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Tag: Adam Grant

  • Why Adam Grant Recommends Giving Bad Interview Candidates Another Shot

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    Business owners, hiring managers, and applicants have all experienced job interviews that started going south at some point, and kept grinding downward from there. But organizational psychologist Adam Grant says even recruiting exchanges that seem to offer neither side much reason to continue may hold opportunities to uncover the hidden capabilities of flub-prone candidates — if they’re handled correctly.

    The best-selling author and professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of business underlined the hiring potentials in what otherwise appear to be no-hope job interview scenarios. Speaking at the WOBI World Business Forum in New York last week, Grant urged company owners and HR executives yearning to pull the plug on unimpressive exchanges with sputtering candidates to instead give them a second chance to demonstrate hidden capabilities. Ideally, that would involve a follow-up encounter with the struggling applicant, conducted from a different angle that they may respond better to.

    The point,t, Grant said, is for interviewing executives to identify and repurpose the very areas job candidates had been stumbling on to see if they can overcome those during a second chance. The reason that’s worthwhile, Grant said, is that research has shown “how well somebody does a job is not indicated by how the first interview goes, it’s how much growth they show from the first interview to the second,” according to CNBC’s coverage of his presentation.

    Aware that many business owners and human resources managers won’t have the scheduling flexibility to call a hapless applicant in for a second interview, Grant offered a workaround requiring far less time and organization.

    “Even if you could pause an interview halfway and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a couple of notes for you,’ and then watch the motivation and ability to grow from the first attempt to the second, that is a great window into ‘is somebody excited to get better,’ and also ‘do they have the capability to learn the skills that you’re trying to get them to excel at?’” Grant told the audience, CNBC reported.

    The key to offering that second chance, Grant explained, is giving flailing candidates a task directly related to the job they’re vying for. That will not only require both the applicant and interviewer to focus on skills the position involves. But it also creates the opportunity for potential recruits to demonstrate their capacity for bouncing back while proving abilities performing the work.

    The extra effort, Grant said, will spare employers from “missing diamonds in the rough.”

    The strategy springs from Grant’s own pre-Wharton near-miss experience, while working in advertising and hiring people for sales positions. He recounted one applicant he described as “the worst fit for sales imaginable,” particularly in refusing to make eye contact. “I didn’t know a thing about neurodivergence then,” Grant noted.

    But his reaction also overlooked a key employment detail that Grant’s boss soon reminded him about.

    “You realize this is a phone sales job, right?” the company president asked him, presumably from beneath sharply arched eyebrows. “There is no eye contact in this job.”

    As a result, Grant called the all the applicants back in and gave them a task related to the sales jobs being filled, and using a reference they’d all be familiar with: a rotten apple. The challenge was for candidates to convincingly sell Grant on the idea of buying the withering fruit.

    The person he’d scratched off his list for not making eye contact never hesitated, and promptly demonstrated his abilities for the sales job being filled.

    “This may look like a rotten apple; it’s actually an aged, antique apple,” Grant recalled of the nearly axed candidate’s second-chance presentation. “You know the saying ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away?’ Well, because of the nutrients in the aging process, you only need to eat one of these a week. And then afterwards you can plant the seeds in your backyard.”

    Though Grant said he had certain reservations about the ethics of making that exact product pitch, he wound up hiring the candidate — who became the best performer on the sales team. The experience made Grant change his thinking about recruitment beyond the valuable recruit he’d nearly written off.

    “What I learned from that story was not just that I needed to see him in action to gauge his potential… (b)ut also, I needed to give him a do-over,” Grant said before broadening that lesson further, according to CNBC. “I realized I had to reboot our hiring process. If you want to gauge somebody’s potential, the best thing you can do is actually give them a challenge that’s really part of the job and watch how they handle it.”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • Brené Brown and Adam Grant Say The Best Leaders Do This. Mediocre Managers Do the Opposite

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    How can you tell if someone is a great leader? They always want to know more. They’re interested in mastery of a subject or skill. They ask great questions. And, as they find out more, they sometimes change their mind. They’re a “learner.”

