Oprah Wants YOU to MAXIMIZE Your Potential The Life You Want Class Oprah Daily

Some insiders to the life you want class so nice to be with this great audience in New York today Well, there's an old belief that greatness is something you're born with that in order to succeed You have to be gifted with natural talent. Well, we're going to up end that myth today I believe that reaching for our full potential is what we're called to do as human beings And that's why i'm so So excited about my guest today adam grant. He's written this book called hidden potential He's someone i've admired forever And let me tell you a little bit about adam He is an organizational psychologist a wharton business school professor A new york times best-selling author of five books and host of the popular podcast rethinking and work life And so I want to start uh adam. Hi Hi, what an honor thank you oprah, I I I just want to start with this quote from uh, serena williams where she's talking about uh, you know What this book meant for her? She says this brilliant book will shatter your assumptions about what it takes to improve and succeed I wish I could go back in time and gift it to my younger self It would have helped me find a more joyful path to progress I just love that I'm sure you did too Yeah, i'm pretty much done at that point Do we all have a little serena in us? I actually think we have more serena in us than we realized Um, there's a classic study looking at high achievers across fields So elite tennis players and swimmers mathematicians and scientists musicians and sculptors And it turns out that very few of them stood out when they were first learning their craft They didn't win early competitions They didn't necessarily end up getting identified as having superior talent And ultimately they ended up achieving much greater things and I think their potential was hidden Not only to some of their their family members and friends, but also they didn't realize how great they could become Well, it's so interesting. Um, I had just finished reading your book and then gail and I went to the beyonce concert last night And it's so interesting when I left there I thought wow that's a person Who has maximized? To the I don't know what transcendent degree their potential and we've both left feeling like Gail said she left feeling like she could eat raw meat But what I felt like that that something in me by watching her was awakened to a greater sense of potential And so I I guess that's what true inspiration what it is to be inspired is that you see the potential within yourself Also what your book does you walk away from reading it feeling like huh? There's more in me than I knew now I have a good friend who likes to remind me of how far I have come in life and I thought of him when I when I um Uh read the first chapter of the book where you say you can't tell where people will land from where they begin Take that in a minute church I see y'all nodding like church You can't tell where people will land from where they begin with the right opportunity and motivation to learn Anyone can build the skills to achieve greater things Potential is not a matter of where you start but of how far you travel We need to focus less on starting points and more on distance travel Can I get an amen to that When did you learn that lesson for yourself adam? I think I probably first learned it when I made a questionable decision to become a springboard diver So I was not naturally talented I walked like frankenstein. I couldn't I literally couldn't touch my toes without bending my knees And I was afraid of heights So not exactly the right sport for me I was already too short for basketball and too slow for track and I felt like i'd ruled out everything else So I I showed up to try out for the diving team as a freshman in high school And I had an incredible coach eric best who said I will never cut a diver who wants to be here and he saw more potential in me than I saw in myself and You know, I would just sort of sit there at the end of the board shaking afraid to hurl myself into the air and somersault and twist I remember one day just Sitting at the end of the board and my teammates were getting annoyed and eric was even losing his patience which never did And finally he said adam Are you going to do this dive? And I was like ever Like yes, of course one day I will do this guy And he said great. What are you waiting for? And all of a sudden I realized there was not going to be a magic day when I woke up and suddenly felt ready I would have to become ready by taking the lead. Oh, I love that moment Yes, and that was when you realized about hidden potential. So what was it about? The science of achieving greater things hidden potential that you felt compelled to Sit down and actually compose a book about it to offer because I consider this an offering to your public That you wanted to offer to us. What is it? You most wanted us to know? I think probably the most important thing for me was I think a lot of us feel like imposters when we take on new challenges And you know, it's easy to to fall victim Actually, how many of you i'm just curious have felt like imposters at some point as parents or in your jobs? Okay, a fair number of you um, if you haven't by the way, i'm a little worried you might be a narcissist, but that's That's another conversation. Um I think that you know, the the basic feeling of imposter syndrome is there's a gap between my own judgment of my capabilities And what other people think i'm capable of And most of us when we feel that we think well They're overestimating me But the research done by a former student of ours basema tufic suggests that more likely it's you underestimating yourself Because other people are better judges of your abilities than you are. They don't have your blind spots. They don't have your biases And so if multiple people believe in you, you should probably believe them I love that so much. You know, it's so interesting because Um when I was doing the oprah show There was a long time where I just would sign autographs afterwards and you know Never looked up and signed up and I after a while decided what I really wanted is just to hear what people said And what was going on in their lives? And so I just started um talking to people after the show and even just you know moving through the world people would say You know the show changed my life the show changed my life the show changed my life