Brené and Adam Grant on Rewarding Effort With Time

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You know, you're one of the, so there are several, there are teachers in the book, and the teachers in the book, we include you, are folks who I thought their work was, their impact on the book and my research and my thinking was so big, it was more than just kind of a paragraph. It was, I wanted to share a lesson directly from you. So Think Again is one of my all-time favorite books. And so I share an excerpt from Think Again in the book. Were you surprised to see yourself come up in yet another chapter? I was. It's such an honor to be featured at all. And I, you know, I, of course, skipped through the part that I wrote, not wanting to reread my own writing. Oh, yeah, that's horrible. I don't do that either. The worst. I had so many edits when I got into the first paragraph alone. I was like, yeah, I can't do this. That's enough rethinking for now. And then I thought I was home free. And I'm just, you know, sailing along a couple hundred pages. And all of a sudden, I came across my name. Yep. You're in the chapter called The Big Reward. And so I talk about your op-ed. Let's get everyone caught up. So you wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled, No, You Don't Get an A for Effort. Tell me about the origin of this op-ed. Tell me the premise. Okay, this started when I was teaching a week-long course for brand new MBA students. And at the end of the class a couple years ago, I got several grade complaints that were worded completely differently from any prior grade grubbing I'd come across. And different students wrote different versions of, I'm not happy with my grade because it doesn't reflect the effort that I put into this course. And I was so surprised to read that because we don't grade effort, we grade excellence. Leaving aside the fact that in a week-long course, there wasn't a lot of room for Herculean amounts of effort. and I was really curious about why they expected to be rewarded for hard work alone as opposed to mastery. And what finally crystallized for me was that some of these students had been, they'd taken the wrong lesson from Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset. Say more. This is really, this is so interesting to me. Well, there's a whole generation of, you know this well, of parents and teachers who were told, don't praise ability, praise effort. Because if you tell a kid, you're really smart. When they fail, they're going to think, well, I didn't have the cognitive horsepower. I don't have the talent to succeed at that. Whereas when you praise kids for effort, when they fall short of a goal, they learn, oh, I need to try harder. And that's much better for their resilience. It's better for their persistence, ultimately serves their growth. But if you take that too far and you only praise effort, what you're essentially doing is you're rewarding students for only their inputs and ignoring their outputs. You're telling them you should keep beating your head against a brick wall as opposed to saying, huh, that strategy is not effective for me. Let me find a different one. and I guess where I landed as I was working through this puzzle was, I think we should be praising effort that leads to progress. So we don't just want to look at how much energy you expend or how long you persist. We want to ask, did that move you forward? Is your effort, is it fueling your growth? And if not, it might not be the right effort. It's so powerful to me. And so there's 10 directions we could take this conversation. And I'm going to write one of them down because if we have time, I want to circle back to it. So I read that op-ed when it first came out. I agreed with it wholeheartedly. Right. No, and. Oh. You know my commitment to the paradox. Jim Collins would say the tyranny of the or or the genius of the and. I'm going to go with and. And what I have found working inside of organizations is kind of dualistic thinking that either says, I am going to praise and reward effort even when the outcome is bad. or on the other side, this is a perversion of the original growth mindset thinking. And if I see you putting a ton of effort into something, but the deliverable or the outcome is subpar, then you get nothing from me. And so my thinking is that we should be rewarding effort with time, with our time. And so if I see you, we'll take the student example. If I see you really busting your ass, you're in class, you're taking notes, you're present, you're asking compelling questions. You have an active role because, you know, both teaching and MBA programs, you have an active role in your group. You are all in and you're spending a lot of time and energy trying to move the ball down the field and the ball's not leaving the 50-yard line. You know, it's just, I'm not going to call that a touchdown. I'm not going to reward that with seven points because the ball's still on the 50-yard line. I'm also not going to dismiss you for how hard you're working because I see you working. What I am going to reward you with is my time in trying to sit down with you and say, I see your