    But these days, most CEOs and other leaders take the opposite approach. They think of themselves as “knowers.” They appear to have all the answers. That’s bad for them, their direct reports, and the organizations they lead, according to . That insight comes from researcher and author Brené Brown, and Wharton professor and authr Adam Grant. The two behavior experts had an open-ended discussion about the nature of courageous leadership during a recent episode of Grant’s ReThinking podcast.

    Being a learner seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years, Brown observed. “That’s not going to serve us right now,” she said. “When I talk to senior leaders all over the world, they’re saying, ‘Boy, it’s really problematic when people come in and they act like they know everything. What I’m looking for are candidates who have exquisite questions and are really hungry to solve the problem.’ And so I think we have to shift the thinking there a lot.”

    Great leaders ask great questions.

    Both Brown and Grant believe that asking the right questions is a powerful leadership skill that’s much more important than knowing all the answers. “If I go into an organization, I’ll spend three weeks just asking questions,” Brown said. “I’ll look at a CEO and say, ‘What’s on your heart and mind? If you sit up straight in bed at four o’clock in the morning, what are you worried about?’”

    It’s important to ask these sorts of questions when dealing with your employees, as well as your potential customers, investors, or company leadership, Grant added. “So many people, when they try to motivate someone, they project their own motivations onto them. As opposed to saying, ‘If I want to motivate you, I’ve got to know what you value,’” he said.

    Once you get answers to your questions, the most important next step is what Brown calls “the playback.” You repeat back the answer you heard and ask if you have it right. It’s vital for two reasons. First, you may not have heard everything correctly. This gives you a chance to correct anything you misunderstood and catch anything you may have left out.

    Just as important, that question lets you build a connection with the other person. Research shows that in hostage situations, whether people live or die often comes down to two words, she explained. the goal is for the hostage negotiator to repeat back what the hostage taker says, and for the hostage taker to say, “That’s right.”

    “Hardwired to Be Seen and Heard.”

    If it happens, that simple exchange improves the odds of survival for both the hostages and the hostage taker, Brown said. “As a human being, we are neurobiologically hardwired to be seen and heard.” It’s another reason why asking the right questions, and being willing to listen, learn new information, and even change your mind, are some of the most important skills a leader can have.

    There’s a growing audience of Inc.com readers who receive a daily text from me with a self-care or motivational micro-challenge or tip. Often, they text me back and we wind up in a conversation. (Want to know more? It’s easy to try it out and you can easily cancel anytime. Here’s some information about the texts and a special invitation to a two-month free trial.) Many of my subscribers are entrepreneurs or business leaders. They know how important it is to always keep learning throughout their careers. Knowing how to ask the right questions and then repeat back the answers is a good place to start

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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    Minda Zetlin

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  • Science Says You Can Tell in 5 Minutes if Someone Isn’t Nearly as Smart as They Think: the ‘Cynical Genius Illusion’

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    A guy I know is the ultimate devil’s advocate. Have an idea? He instantly has reasons it won’t work. Have a belief? He instantly has reasons it’s unfounded. Enjoy something? He instantly critiques it to within an inch of its life. He’s quick. He’s sharp. He’s insightful.

    He’s extremely intelligent.

    Or not.

    According to a study of over 200,000 people published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (aptly titled “The Cynical Genius Illusion”), while conventional wisdom holds that cynical people — people who tend to be doubtful that something is worthwhile or will happen — are smarter, wiser, and “cognitively superior,” they actually tend to do worse on cognitive ability tests and academic competency tests.

    Turns out the opposite is true: The more cynical you are, the less intellectually competent you’re likely to be. People who have poor reasoning skills are more likely to assume the worst in human nature. More likely to assume that people are selfish and untrustworthy. Are more likely to see conspiracies where there are none, to reflexively assume belief is unfounded, to believe that almost nothing could actually be what it appears to be.

