Transcript, E202: Adam Grant on when to help others

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Jessi Hempel:

Hey, it's Jessi Hempel, host of Hello Monday, coming at you this week with an episode from our archives. And for this week, I went all the way back to our very first season when I invited my friend Adam Grant into the studio. You may know Adam's work. He has written so many books. He's an organizational psychologist. And, um, I actually had a question for him. Adam is an expert at time. He just comes off as one of the most productive people you've ever met, and he's a person you just, you want to do things for him because he always does things for you.

So I wanted to know how he balances his social network, I mean his IRL social network. How does he do that? How does he manage not to get burnt out himself while also showing up for so many people? Goodness knows I'd love to be able to figure out how to do that better in my own life. Um, so without further ado, I give you this episode. And please, please stick around for the coda, because if you, like me, know that this was recorded in 2019, you will have to listen well to what Adam said about the difference between being in real life with somebody and being on a screen. Okay. With that, have a great week.

From the editorial team at LinkedIn, I'm Jessi Hempel, and this is Hello Monday, a show where I investigate the changing nature of work and how that work is changing us. Adam Grant is everyone's favorite life coach. He thinks he can improve your memory. He has rules for how to tame your inbox. He has an endless stream of productivity tips. Adam's an organizational psychologist and a professor at Wharton. He's written an entire book on givers and takers, and he thinks it's a good idea to be generous with your time and attention, which is why this week, I wanted to get his help on a very personal pain point: how we nurture our social networks.

I'm not talking about software here. I mean our actual communities, the people we meet, work with, and choose to help out. And when I say pain point, let me be clear. I'm completely overwhelmed by the number of ways I'm in touch with people. Phone, text, work email, personal email, messaging services, social networks. I just feel like I fail at it all the time. I miss important things, and it cuts into the time I have to do a critical part of my job as a writer, you know, the writing part.

So this episode, Adam and I compare notes. He has very smart thoughts on how and when to be a giving person, and why it will matter even more in the future. He has a great approach to drawing boundaries with people, and he explained how he gets the work done without distraction. Here's Adam. So Adam, I was thinking about all the things we could talk about today, and specifically, I was thinking back to the book that you published in 2013 that really addressed this idea of generosity and the idea that the more you give, the more successful, ultimately, you can become.

Adam Grant:

Yeah. You know, I think the gist of it was that I found there are three different styles that people bring to their interactions at work, right? There are, there are givers, takers, and matchers. And y- the, the givers tend to be generous. The takers tend to be selfish. Most of us don't want to fall off either edge of that, so we end up in this matching style of, of trying to be fair and saying, "I'll do something for you if you do something for me."

And my surprise in, you know, in writing the book and, and doing research for a decade going into it was that the givers tended to be overrepresented among both the worst performers and the best performers. And so yeah, helping others can elevate your career, but c- it can also undermine it if you're not thoughtful about how you do it.

Jessi Hempel:

When does it hurt you?

Adam Grant:

When you look at the differences between successful givers and failed givers, you see that, you know, anybody who, who is generous is high in concern for others. And the difference is about, do you also (laughs) care about yourself? And you see that successful givers are ambitious for themselves as well as others, you know, and they're, they're careful when they help others to make sure it doesn't come at too much of a personal cost, uh, so they're not wandering around, you know, sacrificing themselves.

And that's what you see failed givers do, is they say, "Look, you know, I'm gonna drop everything, for anyone, at any time a request comes in." And so, you know, I think that, that giving becomes risky, especially in a career sense, when you're not thoughtful about who you help, (laughs) and so you end up, you know, getting burned by takers. It's risky when you're not thoughtful about when you help, and, you know, you, you're constantly falling behind on your own work, and you can't get your own work done (laughs) 'cause you're doing other people's jobs. And it's risky when you're not thoughtful about how you help, and you end up saying yes to all kinds of requests that are actually not aligned with your skills, and so (laughs) you're not adding that much value, and you're getting stretched in all these directions that don't make a lot of sense for you.

Jessi Hempel:

Do you recommend sort of a framework for thinking about it? Is it a sort of... Like, for example, one of the things that I remember is this idea of batching your favors, rather than sort of spreading them out willy nilly when they come at you, deciding to do, say, five on Tuesday afternoon.

