00:00:02
i'm adam grant i'm here with brian
00:00:03
little who teaches at cambridge he's
00:00:05
also a senior fellow here at the wharton
00:00:06
school
00:00:07
he's a personality psychologist and the
00:00:09
author of me myself and us
00:00:10
a wonderful new book and it's not every
00:00:13
day that i actually get to interview my
00:00:14
mentor on camera
00:00:16
brian for starters tell us about your
00:00:17
book the book
00:00:19
actually grew out of experiences you and
00:00:21
i had
00:00:22
uh which were at harvard a few years ago
00:00:27
i had stumbled upon
00:00:30
the opportunity of teaching a class and
00:00:33
as the class sort of went on after a few
00:00:35
days it got bigger
00:00:36
and then bigger and i thought oh isn't
00:00:39
this wonderful all the students are
00:00:40
coming but in fact
00:00:42
it was the ex-boyfriends of some of the
00:00:45
students in the class were coming
00:00:47
because there seemed to be something
00:00:49
that touched their
00:00:51
their hearts and let them think that
00:00:54
there was something of value here beyond
00:00:56
the classroom that may actually
00:00:57
influence
00:00:58
their lives and then it started to
00:01:00
happen that
00:01:01
the parents would come and and
00:01:03
belligerent uncles and things like that
00:01:06
and so i thought in about the year 2000
00:01:08
that it would be a good eye
00:01:09
it would be a good idea to write a book
00:01:13
that would engage with those people
00:01:14
who weren't taking personality
00:01:16
psychology as
00:01:18
an academic course but as a way of
00:01:20
illuminating
00:01:21
their lives and understanding the people
00:01:23
they love and work with
00:01:25
i remember sending every one of my
00:01:26
roommates actually forcing them to take
00:01:28
your course
00:01:29
and everything i remember that too i i
00:01:32
of course got repaid for that by them
00:01:33
coming back and diagnosing all of my
00:01:35
problems and pathologies which i suppose
00:01:37
i deserved
00:01:38
but one of the most interesting things
00:01:39
we learned about in the course was this
00:01:41
idea of free traits
00:01:42
talk to us about that thank you i think
00:01:45
the the the setup to this
00:01:46
is that right now the study of traits is
00:01:49
in
00:01:49
the ascendancy as as you know there was
00:01:52
a time when trait psychology was
00:01:55
was in deep trouble and it was uh as a
00:01:58
result of
00:01:59
walter michelle's 1968 book uh
00:02:01
personality and assessment
00:02:03
where uh he drew the the conclusion that
00:02:08
stable traits of personality were
00:02:10
non-existent he's modified that position
00:02:12
more recently but at the time it dealt
00:02:15
quite a blow to the to the field
00:02:17
in the um in the ensuing years trait
00:02:20
psychologists
00:02:22
those who study the big five dimensions
00:02:24
of personality
00:02:26
gained regained ascendancy
00:02:29
and it's become i think certainly
00:02:33
the most active field of personality
00:02:36
research
00:02:37
but i have some concerns about it let me
00:02:39
let me tell the essence of
00:02:41
my concerns about about traits
00:02:44
um the big five dimensions um spell out
00:02:47
the acronym ocean
00:02:49
openness conscientiousness extroversion
00:02:52
agreeableness and and neuroticism and
00:02:56
many who study traits believe that we
00:02:58
can be adequately and effectively
00:03:00
described
00:03:01
by our status on those five dimensions
00:03:04
and i think there's some truth to that
00:03:06
and i lecture as you know
00:03:07
um about these in in the book i uh spend
00:03:11
a couple of chapters
00:03:12
talking about these relatively fixed
00:03:15
traits of personality
00:03:16
and perhaps the most um topical
00:03:20
and hot topic is is that of um
00:03:23
extroversion
00:03:24
largely the result of our mutual friend
00:03:26
susan kane's
00:03:28
uh book quiet and um
00:03:31
one of the which i strongly recommend
00:03:33
your viewers to to read except for
00:03:35
chapter nine
00:03:36
because chapter nine is about the uh
00:03:38
machinations of a strange little
00:03:40
canadian
00:03:41
uh guy who taught at harvard for a few
00:03:43
years uh who used to hide from the
00:03:45
students in the washroom
00:03:47
and um i and i explained that behavior i
00:03:51
guess it's somebody very similar to me
00:03:53
and um it i explained that behavior by
00:03:56
invoking the notion of free traits
00:03:58
i am and this surprises my students um
00:04:01
a very introverted person i'm off the
00:04:04
bottom of the scale
00:04:05
as an introvert but because of something
00:04:08
that matters dearly to me
00:04:10
which is a personal project to
00:04:11
professing with passion
00:04:13
and alliterating in a public place i
00:04:17
i will act as an extrovert when i'm
00:04:20
lecturing i'll speak
00:04:22
loudly as as you do when you're
00:04:24
addressing a class at the beginning
00:04:26
i'll gesticulate wildly i hope not too
00:04:29
wildly
00:04:30
wildly because i think we need to not to
00:04:33
be overbearing when we're professing
00:04:35