And I wasn't really paying attention to it I thought it was just something people were saying and when I stopped to ask people specifically tell me how that happened people would have all these incredible examples of What someone has said or something I had said or a guest like yourself Uh expert had said and I started to believe that oh, this is more than just a show This is a platform that can be used as a force for helping people to see their lives differently It's amazing that you didn't know that oprah Honestly, I mean you no I didn't at first I was just doing the work and doing the work And not really attentive to what that work was doing I mean, it's it's just hard to imagine as an audience member who grew up watching Well, you gave a lot more than cards to your audience. Yeah Yeah, and I think for a lot of people you gave hope and inspiration during your show, but I think also As a role model, um watching the success you achieved knowing where you came from one of the things i've i've been really stunned by as a psychologist is there's some research suggesting that When people tell us to aim for our best or to you know to dream big We actually aim lower than if we're exposed to a specific role model And once we see that person we say okay Maybe i'm capable of more than I think and I think you've been that person for more people than I can count Well, thank you for saying that i'm just saying that For a long in the beginning when I was doing the show I was like, okay got to do the show got to do the show people would say things I wasn't really taking it all in and once I started to Understand That's when I think the power of the show got better because I was I was paying more attention to what people were saying You know teachers are my hero. So when I heard you talk about Kindergarten teachers being able to what happens to you in kindergarten being a good predictor of your future Can we talk about that your future success? Yeah, we have to so as you know, there's an incredible study by economists of People looking at whether they get into college and then eventually how much money they earn in their 20s And it turns out that you can predict that just by knowing how many years their kindergarten teacher has been teaching Wait having a more experienced kindergarten teacher that makes you more successful that helps you grow Why is that? Well, my first thought was They have to be masters at teaching cognitive skills. They figure out how to help kids learn to read early They help them figure out how to do math But no, it turns out that the lasting impact of experienced kindergarten teachers is not cognitive skills. It's character skills Kindergarten teachers set their kids up for success later in life by teaching them to be pro-social proactive disciplined Determined and those are the lessons that really stick. Well, I love how you Associate character skills with what used to be called soft skills. Let's talk about where soft skills got its name Uh, this drives me crazy So it turns out it originally comes out of the u.s Military where soft skills were literally anything that did not involve operating a machine. Yeah So like even finance is a soft skill according to that definition, yeah And so they meant anything you're doing that relates to behavior leadership collaboration That was a soft skill and they thought it was extremely important But soft sounds weak and I think it got a bad rap. It got a bad rap because of that And so rather than calling them soft skills Character skills you say character is more than just having principles. I love this so much that it's a learned capacity to live By your principles tell us about what you call character skills. Well, I think a lot of people confuse character with personality So we all have personality traits They're your tendency for how you would typically think or feel or act in a typical day And they're not your destiny. They're just your tendency So a lot of times we find that to reach our hidden potential. We actually have to reject our personality traits I didn't choose for example to be a shy introvert I was born with that tendency But it sure stood in my way when I wanted to become a professor and a public speaker And so I had to learn some character skills to try to transcend the limitations of my personality And become a little bit more engaging on stage, which is still a work in progress But I hope i've made some progress, but you did it by actually going actively out speaking on stage I had to I didn't know any other way to learn it psychologists when they talk about exposure therapy They talk about systematic desensitization Where you kind of dip your toe in the pool and then flooding where you just dive into the deep end and I chose the flooding Approach. Yeah, which did not always go as planned. You know, I recently talked with dr Abraham beguis who wrote this incredible novel called the covenant of water You should read it and he told me something, uh that I found fascinating. He was here a month ago talking about how he develops characters and that Sometimes the character doesn't hold up under pressure He says when he's writing and that only the characters that can hold up under pressure Are the characters that remain in the story and that that is also true for life It is holding up under pressure you write something similar on page, uh 20 You say knowing your principles doesn't necessarily mean you know how to practice them particularly under stress or pressure It's easy to be proactive and determined when things are going well The true test of character is whether you manage to stand by those values when the deck is stacked against you If personality is how you respond on a typical day. This is my favorite quote If personality is how you respond on a typical day character is how you show up on a hard day Oh the church said amen again How do we stay true to our values on those hard days You know, okay I have to turn the tables on you and ask you about this Because you have talked about how when you were starting out as a tv reporter you got demoted Which sounded like one of the hardest days of your career was So, okay. I said gail was there I said Meet me in the bathroom now So, how did you stay true to your values in that in that moment well, here's here's here's I I stay true to my values because There was nothing else to do or be I just used your quote this morning literally one of my daughters was saying, uh That she had taken