Adam Grant:

So I, I think you've, you've started with a great one, and there, there's actually now evidence that this is true both for random acts of kindness in, in your life and for the helping you do in your job, that if you batch them together in one day, and let's say you're gonna do five helping acts this week, if you do all five on Monday, you actually get more of a boost to your energy and your sense of meaning than if you spread them out throughout the week.

And, you know, I think that's because, you know, (laughs) if you do a little bit every day, it feels like a drop in the bucket, and you don't really know that you made a difference, and you're kind of distracted, whereas, you know, if Monday is your helping day, (laughs) a case of the Mondays actually turns out to mean something very different from what it meant in office space, right? And you're like, "Oh, a case of the Mondays is, that's the day where I matter to other people and, and I make a contribution."

Jessi Hempel:

Is this the way that you go about it in your own life?

Adam Grant:

I try to, yeah. So I stack all my office hours together, so, you know, I'll have a day or two a week where I'm on campus and I'm totally focused on students, and that's basically all I do. So I'm teaching, I'm in office hours. I might have a, you know, an author on campus that I'm hosting. And then I have some (laughs) days where I work from home and I try not to talk to another human being who's not part of my family, and that way I'm, you know, I'm really focused on progressing with my own creative work, my writing, data analysis, whatever I'm working on.

And I, I think that's, you know, it's... I can't, I cannot stress enough how beneficial that is in, in terms of being focused and also feeling like I'm making progress, but I'm also able to show up for other people. And, you know, I think the other big strategy that's probably made a real difference in my life is, I used to feel like I had to carry the burden of, of helping kind of in a tailored way for every person who reached out. Right?

So (laughs) one of the worst things that, that happened along this, this path was, Give and Take came out. The New York Times Magazine did a cover story on my work, and one of the scenes that, that Susan Dominus, the reporter, wrote about was me in office hours, you know, giving career advice to students. And all of a sudden, I got bombarded with career advice requests from complete strangers. And I've got to tell you, I'm not even good at giving career advice to people that I know well. Right? (laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Adam Grant:

Like, I'm, I'm the person who became an organizational psychologist because I didn't know what I want to do with my life, and so I'm like, "Well, maybe my job could be to fix other people's jobs, and then I get to experience all of them vicariously." And so, you know, I'm not, I'm probably not the person you want to come to for, for career direction. And I'm especially bad if I don't know you well and I don't have a sense of your interests and your strengths and, you know, your goals and your values. And so I, (laughs) I tried to field all these conversations individually, and I, I talked to strangers. I, you know, responded to, to emails in depth. And-

Jessi Hempel:

Wait, Adam. You really did?

Adam Grant:

Yeah. (laughs) It was, it, I, I did it for a while. And one, I just couldn't keep up, and two, I did not actually feel like I was helpful.

Jessi Hempel:

Right.

Adam Grant:

And so eventually, you know, it, it dawned on me that I should follow my own advice, so (laughs) I went back to, you know, to my research and, and writing and said, "Okay, what would I advise someone else to do in this situation?" And the clear answer was, one, to be, you know, to be aware of, of the ways that, that I add value, and career advice is rarely one of them.

And so what I did was, I wrote up a list of (laughs) the most helpful books and articles I'd read on the topic, and then I just kind of sent that out as, as an FAQ sheet to anyone who would reach out. You know, that made things way easier, 'cause instead of having, (laughs) having the same conversation 12 times, I just, I put it in a one-pager and said, "Hey, read these books. Listen to these podcasts. You know, read these articles. I hope there's something useful in there."

Jessi Hempel:

So that sounds so practical, Adam, and I'm thinking about it, and I'm thinking about it in the role that I sit in, in which, you know, people approach me, and they would like all manner of favors for me, and so I'm just curious, where does that fall for you?

Adam Grant:

There's a whole bunch of research that Mark Bolino put on the map years ago and that a bunch of us have followed up on, saying, (laughs) like, there, there are two major reasons why people help others at work. Uh, one is kind of being a good soldier. Right? You, you're committed to the mission of your organization. You care about, you know, the people in your platoon, and you really want to be helpful.