    As the researchers write:

    Our results revealed that laypeople tend to endorse the “cynical genius” belief — that is, believed that cynical individuals would do better on a variety of cognitive tasks and cognitive ability tests than their less cynical counterparts.
    (In fact), cynical individuals are likely to do worse rather than better on cognitive tasks, cognitive abilities and competencies tests, and tend to be less educated than less cynical individuals.

    Why? For one thing, as Adam Grant points out in this podcast episode with Matthew McConaughey, assuming the worst in others is a form of protection. Guarding yourself against the worst in others — whether people, or organizations, or beliefs, or anything — keeps you safe.

    For another, taking a cynical position is easy. It’s a lot simpler, and a lot less risky, to say why something won’t work. It’s a lot easier to judge than understand, much less embrace.

    Plus, statements like, “Trust me, the risk outweighs the rewards,” appear to carry the weight of experience. Saying, “You know, that might be worth trying”? Since experience — or implied knowledge — can’t play a part, a statement like that sounds more like a guess.

    And then there’s this: A Journal of Personality and Social Psychology study shows we tend to pay more attention and give much greater weight to negative experiences. As brain scans reveal, negative events are quickly stored in your long-term memory, but research shows you need to actively think about positive events for 12 seconds or more in order for them to be transferred to long-term memory.

    In short, it’s easy to be cynical, to latch on to the negatives instead of considering potential positives, both because it’s safer and because we’re built that way.

    All of which is a problem.

    Take deciding whether to invest in new businesses or initiatives; a study published in Management Science shows that people are more swayed by negative views than positive ones. While evaluators lower their scores by more points after seeing scores more critical than their own, they don’t raise them after seeing more favorable scores. 

    Negative clearly seemed smarter than positive, which leads to protecting against failure — instead of seeking to maximize success.

    The next time someone immediately shoots down an idea, don’t assume they’re smart.

    More important, the next time an idea sounds interesting to you, don’t immediately assume you’re wrong.

    Or less intelligent.

    As Jeff Bezos says, “The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.”

    And are smart enough to realize that never trying something new means never experiencing, enjoying, or achieving anything new. 

    Which is a pretty sucky way to live.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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    Jeff Haden

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  • This Startup Has Built an Algorithm to Pay Creators for Their Work Used to Train A.I.

    This Startup Has Built an Algorithm to Pay Creators for Their Work Used to Train A.I.

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    Some startups are exploring the revenue-sharing model to solve A.I.’s growing IP dilemma. Alex Shuper/Unsplash

    OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has come under fire from publishers and artists who alleged the company scraped their work from the internet to train GPT, its large language model, without their consent. These concerns have sparked lawsuits against the A.I. giant on accusations of copyright infringement, highlighting a major ethical dilemma that comes with pushing A.I.’s capabilities forward. Some startups are exploring a solution that focuses on sharing revenue with content creators. In August, Perplexity AI, an A.I.-powered search engine, introduced a program to pay publishers a portion of ad revenue generated by search queries if their content informs its outputs. ProRata.ai, a startup founded by a pioneer of the early internet monetization model, is developing a similar algorithm to compensate publishers, authors and other creators whose work is used to train generative A.I.

    ProRata claims it has created an algorithm that can review an A.I.-generated output, identify the source of information based on novel facts and textual styles, and calculate how much each source contributed to the response. These percentages are then used to cut checks to these creators at the end of every month—a model that, in theory, could help protect the livelihoods of creatives and prevent future lawsuits around intellectual property. 

    “If you don’t share, then creativity is unsustainable. There’s no way for you to make a living,” ProRata’s co-founder and CEO Bill Gross told Observer regarding the careers of artists. Gross is credited as the inventor of the pay-per-click monetization model for internet search with a company he founded in the late 1990s that was later acquired by Yahoo, according to ProRata’s website. 