another job, even though she had a contract with another job And that her boss is saying you have to hold to the contract and she was like, what do I do? And I say you obviously hold to the contract because that is your word And I said because character is what shows up on the hard days Not on the easy days and so I always believe you do the right thing Even when nobody is looking and especially when nobody is looking because that's what you know to do That's what you know to do makes a lot of sense I think I think a lot of people struggle with this because they get advice. Well, you know, you gotta you gotta walk the talk Yeah, and I think sometimes then it becomes really hard to live up to the words that you put out into the world Yeah, so i've started to wonder if we should reverse that and only talk the things we already walk Say that again adam, I like it I guess I I don't know that but what I meant to say was something like Um, I think that a lot of people struggle to walk the talk and maybe we should only talk what we are Well, yes, and also you see on these instagram reels. Everybody's talking talking talking about everything And nobody's walking walking walking To talk right right literally, right? And I think part of that is because particularly in america We don't like to be uncomfortable, but you see uh facing Um discomfort as a character skill It's a vital character skill So, um, let's go back to me being a shy introvert trying to learn how to teach Uh, one of the ways that I I just flooded myself was I signed up to teach a four-hour session for air force colonels I was in my mid-20s They had they were about twice my age. They had thousands of hours of flying experience And I was extremely nervous going in there And so I did what came naturally to me Which was I started to talk about my credentials and explain to them why I was qualified to teach this session Otherwise, why were they here? And the feedback afterward was brutal One of the air force colonels had written there was more knowledge in the audience than on the podium Whoa Technically, that's true. There are a lot of you There's one of me and you have a lot more experience than I do And then another wrote I gained nothing from this session, but I trust the instructor gained some useful insight So What I wanted to do in that moment was crawl into a hole I I remember thinking I would love to be an actual bear and hibernate for a few months And come out when I feel better But what did you do? What I did was I realized I'd already committed to do another session for a different group of air force colonels a week later And as uncomfortable as it was I had to get comfortable with the discomfort So I um, I i've been reading some research that suggested that feedback is not as helpful as advice That when you ask for feedback you get a bunch of critics telling what you did wrong yesterday When you ask for advice you turn people into coaches and they tell you what you could do better tomorrow That's why this is such a good leadership book Feedback is not as good as advice. That's great Yeah, the advice the advice I got was really helpful actually I one one person in the audience said You know, why don't you try a different opening? Why don't you call out the elephant in the room? Instead of trying to you know Talk about your credentials and so I did the only thing I could think of as uncomfortable as it was I walked into my next session and I said hey, I know what you all are thinking right now What could I possibly learn from a professor who's 12 years old? The air force colonels did not find that amusing. Yeah But after after what felt like an eternity one of them piped up and said oh come on that's ridiculous you got to be at least 13 And it broke the ice and the relationship with them was completely different Uh, we had a real give and take as opposed to me just standing up lecturing and afterward I got different feedback I was told that although I was junior in experience I dealt with the evidence in an interesting way and I felt like because I embraced that discomfort Um, I actually ended up growing more don't you find too though this happens to me a lot of times people who friends who write books memoirs in particular and also Friends who are in the film business They'll give you a thing to look at or to review and say give me your feedback But what they really want is for you to affirm for them everything. They want to hear about it Yeah, so would be much better if they as you were saying that I was thinking Must be much better people say advise me as to what you think would make this better. That would be so much better Um, I think that what a lot of people do is they're so afraid of critics that they try to surround themselves with cheerleaders And the problem with that we have a very responsive audience this afternoon y'all are good. Yeah, this is you're doing right? I don't know. No Um, I think the the problem with that just at a basic level is that a cheerleader only sees and celebrates the best version of yourself Yes, a critic only sees and attacks the worst version of yourself and what we really want our coaches Who see a better version of you and then help you realize that potential? Well, you know our country is obsessed with perfection So many people and you know The whole social media is all about people showing you their perfection and you say it's a mirage And we need to honor the beauty of our imperfections this quote. I love so much that you write on page 67 Perfectionists berate themselves for making mistakes which make it harder to learn from them And they fail to realize that the purpose of reviewing your mistakes Isn't to shame your past self. It's to educate your future self How did you learn that? well, uh, I remember growing up my mom used to say Uh, look, you know, whatever whatever grade you get in school As long as you tried your best Then i'll be proud of you And then she would add But if you didn't get an a i'll know it wasn't your best And she said it with a smile and I think she was sort of joking but also sort of not And I really internalized the expectation that I needed to be flawless and I beat myself up a lot for that diving was a miserable sport in this sense because There's no such thing as a perfect 10 it turns out A 10 is for excellence not perfection. And so I was chasing a mirage that literally didn't exist And I think life is a lot like diving. There is no such thing as a perfect 10