And the other is being a good actor. (laughs) Right? It's all about impression management and maintaining a good image or reputation. And I think this is a test of, you know, what, what are your motivations? If you're saying yes to people only because of the image benefits, and you're not convinced you can be helpful, you're, one, doing them a disservice, but two, in the long run, you're actually doing your, your reputation a disservice. You know, all those people that I said yes to and then gave really bad career advice to, they probably hate me now.

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Adam Grant:

(laughs) And so I think that it's really easy to get sucked into the short-term cost of saying, you know, no, which is something that Vanessa Bohns and Frank Flynn in their research have found we, we tend to do a lot, right? We, we're kind of, we're too worried about the cost of saying no. And the reality is, there are big costs of saying yes, and I think we need to be aware of those. And so I guess, (laughs) Jessi, if I were in your shoes, what I would do is I would say, "Look. Whenever somebody asks you for something and your impulse is to, to help because of, you know, a desire to be liked, uh, or, or respected, think about whether there's a, (laughs) a more helpful to say no."

So for example, like, one version of this for me is, I get a lot of, uh, of questions about, you know, "Okay, should I leave my investment banking job or my consulting job now?" And I'm like, "Well, technically I've never had one of those jobs, but I've taught a few thousand students who have." And some of those students, you know, are really happy to pay it forward, and they've gotten advice from people in the past, and so I've got a, kind of a network of people now who are excited to help with that request and really knowledgeable about helping with that request. And it saves me time, and it also makes me look better because I opened the door to somebody who could actually help them.

Jessi Hempel:

Okay, so that makes a lot of sense. So I want to go back to the framework that you spelled out for how you decide when you're going to y- do nice things for people, how you decide what time is your time.

Adam Grant:

Well, I think one of the things I've, I've actually gotten comfortable doing is, uh, is responding in batches, right? So the same way that I, you know, (laughs) I have a day where I'm, I'm focused on students, I do kind of have an administrative day in each week. And, you know, it's, (laughs) it's a day that I don't look forward to, but it's also (laughs) a day that when I'm done with it, I feel like I have all this mental space and time freed up to think more creatively and to be more proactive also in reaching out to people who I want to support, as opposed to just, you know, being reactive and responding to whoever wants to, (laughs) to sort of jump into my schedule.

So I think that can be managed the same way, right? I think too many people, when they get their requests in, they're like, "Ah, I need to, I need to deal with this right away and get it out of my inbox." And I would say, "No. You want to have an admin inbox or a favor inbox, and you pick a day every week and, you know, actually carve out a time, it might be an hour or two, where you get through as many of those as you can, and then you pick it up the next week."

Jessi Hempel:

Coming up after the break, I'll talk to Caroline Fairchild about how to prioritize when to be helpful and how to set better boundaries. Okay. I'm back, and I'm here with Caroline. Hi, Caroline.

Caroline Fairchild:

Hey, Jessi. So this week, both you and I got kind of obsessed with this idea of, how do you say no to the people in your network who you just can't help in the way that you want to help them?

Jessi Hempel:

Right. Either you actually don't have the skills to help them, or it doesn't make sense to prioritize the time to do it.

Caroline Fairchild:

And you and I have talked about this a lot even before this episode. We both work on a social network. We're both journalists. We get a lot of inbound from people who want our advice and our help, and we generally want to help them. But I wanted to hear from people who have great strategies for helping everyone in a way, in a way that allows them to actually get their own work done as well, so I talked with our listeners, as well as some members on LinkedIn, and I want to play some of what they had to say for you. One of them was Sanyin Siang. She's the executive director at the Coach K Center for Leadership and Ethics.

Sanyin Shian:

Here's my one trick: offer them an alternative. So for example, if someone asked me to come join a committee, I would come up with a solution, such as, "I may not be able to make every meeting. However, I can bring someone else with me."

Caroline Fairchild:

So I love this, because you are really saying no, but it's in a way in which the person doesn't feel like they're getting let down. We also heard from Will Jacyll, who used to work for CNN, and he gave a solution that perhaps will take less time.

