Psychologist Adam Grant Talks Leadership and Humility at IOP Forum

Organizational psychologist and University of Pennsylvania professor Adam M. Grant ’03 discussed the importance of intellectual humility in leadership and interpersonal relationships at a Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics forum Thursday.

At the forum, Grant — who is a New York Times bestselling author and host of the “Re:Thinking” podcast, which has featured guests ranging from Sal Khan to Sam Altman — said most fall into the trap of thinking like “preachers, prosecutors, and politicians.”

“In preacher mode, you are basically proselytizing your own views,” he said. “In prosecutor mode, you’re attacking someone else’s views. And in politician mode, you don’t even bother to listen to people unless they already agree with your views.”

“If you’ve already concluded that you’re right and other people are wrong, that means you have closed the door to learning,” Grant added.

To combat such tendencies and practice intellectual humility, Grant said the best strategy is to “think more like a scientist,” adding that scientists are “as motivated to look for reasons why they might be wrong as they are to search for reasons why they must be right.”

During the forum, Grant pointed to several research studies he conducted examining the effects of leading with humility.

In a 2021 research study that examined the effects of self-criticism, Grant found that after leaders had openly criticized themselves, “their teams were more willing to speak up and challenge the status quo.”

Grant said he uses that same self-criticism tactic in his own classroom, mentioning the humorous student criticisms that he receives as a result — like a student who said he “reminded them of a muppet.”

Despite the lighthearted nature of some of the comments, Grant said they play a strong role in his teaching.

“If you can laugh at yourself, it makes it so much easier for other people to be candid with you,” Grant added.

HKS lecturer Hannah Riley Bowles, who moderated the forum, posed a question to Grant about how leaders should develop the skills to “engage across differences.”

In response, Grant pointed to a portion of his book “Think Again” that mentions a survey he ran, in which he tested the impacts of counterfactual thinking on Boston Red Sox fans.

“We asked Red Sox and Yankee fans to just imagine that their parents had happened to plant roots in a different city,” Grant said. “Who would you root for?”

After considering they could have conceivably been on the other side, the study participants showed to be less likely to “spike fans of the opposing team with painfully hot hot sauce.”

In the study, Grant then moved on to more divisive issues, such as debates on gun control or abortion, to prompt people with opposing beliefs to imagine they had been raised in a different environment.

The study found that participants were “less likely to eviscerate” those who disagreed.

“We don’t always need to walk in other people’s shoes,” Grant said. “Sometimes we’re not willing to do that, but we can ask, ‘Could this have been me?’”