effort. Let's talk about why the ball's not moving. And this is really hard because I think in the dualistic solution situation where you can just give them nothing or you can give them seven points, both of those answers are easy for you as the score giver because it takes no investment from you. Right. You're just a judge. You're not a coach. You're just a judge, not a coach. That's exactly right. You're a scoreboard, not a coach. Right. That's it. So to me, when I work with leaders, I always say, if you see effort, don't reward it and call it excellence or success, because that's a lie. And that's usually about your own comfort. And also don ignore it because man one day you going to wish you had someone that put that much effort into something Reward it with your time So I curious about your take on that Oh I find that very compelling I think that what needed because if somebody is putting in the energy and they're not getting the result, then that's the ideal moment for coaching. Yes, that's coaching. That's when they need somebody to say, okay, you're working really hard. Let's talk about what it would look like to work really smart. or it seems like, you know, we actually haven't given you the training that would allow you to master this area of expertise. So we want to invest in that and invest in you. Okay, God, I need your help with something. Oh. This is so exciting. I didn't think we were going to come here, but I'm so excited about it. One of the questions I get a lot from leaders especially, actually all the way from kind of first line managers all the way up to C-suite leaders is I'm working so hard. I'm busting my ass. I'm working 60 hours a week and I'm not moving the ball. And when we get underneath why there's so much effort and no result, I'm not exaggerating right now at all in this context of geopolitical crisis, tariff issues, volatile markets, changing strategies, horrific supply chain issues, the problem identification always lands on prioritization, the lack of prioritization skills. No one's teaching it. No one's talking about it. The communication around it is terrible. What can you tell me or teach me about prioritization? Oh, that's such an interesting question. It's such a crisis right now everywhere I go. It doesn't matter what industry I'm working in. Even with sports teams I'm working with right now, should we be prioritizing toughness or discipline? Should we be prioritizing accountability? And I think there's probably a swirl of those things that all are related to each other. But what would you tell a leader that said, I'm working so hard, I'm not seeing the results because the priorities from on high are shifting daily? Huh. I think I'm thinking out loud here. I love it. I think maybe the best lesson I've gotten on prioritization came from a conversation I had a few years ago with Jeff Bezos, who, you know, whether you love or hate him and whether you're an Amazon fan or detractor, I think Jeff has been remarkably effective at being clear on his priorities. I don't think you can argue that no matter how you feel. Yeah, exactly. You might not agree with what the priorities are, but he's clear on them. Yeah. And I was asking him how he decides what to prioritize. And I came away from that conversation with a two-by-two that I think about maybe once a week. And I don't even have a real job. So this has to be much more relevant for leaders than it is for me. But Jeff said the two questions he asked himself when he's making a decision are, one, how consequential is it? How high are the stakes? And then, two, how reversible is it? is he walking through a door that's going to lock behind him or is it a revolving door? And he said, there's only one quadrant there that I spend real time and energy on. It's the highly consequential irreversible decisions because they really matter and you can't easily undo them next year. So imagine Amazon made a huge investment in the cloud. He's not going to wake up one morning and say, you know all those billions we poured into cloud computing? just kidding, I want them back. It's not an option. He said with those decisions, he does not want a first mover advantage. He considers that a disadvantage. He will procrastinate as long as possible because he wants to see other people make commitments and make mistakes and learn from those. And also he wants to gather enough information, you know, qualitative and quantitative data to try to figure out what the right important semi-permanent commitment is. And he said, I don't waste a lot of energy on the other three quadrants. If a decision is less consequential or more reversible, I will act quickly on the best information I have and just stay open to doubting what I know. I will delegate it to other people. And I think that for me, this framework has, I guess it has two applications. One is in our own lives to ask, what are the consequential irreversible decisions? Let's prioritize those. The other stuff probably It doesn't matter that much. And two, this is a question to ask up the hierarchy, right? If you feel like you're putting in a ton of work and the leaders above you are not delivering on giving