but we need to keep students awake at
00:04:38
eight in the morning
00:04:40
and so i act like that and i'm engaged
00:04:42
in what i call a free trade
00:04:44
um and much of me myself and us the book
00:04:47
deals with how free trait behavior
00:04:49
differs from trait behavior or fixed
00:04:52
trade
00:04:52
behavior and the free trade of in my
00:04:55
case
00:04:56
pseudo extra version plays out by
00:04:58
advancing my core project
00:05:00
which is engaging with my students whom
00:05:02
i love
00:05:03
um and and it advances
00:05:07
that core project in ways that will
00:05:09
redown to my benefit
00:05:11
but there are potential costs i'm not
00:05:13
rare many people
00:05:14
act out of character through free trades
00:05:17
there are
00:05:18
highly agreeable people who for all of
00:05:20
the month of march
00:05:22
act out of character because they're
00:05:24
trying to
00:05:25
get a better place for their mother in a
00:05:28
care home
00:05:29
and they have to bash down the doors of
00:05:32
administrative
00:05:33
um resistance and an advance a project
00:05:38
take care of mom that enjoins that
00:05:40
person to act in a disagreeable way
00:05:43
we can do this it's called
00:05:44
professionalism it's also called
00:05:47
love but we may pay a price
00:05:50
if we act protractedly act out of
00:05:52
character
00:05:53
um for uh for a long period the the
00:05:56
empirical evidence on that is still
00:05:58
growing
00:05:58
i'd say right now it's mixed but uh
00:06:01
there is
00:06:03
growing evidence that acting in ways
00:06:05
that go against your first nature
00:06:07
as i call it may um may be problematic
00:06:10
at the same time
00:06:11
as it advances our well-being so when we
00:06:13
take this into the workplace
00:06:15
one of the things that you touched on is
00:06:16
this idea that we all have personal
00:06:17
projects
00:06:19
these commitments that we make to
00:06:20
courses of action that matter deeply to
00:06:22
us
00:06:23
how can an understanding of the personal
00:06:25
projects the people
00:06:26
i work with enable us to work more
00:06:28
effectively together
00:06:29
well i think it it offers an explanation
00:06:33
for their action
00:06:34
in ways that simply monitoring or
00:06:37
attending to their
00:06:38
their outward invisible behavior would
00:06:41
not
00:06:42
um i think we can watch a person who is
00:06:46
engaged in a pattern of behavior that
00:06:48
makes us say that person is neurotic
00:06:50
um and therefore i may write that person
00:06:53
down because
00:06:54
he appears to be anxious when dealing
00:06:56
with clients but in fact that person may
00:06:59
be engaged in a personal project
00:07:01
that um is entirely explicable by no
00:07:05
by noting what that core project is that
00:07:07
core project
00:07:08
may be that i've got to pick up my kid
00:07:12
um he's waiting outside in the cold um
00:07:16
i know i'm a little distracted and i may
00:07:18
give the appearance
00:07:19
of not understanding what's going on in
00:07:21
this financial
00:07:22
meeting once you understand what a
00:07:25
person's core projects or even ask a
00:07:27
person
00:07:28
how's it going david it puts us in a
00:07:31
position where we can actually treat
00:07:33
humans as humans and that to me is going
00:07:37
to pay
00:07:38
enormous benefits in the long term
00:07:41
now you sort of take a stand in the book
00:07:43
about some more effective and less
00:07:45
effective ways of thinking about
00:07:46
personality and one of the more popular
00:07:48
ones of course is the myers-briggs type
00:07:50
indicator
00:07:51
which you've been observing for almost
00:07:52
half a century now yes um where do you
00:07:54
stand on that as an assessment
00:07:55
instrument
00:07:56
um i in the in the book i i take a few
00:08:00
whacks
00:08:00
at the mbti um but then i i
00:08:03
come back and and look at um
00:08:07
the the function that it serves of
00:08:08
getting people to talk
00:08:10
about individual differences in
00:08:11
personality and that's good
00:08:13
i think that it opens up a way of
00:08:16
thinking about each other
00:08:18
uh and thinking about ourselves the
00:08:20
validity and reliability leaves a lot to
00:08:22
be desired from a
00:08:23
hard-nosed psychometrist perspective but
00:08:26
i think it does serve a purpose and so
00:08:29
unlike some of my students who would
00:08:30
totally castigate it
00:08:33
i would say that there is a room for
00:08:35
that but we need to be cautious
00:08:36
and the best example is by invoking free
00:08:39
traits again
00:08:40
that people who walk around with a i am
00:08:42
an extrovert or
00:08:44
i'm uh an intuitive
00:08:47
introvert um sometimes reify
00:08:51
it so much that they actually think that
00:08:53
there's a kind of
00:08:54
neurological circuit in the brain
00:08:58
that declares itself as i am an
00:09:00
extrovert or i am an introvert
00:09:02
and that is palpably false and i think
00:09:04
by
00:09:06
cordoning ourselves off from refutation
00:09:09
by claiming as a core sense of our
00:09:10
identity
00:09:11
