In a turbulent world, intelligence is the capacity to rethink and unlearn, in thinking and in leadership.
Attention isn't shrinking, motivation isConcentration tests show no decline over three decades; people focus for hours when their interest is sustained.
Take the leap to gain confidenceGrant waited to feel ready before hard dives, books and his first TED talk until Eric Best's question flipped the order.
Promote character and impact, not just resultsMeasuring assists to colleagues, not individual revenue, is what predicts the leaders worth having.
Executive SummaryAI
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant tells Radio Davos host Robin Pomeroy that a meta-analysis of dozens of studies over a three decade period found adults' and children's concentration has not gotten worse, so the problem is motivation, not attention, which is why teenagers binge eight hours of Netflix or play video games for 14 hours.
Grant traces his own approach to his diving coach Eric Best, who, after Grant stood frozen on the board for 45 minutes before a full twisting two and a half, asked him "what are you waiting for?", teaching him that the leap comes before the confidence, not after.
He explains motivational interviewing, developed by counselling psychologists Miller and Rolnick with people struggling with addiction and backed by over a thousand randomized controlled experiments: instead of arguing, you get curious and help people surface their own reasons to change, exactly as Darrell Davis does when he asks white supremacists how they can hate him without knowing him.
On polarization, Grant argues we overestimate it (the perception gap) and fall into binary bias, citing gun policy in the US where there are at least six camps and over 85% of Americans back universal background checks, plus Peter Coleman's research showing that reading about the complexity of one issue makes people likelier to find common ground on another.
His hope for 2026 is that boards choosing CEOs and voters electing politicians reject the dark triad of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and that organizations promote on impact on others, as Alan Benson's study of over 30,000 salespeople shows assists predict great sales managers better than personal revenue.
Key Quote
“intelligence is not just your ability to think and learn, it's your capacity to rethink and unlearn.”
— Adam Grant
Key Quote
“I think of it as the mother of all biases, Robin. It's the belief that you might have flaws in your thinking, but I'm neutral, I'm rational.”