    The startup, which raised $25 million from venture capital firms Mayfield Fund, Prime Movers Lab, Revolution Ventures and IdeaLab Studio in a series A funding round in August, is set to showcase the algorithm through an A.I.-powered search engine expected to release in October. Starting at $19 a month, the engine will monetize queries through advertisements and subscription payments, according to Gross. While 50 percent of the revenue generated will go to ProRata, the other half will be split proportionately across creators. 

    ProRata’s ultimate goal isn’t to create an alternative to Google Search, but to introduce a new business model that search engines could adopt to ensure creators get paid for their contributions to A.I. “We want to make that the industry standard,” Gross said. While A.I. search features from Google and Microsoft’s Bing don’t directly share ad revenue with publishers, they refer users to links from publishers as a way to drive traffic to their sites.

    The answer engine will only be trained on data from creators who partner with ProRata. That means the model will draw from a limited amount of data that could potentially compromise the accuracy of outputs. Still, ProRata isn’t focused on making its A.I. search engine a standalone product but rather on having the pay-per-use model adopted by major search engines.

    So far, the company has inked deals with publishers like The Atlantic, Fortune, Financial Times, Time, and Axel Springer, the German company that owns Politico and Business Insider. Authors like Walter Isaacson, Adam Grant, and Ian Bremmer have also agreed, as have music industry veterans like Universal Music Group. ProRata hasn’t encountered any resistance or skepticism from its partners yet, according to Gross. “Most people just want us to be wildly successful so they’ll get a paycheck,” the CEO said. The real challenge, he notes, is convincing Big Tech companies who’ve been crawling web data for free to adopt ProRata’s business model.

    “It’s amazing to me that some of the people think that crawling is not stealing,” Gross said. “Basically, Mustafa, the CEO of Microsoft A.I., came out and said, ‘Hey, if it’s available on the web, it’s free for us to use.’ And that’s just bullshit,” Gross added, referring to comments made by Google Deepmind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman during a CNBC interview in July when asked if training A.I. models on web content is akin to intellectual property theft. “Just because something is available and visible doesn’t mean it’s open source,” Gross said.

    ProRata.ai CEO Bill GrossProRata.ai CEO Bill Gross
    ProRata.ai CEO Bill Gross. Andres Castaneda

    Paying creators may be a temporary “Band-Aid” solution

    Financial compensation may not fully address the ethical concerns of having a creator’s work used for A.I. training without explicit permission, according to Star Kashman, a tech lawyer and partner at Cyber Law Firm with expertise in digital copyright law. She cites actress Scarlett Johansson as an example, who allegedly refused to give OpenAI permission to use her voice for ChatGPT despite financial offers. 

    “Many authors and creators have personal, moral objections to their work being utilized for A.I. training, regardless of compensation,” Kashman told Observer. “Without explicit permission, paying creators may be a temporary ‘Band-Aid’ solution, but it may not be an all-encompassing resolution to deeper concerns about consent and the impact on creative works.” 

    The “pay-per-use” model could also potentially lead to a new crop of legal issues. Creators may disagree over whether the payment they receive “accurately reflects” what they contributed to the A.I. systems, especially if they can’t set their own rates, Kashman said. Moreover, A.I. tools may favor the work of bigger, more established creators over smaller ones even if their content is more relevant to a particular query, similar to how search engine optimization (SEO) works. Compensation may also not fully protect A.I. companies from being sued for intellectual property theft, which she said could be easier to prove in court with concrete attribution. 

    “​​There will continue to be many IP cases until the Copyright Act is amended to allow scraping on copyrighted content for the purposes of training LLMs,” Gabriel Vincent, another partner at Cyber Law Firm, told Observer, echoing Kashman’s comments. 

    ProRata has plans to diversify its model to include more than just text. After the October launch, the startup will focus on collaborating with music companies, according to Gross. He also hopes to collaborate with video and movie brands as well as smaller, independent creators and plans to license its attribution technology to A.I. companies that can implement it into their own models. 

    “A.I. is so amazing, but it needs to be fair to all parties,” Gross said. 

    This Startup Has Built an Algorithm to Pay Creators for Their Work Used to Train A.I.

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    Aaron Mok

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