that i am an extrovert we
00:09:15
or any of the other myers-briggs
00:09:16
designations
00:09:18
i think we reduce our degrees of freedom
00:09:20
to be fully human
00:09:23
adam let me just use a random name maybe
00:09:26
quite introverted but he could act out
00:09:29
of character and advance the core
00:09:30
projects that matter to him such as his
00:09:32
students at wharton
00:09:34
and and all that is is important but if
00:09:37
he just walked around
00:09:38
with i am an introvert on his forehead
00:09:40
the degrees of freedom would be severely
00:09:42
curtailed
00:09:44
probably my favorite chapter in the book
00:09:45
was the one about self-monitoring which
00:09:47
i think captures some of the the
00:09:49
fundamental questions around
00:09:51
when do some people essentially end up
00:09:54
adapting to the situation
00:09:56
whereas others choose to say this is who
00:09:58
i am yeah talk to us a little bit about
00:10:00
what we should know about
00:10:01
self-monitoring
00:10:01
self-monitoring um boomed in the in the
00:10:05
70s with mark snyder's work
00:10:07
and i sort of revisited and tried to
00:10:09
cast it in terms of
00:10:10
of the whole issue of fidelity
00:10:15
to to our beliefs and
00:10:18
um and and authenticity and the current
00:10:21
debate about authenticity
00:10:23
um high self-monitors are those who will
00:10:26
adapt themselves to the uh
00:10:27
to the to the current situation so at a
00:10:30
party they will act party at a funeral
00:10:32
they were
00:10:33
act funeral um and
00:10:36
um and those who are low
00:10:39
self-monitors will shape their behavior
00:10:42
to accord
00:10:45
the high self monitors will shape their
00:10:47
behavior to accord uh to the situation
00:10:49
the low self monitors will
00:10:51
act on the basis of their own um beliefs
00:10:54
and their own personality traits and so
00:10:56
if they're feeling particularly funerial
00:10:58
at
00:10:59
party a low self-monitor says well
00:11:00
that's the way i am
00:11:02
i like to be glum at a party
00:11:05
uh the high soft monitor would say good
00:11:07
god it's a party
00:11:09
why are you standing by the coffin
00:11:11
staring at it i mean
00:11:12
um you've got to shape yourself up by
00:11:16
adapting to the situation to which the
00:11:18
low self-monitor says
00:11:20
i don't get it why
00:11:23
people who are stand-up chameleons have
00:11:26
no character
00:11:28
and those who are high self monitors
00:11:29
will say those who are rigidly
00:11:32
themselves have no humanity
00:11:34
because they're insensitive to the needs
00:11:37
of others
00:11:38
and so the conclusion i reach after
00:11:40
giving a bunch of the research
00:11:41
in this area is that i think on balance
00:11:45
high self-monitoring is very adaptive
00:11:49
as long as it doesn't blend itself
00:11:52
into what's called aesthetic character
00:11:55
disorder
00:11:56
where you are so imbued with the
00:11:59
um with the demands of the situation or
00:12:02
the delights or the aesthetics of the
00:12:04
situation
00:12:05
that you will act in ways that go
00:12:07
against your core values
00:12:09
and there have been some politicians who
00:12:12
have been accused of having
00:12:13
ascetic character disorder and i think
00:12:16
that
00:12:17
it in turn blends into a kind
00:12:21
of insensitivity that can be downright
00:12:24
downright dangerous in closing
00:12:27
we often think that great leaders are
00:12:30
great teachers
00:12:31
and i think it would be great to hear a
00:12:33
little bit of wisdom on what we can
00:12:34
learn from
00:12:35
one of the true great teachers you won
00:12:37
canada's highest award for university
00:12:39
teaching
00:12:40
you were the one of the favorite
00:12:41
professors of the harvard class every
00:12:43
year you taught there
00:12:44
um what can leaders learn from the way
00:12:45
that you teach in the classroom oh
00:12:47
first thank you um i've been giving a
00:12:51
lot of thought to this recently
00:12:53
um and part of it was stimulated by
00:12:56
by your own work uh and by the
00:12:59
evidence that uh introverts can be
00:13:03
good are good listeners
00:13:07
and that balance between
00:13:12
talking and listening asserting
00:13:16
and reflecting and the capacity to shift
00:13:18
between them
00:13:19
seems to be really critical so i don't
00:13:22
think that there is a
00:13:23
one size fits all personality type for
00:13:27
leaders
00:13:28
i think there's a there are diverse set
00:13:30
of factors
00:13:32
the key aspect of which is the ability
00:13:35
to choose
00:13:38
select and empower
00:13:41
the most virtuous forms of your own
00:13:43
personality
00:13:44
the capacity to listen the capacity to
00:13:47
say i've
00:13:48
listened i must act the capacity to show
00:13:52
alacrity moving in and dealing with the
00:13:55
situation instead of puzzling and
00:13:57
all hamlet-like and not being sure
00:14:00
but overdoing one or the other i think
00:14:02
leads to
00:14:03
to problems uh both personal and
00:14:07
and political thank you brian thank you
00:14:14
adam
00:14:34
you