Will Jacyll:

So a tip that I learned years ago was to give somebody two choices, both of the choices acceptable to you. If somebody wants to meet for lunch, tell them that instead, you can do a phone call on Monday at 10:00 AM or Wednesday at 3:00 PM.

Caroline Fairchild:

We also heard this week from Alison Levine. She's a keynote speaker as well as a New York Times bestselling author.

Allison Levine:

So the other thing that often dictates whether or not I say yes to helping with something or getting involved in a project is the level of commitment I see from the person doing the asking. If they have not done their homework, then it's not something I'm willing to get involved with, because if you're asking me for my time and attention, you better darn well have put in your time and given it your focus as well. So when people come to me and they haven't done their homework, then that's an automatic no. I'm like, "Can you do a two-minute Google search and get a little bit of information?"

Jessi Hempel:

And I loved that one, because gosh, it sounds familiar.

Caroline Fairchild:

Another member that we heard from this week was Kate Luce. She's the president and CEO at the Mississippi Export Railroad Company, and what she told us is that if there's something that you can't do today but maybe you want to do tomorrow, just be honest with how you communicate that.

Kate Luce:

So if there's not the opportunity for us to work together today, let's plant that seed for tomorrow. And so I try to be very upfront, like when someone wants me to join their board, and saying, "These are the commitments that I have right now." And so making it clear that now is not the right time, but I would like to stay engaged and learn more about their organization.

Jessi Hempel:

It's actually advice that really resonates for me. If somebody approaches me about something, particularly if they approach me through somebody that I really care about, and I'd like to help them but I can't right then, I tell them when I can. I say, "Please get back in June, and I'll be freer in June, and, and let's talk then." And the thing is, you know, truthfully, most people, especially if they don't really want what you have to offer, they're not gonna get back in touch with you in June. And if they do get back in touch with me, I always prioritize spending time with them. I feel like all of this comes back to this thing that I don't exactly understand why it's so difficult to do, which is just communicate directly and tell the truth.

Caroline Fairchild:

Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

And Caroline, so much of this gets back to, how do you use your time? And so it occurs to me that that is something that would be great to know from other people.

Caroline Fairchild:

Right. We want to hear from you, our listeners, on that this week. So if you have concrete ideas that you think others could benefit from about how you manage your time in an increasingly collaborative workplace, let us know. Send us a voice memo at [email protected], and we hope to share your thoughts on next week's show.

Jessi Hempel:

Thank you, Caroline.

Caroline Fairchild:

Thanks, Jessi.

Jessi Hempel:

Now back to my conversation with Adam Grant. So I want to know what your approach to email is.

Adam Grant:

Productive email habits are mostly about saying, "Look." You know, I, I used to, (laughs) I used to write soliloquies, right, and I just was not happy with the amount of time that I put into writing emails, and so I decided that I was gonna try to respond in shorthand, and, and know that actually, (laughs) people appreciate a fast no much more than, you know, saying yes and then dropping the ball, or, you know, a delayed really long response.

And so, you know, my goal is, when I open an email, I want to answer it. Uh, you know, I guess sometimes people call that the touch it once policy. Uh, and if I can't do that, then it's not something that belongs in my inbox anymore. It's something that belongs on my to-do list, and I need to file it out of my inbox, and that makes my inbox pretty clean. Uh, but, you know, otherwise, I actually like... I like the rhythm of saying, "All right, you know, I'm, I'm kind of stuck on a sentence here. Let me go answer an email."

And I know this is gonna sound really weird to a lot of people. And Jessi, as, as a, as a fellow writer, I don't, (laughs) I don't know if this is gonna be weird to you too. Tell me if, if, if it is odd. But, you know, people are always talking about the, you know, like, the distraction and the switching cost associated with multitasking. For me, sometimes, though, the best way to get out of writer's block is actually just to answer some emails.

Like, if I have four or five emails and I get through them fast, I feel like I'm starting to get in the flow and like, "Oh, today I'm a writer." (laughs) I'm like, "My, my, like, my, my typing is, you know, is, is actually capturing something that's fluid, and so now maybe I can, I can carry that over to, you know, to something more complex that I'm trying to write about." Do you ever have that experience?

