Lessons I learned from reading Malcolm Gladwell

Of course, you have heard of Malcolm Gladwell and I don't want to spill pixels introducing him. But you may not have heard of all the things that he does. I’ve been on a bit of a Gladwell binge and thought you may also enjoy the wide variety of content he produces.

Here are some read, hear, see suggestions…

What to read?

Talking to Strangers

So you think you are a good judge of people? Well, I can’t tell you how wrong you might be. 

I was under the impression that I am a good judge of people, as I have a high level of empathy, strong listening skills, attention to detail - basically everything that would equip you to be a good judge of character. But over the past 3 years, I would have hired 100+ people, and my success rate is just about 60%. Think about it - I’m only slightly better than chance when it comes to judging who would be successful at my own company. I will come back to my solution to this.

But basically, Malcolm Gladwell in this book explains why we are so terrible at judging people. Somewhat of a spoiler here - the basic premise is that humans default to trust. We trust people until we reach a tipping point of evidence and red flags when we no longer trust people. The examples of confidence man (Con Man) who exploits this basic human psyche about. 

A side note on the term Con Man - this term comes from the 1840s when a certain well-dressed draper gentleman would approach other well-dressed dapper gentlemen on the streets of New York and ask them this question - Do you have the confidence in me to lend me your (or anything else) for a day? And of course, if you were living in that time then you would have also lent him their watches, otherwise what type of person would you be if you could not even trust another gentleman. He was of course eventually caught with hundreds of watches recovered from his room!

Coming back to Gladwell’s book, one of the examples he gives is of Bernie Madoff - he ran one of the biggest Ponzi schemes ever, and he fooled some of the most sophisticated people (Wall Street I-bankers) in this scheme. How did he get away with it? It was not that he was a genius at deception at the same level as Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. No, he just exploited the human tendency to default to trust and managed to keep the red flags below the threshold beyond which people would stop trusting him.  

Is there a way for us to improve our ability to judge people? Read the book to find out, you cheapskate! Don’t expect so much free gyaan :D

What to hear?

Unlike most people, I became a fan of Malcolm Gladwell after I started listening to him rather than after reading his books, so I can’t rave enough about how good his audio delivery is. Not only does he have a great radio voice, but he is also able to build up stories that hook you, and deliver punch lines that impact you, use witty lines that you would want to write down and use yourself, and really transport you inside the story he is narrating.

Here’s a bunch of stuff from Malcolm Gladwell that you can listen to/view, some free and some paid:

1. The audiobook of ‘Talking to strangers’ on Audible - in case you are too lazy to read the book then I highly recommend buying the audiobook version from audible. This is not a regular audiobook with one narrator reading out the book but contains the actual interviews with people that Gladwell spoke to for this book.
2. Revisionist History - this is a long-running podcast from Malcolm Gladwell where he takes up things that happened in the past and examines them with a new lens. By the end of each podcast, you have developed a better understanding of human behavior and psychology, and the distorted lens through which we view the world and history. As usual - his narration is excellent and the podcasts are peppered with interviews, etc to make it a richer listening experience.
3. The unheard story of David and Goliath - this is a Ted talk by Gladwell in which he re-examines the traditional narrative of David vs Goliath, and as usual, it is a rich narrative that transports you into his story and leaves you re-examining everything you may have believed.

And coming to how I solved my internal hiring problem - I increased the input data that affects the final outcome. From a process where I would be the only one providing input on whom to hire, we now have 7 different people providing input on whom to hire, and hence the weightage of my input has come down from 100% to 14%. We’ve managed to reduce our failure rate by more than 50% after implementing this approach.

Moral of my story: Don’t overestimate your wisdom, especially while making a judgment on people.

This article is written by me for #SlipStream, a newsletter published by the ThePodium. Click here to read & subscribe to the newsletter.