you clarity, right? Asking them, hey, we've got a lot of things we're being asked to do here. Which are most consequential for you? Which are most irreversible for you? Do you agree that those are our top priorities? What do you make of all that? God, I could talk to you for 12 hours about this. It's what I talk about every day with folks. And so it's really interesting to me. I think that, okay, I have like a lot of questions. So we're talking about rewarding effort with our time and our thought partnership. And I brought up the example of prioritization. I wonder if, depending on where you are in an organization, if part of rewarding effort with time is leaders helping coach leaders on how to make decisions and appraisals of what's consequential and what's not, what's reversible and what's not. Because I would imagine if I'm in the C-suite, I have a different understanding of what's reversible and what's not reversible. I have a different understanding of what's consequential or not than if I report up to someone who reports up to someone who reports up to someone who reports up to the C-suite. Does that make sense? It does. So how do you think about doing that? Well, I'm thinking right now about 4,634 misses in my own organization based on what you just said that have happened over the last two weeks. Because what I'm thinking right now in real time, I'm almost like I'm almost breaking into a sweat, is I have not talked to my teams about what feels consequential and reversible and irreversible and not consequential. I have not done mission-critical communications, which is a part of the book. I have not shared with them what I believe is consequential and inconsequential and what's reversible and not reversible. I do not think my team is aligned. Sounds like a conversation worth having. Yes, because what I do see is, and what I hear leaders talk about all the time, is action over impact, which can feel really shitty. That's really shitty feedback to give someone. Like, hey, listen, I see a lot of your work, but I feel like you're engaging a lot of action over impact. And I wonder if that diagnosis is wrong because my mindset is different about what's consequential and reversible. Yeah, if they have a different idea about what's important and what can be undone, then they're going to invest their action in other things. Yeah because I getting stuff that is coming up to me that feels inconsequential and totally reversible Wow And okay so I curious about why that is I know there the what the famous parable about when Bob Rubin was the treasury secretary and he made an offhand comment in a hallway about gold and then this rumor starts spreading like wildfire, Rubin loves gold, and all of a sudden people are spending all this time analyzing like gold markets and pricing and People overweigh the offhand comments that leaders make. They're constantly trying to infer what's important by observing your behavior and observing your attention. Is there a signal you sent that said, this thing that's inconsequential and reversible is actually really important to me? Yeah, I'm having an IRL meltdown. Real time, folks, this is what it looks like. Yes, because I can be undisciplined in my emotional reactions to anything that doesn't meet our value of beauty and excellence. And that can be perceived as life or death consequential. And therefore, people are spending a wild amount of time on something that I had an emotional reaction to because there was a dangling modifier. And I'm making that up because I'm never really sure what that means. But like I, yes, it's about my emotional responsiveness and going under the line. and being undisciplined in my responses. And then my response is perceived as, oh shit, this is life or death for Bernay. So coming back then to where we started the conversation, through having an emotional reaction, you signaled that a different kind of effort would have been rewarded. Yes, yes. But it's not actually the effort you wanted. No, it's not. And in a more disciplined response, I would have been more focused on systems than people, and we would have corrected systems, and not making people feel like stuff is more consequential and irreversible than it actually is. Does that make sense to you? Yeah. Yeah, it does. So how do you think about course correcting on that? because what's interesting is it's reasonable to assume that if you have a strong emotional reaction to something, that's highly consequential for you. And separating those two things is not always easy for people. Why would you emote about something that doesn't really matter? Oh, because I think that's probably a huge difference between you and me. Like, I am an emotional being. Are you a highly sensitive person in the Elena Aaron sense? No. No, but I am. I do want... If we send something to someone I'm working with and misspell that person's name, that can feel irreversible and consequential to me. But normally, I think the response to that is, should be above the line where I'm a good coach, I'm a good challenger, I'm a good creative. What systems do we have in place to make sure things have a second set of eyes? What's the proofing channels that we're using? You know, that's the answer to that question. Not, I need six people spending 60 hours for three weeks on the mailing list. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. So this is an interesting example of something that it reflects on your values. And therefore, it's worth spending some time on, but it's not consequential in the capital C sense. It's not consequential, nor is it like reversible in the capital. And it's interesting because I'm working with a company right now, and the CEO is really talking about experimentation and reversibility. and leaders are having a hard time seeing the same things as reversible as what he thinks are reversible, like pricing or, you know, we can try something. But I think if you're heading that market, it feels very different, you know? And so it does go back to, I never thought when we reward effort with time and thought partnership, I think we have to start by when we see effort as a leader, and maybe even as a college professor, when we see effort that is not leading to success or mastery, maybe one of the first things we need to do is reflect on our own part in that. Yeah, did I send you a message explicitly or implicitly that this was the effort I wanted. And this is how we measure success. This is the effort we're looking for in service of this mission completion. You know, it's so funny. My first organizational psychology class when I was a junior in college. I remember just falling in love with the material and thinking, I want this to be my future career, not knowing what that would look like, and studying really hard for the midterm and getting a B+. And I was crushed. Crushed. Like, this is my thing. And I didn't ace it. And I remember sitting down with the head TA and asking her, why did all the preparation that I did not result in an A, or at least an A-? And she said to me, look, our expectations are really high in this course. And you regurgitated a bunch of material. We wanted you to think about novel ways of applying the material. So this was not a test of whether you know the course concepts. It's whether you can use and extend the course concepts. And I studied very differently for the next test and did much better on it because she had taught me how to redirect my effort. And I'm realizing now I failed to pay that lesson forward to the students who told me that their grade did not reflect their effort. God, that's such a great example. I mean, it's such a great example of rewarding effort with a conversation with you about, yeah, you're smart. I get it. You understand the material. Interesting to see the transferability of your knowledge to different contexts and how can you apply it and get creative with it. Like, this is what I'm talking about. So I do think, well, I think we reward effort with our time. And we start, I think I'm going to start. I don't know what anyone else is going to do. I'm going to start when I see effort, but I see the ball not moving down the field. I want to start with myself and say did I set this person up for success with a clear understanding of what are the priorities what consequential what reversible and what not and what is success going to look like I think that's really... And then work with them, because they may have a full understanding of that and still not be moving the ball downfield. And I think that happens a lot, especially with young leaders and new people and students. I really want to hear the postmortem on how this conversation goes. It's making me think, And just thinking about your example of, you know, if we misspell someone's name, I'm realizing now as you've talked about that, there's nuance in the reversibility concept that I hadn't seen before, which is in technical terms, that is not a reversible mistake. You cannot unsend the email. You can't take back the letter. Right. The error was made. But the impact is reversible. You know, you could show remorse to the recipient. You can let them know what a priority it is for you to get it right. And then, as the saying often goes, the best apology is change behavior. You can demonstrate to them moving forward you're not going to make the same mistake. And that, I think, can reverse the impact, even though the event itself is not reversible. I think that's true. I think that's absolutely true. And I'll just do a full confession here since, like, the Adam Bernay confessional. this should be the new podcast, you know, with each of the little collars on, take a picture of ourselves in a confession booth, which will take me back to Catholic primary school. The confession for me is if I can be above the line, you know, below the line is kind of hero, victim, villain. Oh my God, you screwed this up. You have no idea how hard this is on me. I'll do it myself. Above the line is coach, challenger, and creative. So my job as a leader, and I can be not good at this, that's my way of saying I can be really shitty here, is I can clean it up with a note to the person and say, you know, so sorry we did this, I apologize. Or if I can stay above the line, I can say, we misspelled them. I'd love for you to reach out