Jessi Hempel:

Well, it's funny that you say that, Adam, because I do this thing that I, really, I think I've only told my wife, and now you and everybody listening, which is, I set the timer on my phone to go off every 10 minutes, and I just keep switching tasks until I start writing the thing that needs to be written, and then it writes itself. So I would start writing it, but in my head I'd be like, "I'm only committed to writing this cover story for X magazine for 10 minutes, and then, then I'm gonna return emails for 10 minutes, or then I'm gonna clean the kitchen for 10 minutes." And I do that back and forth and back and forth until the one time I sit down and start writing for 10 minutes and know what I'm saying, and then I might write for four hours.

Adam Grant:

Wow. Why?

Jessi Hempel:

Surely, surely there's a thing. Th- surely, that is, that is a way that people function in the world.

Adam Grant:

Yeah. Why, why do you set it up this way, though?

Jessi Hempel:

Well, 'cause I need to take away the pressure to perform well. I mean, the thing about writing is, writing takes so many different forms, right, but when you're writing something like a book or a longer article, you have the pressure for it to be good and to impress people. And sometimes for me, that pressure becomes so overwhelming that I can't get started.

Adam Grant:

Oh, that's interesting. So answering emails is a way of almost lowering your standards to-

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Adam Grant:

... (laughs) "I, I can write something a little drafty and a little messy, and that's okay."

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah. I suppose. I mean, how do you write when you write something significant, a piece of thought work?

Adam Grant:

I guess, you know, I, I always think of, of Vonnegut here. I, I loved his distinction between swoopers and bashers.

Jessi Hempel:

Huh.

Adam Grant:

And what drives me crazy is people who write like bashers, which is, I write one sentence, and then I perfect it, and then I write the next sentence. And it takes them forever. Swooping, for me, is much more efficient, and my read of the evidence from Bob Boyce and his colleagues is, it's just as effective, which is to say, all right, when I write, I treat editing and, and writing as two separate tasks.

And I think, actually, think applies to any kind of creativity, that idea generation and idea evaluation and refinement are completely different and maybe even opposite mindsets. Right? Like, (laughs) trying, trying to draft an article is... For me, it requires divergent thinking. I want to be, you know, connecting disparate ideas. I want to be open to lots of possibilities. And, you know, it's, it's pretty free-flowing, whereas, (laughs) you know, then vetting, is this sentence any good, and how do I make it easier to read or more interesting to read, uh, that, that requires much more of a narrow focus.

Uh, it's about precision. It's convergent rather than divergent. And so I really cleanly separate those in the sense that I will, I will try to write an entire article or draft of a chapter just as I would talk. Just like if we were in this conversation, you wouldn't just keep self-editing and say, like, "Wait, let me redo the last four sentences." I'm not gonna do that when I write either, and then I'm gonna go back when I'm, when I'm in a much, I guess much more critical mindset, and, and read this stuff and say, "Who wrote that garbage?" And now I can fix it.

Jessi Hempel:

Well, so, you know, one thing about the process of bringing new ideas to life is that it doesn't always fit into prescribed 9:00 to 5:00 work day. How do you balance work and things that are not work, your family, your community, whatever's important to you?

Adam Grant:

First of all, I think the balance metaphor is, is the wrong one. Uh, I don't, I don't think my life is ever in perfect balance, and I don't know anyone who, whose is. (laughs) You know, when I think about balance, I think about someone doing a tightrope walk and, you know, having everything in, in perfect sort of harmony or proportion. And I think the reality is that if you care about your family and you care about your work, and you also care about your health and your friendships and, you know, all the, the different domains of your life, they're not all gonna be perfectly balanced, at least, you know, in, in the span of a day, maybe even not in the span of a week.

And so I've come to think about it much more in terms of work-life rhythm, in that, (laughs) you know, it's like, if you think about a year as a song with a bunch of different verses, but then also, you know, with, with a melody and, you know, maybe a refrain that, that repeats a bunch of times, what I try to do is say, "Okay, you know, I'm gonna have several days a week that are totally family-focused." And I feel very lopsided on those days because I don't do a lot of work.

