Adam Grant

“I try to get as close as I can to cleaning out my inbox every night.”

“It's true that every leader needs followers. We can't all be nonconformists at every moment, but conformity is dangerous - especially for an entity in formation.”

“We have many identities, and we can't be authentic to them all. The best we can do is be sincere in our efforts to earn the values we claim.”

“Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new. The gifted learn to play magnificent Mozart melodies and beautiful Beethoven symphonies, but never compose their own original scores.”

“To generate creative ideas, it's important to start from an unusual place. But to explain those ideas, they have to be connected to something familiar.”

“Being a magician taught me how powerful the element of surprise can be. In each book, I've tried to work that in - an unexpected twist in a story that reveals an insight, a counter intuitive study that turns your beliefs upside-down.”

“Being a nice person is about courtesy: you're friendly, polite, agreeable, and accommodating. When people believe they have to be nice in order to give, they fail to set boundaries, rarely say no, and become pushovers, letting others walk all over them.”

“In the workplace, many people become helicopter managers, hovering over their employees in a well-intentioned but ill-fated attempt to provide support. These are givers gone awry - people so desperate to help others that they develop a white knight complex and end up causing harm instead.”

“Productive givers focus on acting in the long-term best interests of others, even if it's not pleasant. They have the courage to give the critical feedback we prefer not to hear, but truly need to hear. They offer tough love, knowing that we might like them less, but we'll come to trust and respect them more.”

“No one wants to hear everything that's in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth.”

“Creativity is generating ideas that are novel and useful. I define originals as people who go beyond dreaming up the ideas and take initiative to make their visions a reality.”

“If an organization values innovation, you can assume it's safe to speak up with new ideas, leaders will listen, and your voice matters.”

“I'm not a fan of being inauthentic.”

“Once people take ownership over the decision to receive feedback, they're less defensive about it.”

“It's ironic that when you go through a tragedy, you appreciate more. You realize how fragile life is and that there are so many things to still be thankful for.”

“Some people are selfish in all of their relationships. Those people are called sociopaths.”

“Leaders who master emotions can rob us of our capacities to reason. If their values are out of step with our own, the results can be devastating.”

“Successful givers secure their oxygen masks before coming to the assistance of others. Although their motives may be less purely altruistic, their actions prove more altruistic, because they give more.”

“When you procrastinate, you're more likely to let your mind wander. That gives you a better chance of stumbling onto the unusual and spotting unexpected patterns.”

“Reasoning does create a paradox: it leads both to more rule following and more rebelliousness. By explaining moral principles, parents encourage their children to comply voluntarily with rules that align with important values and to question rules that don’t. Good explanations enable children to develop a code of ethics that often coincides with societal expectations; when they don’t square up, children rely on the internal compass of values rather than the external compass of rules.”