37:16

in myself for getting frustrated and

37:18

impatient with our kids. But I don't think

37:20

a lot of parents I think this is a big aha

37:22

mooent for me. I don't think a lot of parents have sat down

37:24

to say, Okay, I want to be a nine

37:27

parent, not a ten parent, because that's

37:29

going to be healthier for me and for my kid. What

37:32

does a nine look like? What

37:34

are the behaviors that really matter and what are the

37:36

ones that are okay to be imperfect on.

37:39

Yeah.

37:40

I think that's a great discussion that we could all have with our families.

37:43

I'm going to force myself to have it this

37:45

weekend.

37:46

Yeah. I think the most hopeful

37:48

message coming out of your book, and I love

37:50

that you devote a sizeable chunk of the book

37:52

to this topic, is how

37:54

we can help unlock potential in others.

37:57

It is a very other focused orientation,

37:59

which I think is just going to make humanity better

38:02

across the board, because you don't always see that represented

38:04

in in psych books. And so can

38:06

you just leave us with some reflections

38:09

on how we can help unlock

38:11

potential in those around us?

38:13

This is my top pick for kicking

38:16

myself that I didn't write this into the book, Like,

38:19

how did this not make the cut? I don't

38:21

know, all right. So, a

38:23

group of my colleagues, led by Laura Morgan

38:25

Roberts, created an exercise called the Reflected

38:28

Best Self Portrait, and

38:30

the idea is that a lot of people have

38:33

hidden potential that's invisible to them. It's almost

38:35

like the opposite of a blind spot, that

38:37

you're not aware of some of your own strengths and

38:40

so you need other people to hold up a mirror to help you

38:42

identify the things that you're good at

38:44

that maybe these are underutilized strengths as

38:46

opposed to the overused ones that we talked about

38:48

earlier. So the exercise,

38:51

I've had students and leaders do

38:53

it for about fifteen years now, and people

38:55

often come back and say, this was a life

38:58

changing experience. So all you

39:00

do is you reach out to some people

39:02

who know you well in different walks of life. You could do this with

39:04

family, some friends, some colleagues,

39:07

and you ask them to tell a story about you

39:09

at a time when you were at your best. And

39:11

then you collect all the stories, which is the

39:14

most delightful set of emails you will

39:16

ever get. And then your job

39:19

is to recognize the patterns and compose

39:21

a self portrait of who you are at your best.

39:24

And very often when people do this

39:26

like oh, I didn't even know that was the strength of

39:29

mine, and now I see all these places I

39:31

can use it. I also felt

39:33

like this is a gift you can give to other

39:35

people to help them see their hidden potential. So

39:37

when I first learned about this exercise, I think it was

39:39

gosh, it must have been twenty years ago. I remember the

39:42

winter break starting and I

39:44

was a first year grad student. I

39:46

had nothing on my calendar. I was broke.

39:49

What am I going to do with this week? I decided

39:52

that I was going to invert the exercise, and

39:55

I picked up a bunch of people who mattered

39:57

to me, and I wrote them all a story

39:59

about a time when they were at their best

40:02

and just emailed it to them out of the blue.

40:06

It is one of the most meaningful weeks

40:09

I have ever spent, even though I was just sitting

40:12

in a room writing

40:14

emails, because really thinking about,

40:16

well, what is other people's hidden potential

40:18

and how can I make that more

40:20

visible to them felt like a really

40:23

meaningful act of friendship

40:26

or you know, an investment in a relationship, and

40:29

people seem to really appreciate it.

40:30

I love that example. That's something that everyone listening

40:33

can actually do right now.

40:34

I mean, just even pick one person and

40:36

tell them who they are at their best.

41:13

Hey, thanks so much for listening. If

41:15

you enjoyed my conversation with Adam, you might

41:17

want to check out the first time he was on the show.

41:20

It's an episode called Adam Grant

41:22

Thinks Again, and we'll link to it in

41:24

the show notes. And that's a

41:26

wrap on our season. I just

41:28

want to thank you for spending this time with me and

41:30

the remarkable guests we've had on the show.

41:33

We'll be back early next year with new episodes.

41:36

In the meantime, I'm wishing you a happy

41:38

and healthy rest of your year and

41:40

a bit more equanimity in the face

41:42

of any Slight Changes of plan. A

41:54

Slight Change of Plans is created, written,

41:56

and executive produced by me Maya Schunker.

41:59

The Slight Change family includes our showrunner

42:02

Tyler Green, our senior editor

42:04

Kate Parkinson Morgan, our producer

42:06

Trisha Bovida, and our sound engineer

42:09

Andrew Vestola. Louis

42:11

Scara wrote our delightful theme song,

42:14

and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.

42:16

A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin

42:19

Industries, so big thanks to everyone

42:21

there, and of course a

42:23

very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.

42:26

You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram

42:28

at doctor Maya Schunker. So,

42:51

I remember when I flew to China

42:54

after Jimmy and I got married, and we had

42:56

this big wedding reception, and I

42:58

was so jetlagged first of

43:00

all, and I was in extremely elementary

43:02

Chinese land. I'm still in elementary Chinese

43:04

land, but I remember my

43:06

in laws kind of looked at me and they're like, so archie

43:09

to say something. And then on the spot, I had to come

43:11

up with this like wedding speech, and

43:14

it was so it was so basic, Adam.

43:16

I was like, hello, I am Maya,

43:19

I'm married Jimmy. Thank you so

43:21

much for being here, you know, really poetic,

43:23

like so much emotional residence. I'm sure this

43:26

is great.

43:27

You're like, see spot spot

43:29

run exactly.

43:30

I'm like, I currently am in China.

43:33

You are all currently here as well,