And then my work days are the opposite. They're heavily work-focused, uh, and I feel out of balance on those days too. (laughs) But the good news is that, you know, over the course of, of a month, that means I've, I've gotten into really deep work or flow, uh, you know, on some important projects, and I've also spent a lot of quality time with my family. And I think this, this mythical aspiration of balance is something we should, we should just all give up on.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah. That is really true. Like, there's an idea that I'm reaching for that's tied to where we began in this conversation, this idea that success in the world is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. We will accomplish more by focusing on how we interact with other, how we help others, how those dynamics work.

Adam Grant:

Okay, so, you know, as the world changes, you know, is, like, is it better to be a giver? Does the fact that we're more connected change that dynamic at all? And the first thought that I had was, I actually think that as the world of work kind of shifts under our feet, it's gonna be harder and harder to get away with being a taker, because, you know, I think we're gonna probably, at some point, move toward a world of work that's much more organized around, I wouldn't say gigs, but projects.

Right? So there's, like, there's no reason why we need to have... In, in the future, if we can automate a lot of, a lot of technical work, not all of it, but a lot of it, there's no reason why we need to have a company as opposed to, you know, kind of a professional guild. Right? So if, you know, if I'm, if I'm doing something and I mostly have robots, let's say, building cars, but I have a, a complex problem to solve, like, why don't I go to the engineering guild and recruit some really great people there? And whether I want to work with those people is heavily dependent on, okay, are they gonna make me better? And are they willing to use their knowledge and their skills to help other people succeed, you know, not just to, to elevate their own success?

And, you know, if they can't accumulate all of this status and protection and power inside of, of one organization, it's gonna be harder, then, for the, the (laughs) really successful or competent takers to stay where they are and maintain their, their success, because people are gonna say, "You know what? I'm not limited to collaborating with the people in my organization who work lateral or above. I can go outside. Uh, I can, you know, go to a, a bunch of free agents." And, you know, the people who are gonna win in a free agent nation, uh, which Dan Pink predicted two decades ago, (laughs) I think are, are the people who not only are really capable, but use their capabilities to elevate other people.

Jessi Hempel:

That was Adam Grant. Next week on the show, Melinda Gates started working at Microsoft when she was just out of school. She entered an office that was overwhelmingly male, and she almost left, until she realized the importance of being herself.

Melinda Gates:

The more I was myself, the more I could attract people around me.

Jessi Hempel:

Now, years later and with the spotlight shining on her all the time, it remains the most important lesson she practices. If you enjoyed listening, subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts. It helps new listeners find the show. And remember, we'd like to hear from you. How do you figure out how to manage your time well? Send us a voice memo with your tips to [email protected].

Hello Monday is a production of LinkedIn. The show is produced by Laura Sim, with reporting by Caroline Fairchild. The show is mixed by Joe DiGiorgi. Florencia Iriondo is head of editorial video. Dave Pond is our technical director. And a shout-out to listener Tenisha Urena for her voice memo.

Tenisha Urena:

This podcast makes my whole week. It's innovative, motivating, and just so much fun to listen to. Keep up the awesome work, guys.

Jessi Hempel:

Our music was by Podington Bear and Pachyderm. Dan Roth is the editor in chief of LinkedIn. I'm Jessi Hempel. Thanks for listening. Adam, you know, unlike you, I am new at podcasting, and you're actually the first guest that I've had on who I haven't interviewed in person.

Adam Grant:

I have to tell you, Jessi, I think in-person podcast recording is massively overrated. Uh-

Jessi Hempel:

You do? (laughs)

Adam Grant:

I do. Yeah. One, I mean, you know what I look like, right? (laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

That's true.

Adam Grant:

So, like, why, why do you need to look at me? Two, I often find that they're more open when, when they're doing it by phone. They don't, they don't have somebody else's eyes on them. Maybe they feel less judged, and I think there's maybe a, a different intimacy to just being in somebody's ears. (laughs) And then I was also... I, I love this set of studies that Michael Kraus led at Yale where he showed that if you want to read someone's emotions, you're better off closing your eyes and just listening to their voice than you are trying to read their face too.