and make it right, which is so much more rewarding for that team member who did it because then they get to clean it up and they get to not be the person who made the mistake and didn't show up again to clean it up. But let me tell you what we're talking about here. If I pulled back from this conversation and asked myself, well, a group of leaders had lunch on Thursday and listened to this conversation. What's going to be their first comment? Their first comment to each other when the podcast is over is they're going to say, well, that shit takes a lot of time. Getting that right takes a lot of time. Thankfully, we recorded a podcast about that very excuse. Yeah, we did. Do you want to invest a little time now? to save a lot of time later. Your choice. That's it. That's it. I love it. Our podcast is going to become like a self-referencing system. We're going to close the whole loop and we're just going to be like, if you disagree with this, see podcast 1A and we'll take you on there. I just want to say, and this will be such a great time for you to practice taking a compliment, how much it has meant to me for you to do this six-part series with me on the new book. It really has meant a lot to me. And I appreciate you and I appreciate the conversations. Well, I appreciate that. And I was so flattered that you were willing to have me do this because I feel like most of the learning that I've done from your work has been outside of interaction with you. It's been reading your books. It's been watching your TED Talks. It's been listening to your podcasts. And so to have a chance to talk to you about the book right after I finished reading Strong ground was, it was a treat for me. And I think, I don't know if you remember this, but the first time we met, it must've been 2014. I want to say we were, we were speaking at the same event and you're in a green room and I walked in. I was like, I don't belong here. I had massive imposter syndrome. Like I, I should not be talking to Brene Brown. She's too big of a deal. And I remember, I remember being so uncomfortable and then thinking, but she's all about courage, so I need to have this conversation. And if that version of me had known that we were going to have a conversation like the series that we've just done, I think I would have been speechless. But you are amazing at making me feel like I do belong, and I appreciate that. More importantly, I think there is so much insight in this book. I think it's a book that people need to reread because I think on a first read, there are so many rich ideas in it that prioritization could be a challenge. And I've already started to use it as a bit of a reference and say, okay, I need to go back to The Empathy Misses and look at those because I'm really failing on two of these. I need to revisit the chapter on paradox because I'm fighting against two things that actually have to be handled in tension. And so I think Strong Ground is a book that people are going to rely on over and over again. I really appreciate it. And thank you for being a part of the book. Thank you for being a part of the conversation. And thanks for hanging with me as I struggled through real-time learnings in our conversations. I'm already thinking, if I could suck back all the copies of Strong Ground, I'd like to add like four paragraphs, which is not something the book needs. It's already, it's hefty enough. Save it for the next book. Save it for the next book. We'll save it. Maybe we'll do some podcasts in the future because this is too fun for me. I always look forward to a conversation with you. And I think in the spirit of paradox, the sequel to Strong Ground should be called Weak Sky. Don't ever write that book. By Adam Grant. I hope no one writes that book. No, I have no one. Me too. But I do, I guess one way I didn't think Strong Ground would show up for me is I hope it is foundational for people in terms of changing their minds. Like I've already changed my mind about some things that I wrote. And not that the conclusion is different, but there's a lot of nuance under some of these things that we got underneath in these conversations that I think will make me a better leader and a better person. So I'm grateful for that. Well, I'm always excited to be part of rethinking as it happens in real time. And I think I'm just excited to see all the impact the book is going to have on people both in their professional lives and in their personal lives. Well, thank you. Adam Grant, folks. Thank you so much. As we come to the end of these six episodes, I just have to say that I'm so grateful for Adam and the conversations that we've had about Strong Ground. I appreciate the learning, the unlearning, the knowing, the unknowing, and the rumbles. Stay tuned for the next two weeks while I answer your questions about Strong Ground in a two-part Ask Me Anything. Looking forward to it. Dare to Lead is produced by Brene Brown Education and Research Group. Music is by The Sufferers. Get new episodes as soon as they're published by following Dare to Lead on your favorite podcast app. We are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcasts.voxmedia.com.