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Adam Grant on Hidden Potential
Grant discusses the character skills behind achievement at Talks at Google.
Quick facts
Psychology · Business
Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success
Grant’s debut categorizes people into givers, takers, and matchers, using organizational psychology research to show that givers — despite being overrepresented at the very bottom of success ladders due to burnout — are also disproportionately represented at the top, when they give strategically rather than indiscriminately.
Give and Take established Grant as a major voice in workplace psychology while he was still the youngest tenured professor at Wharton, and it holds up as more nuanced than its title suggests: the book is as much about the failure modes of giving as its rewards.
Psychology · Creativity
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
Grant examines how people champion new ideas and challenge the status quo without conforming to a caricature of the fearless maverick, arguing that the most successful originals are often characterized by doubt, procrastination, and risk-aversion in areas outside their core idea — not by reckless confidence.
Originals is Grant at his most counterintuitive, systematically dismantling the popular image of the bold, all-in entrepreneur. The chapters on strategic procrastination and hedging your bets while pursuing a big idea are frequently cited as the book’s most useful, unexpected material.
PsychologyOn my shelf
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know
A #1 New York Times bestseller arguing that the ability to question your own opinions and revise your thinking — intellectual humility, essentially — is an underrated skill that matters more than raw intelligence in a rapidly changing world, and can be deliberately practiced both individually and within organizations.
Think Again arrived amid intense political and cultural polarization and struck a nerve for exactly that reason: it’s less about facts and more about the psychological conditions that make people willing or unwilling to change their minds, including his own. It’s widely considered Grant’s most broadly applicable book.
Frequently asked questions about Adam Grant’s books
From the bookshelf
“The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option is available.”
— Adam Grant, Originals
For more organizational psychology that challenges what you assume is fixed about people, browse the full shelf.
