Think Again Quotes

“What stands in the way of rethinking isn’t the expression of emotion; it’s a restricted range of emotion.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“What works is not perspective-taking but perspective-seeking: actually talking to people to gain insight into the nuances of their views. That’s what good scientists do: instead of drawing conclusions about people based on minimal clues, they test their hypotheses by striking up conversations.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“the quest for knowledge is never finished.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“The more reasons we put on the table, the easier it is for people to discard the shakiest one. Once they reject one of our justifications, they can easily dismiss our entire case. That happened regularly to the average negotiators: they brought too many different weapons to battle. They lost ground not because of the strength of their most compelling point, but because of the weakness of their least compelling one.”
― Adam Grant, Think again: the power of knowing what you don’t know

“Confident humility doesn’t just open our minds to rethinking—it improves the quality of our rethinking”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Arrogance is ignorance plus conviction,”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“A fundamental lesson of desirability bias is that our beliefs are shaped by our motivations. What we believe depends on what we want to believe.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Part of the beauty of motivational interviewing is that it generates more openness in both directions. Listening can encourage others to reconsider their stance toward us, but it also gives us information that can lead us to question our own views about them. If we take the practices of motivational interviewing seriously, we might become the ones who think again.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“There’s a fourth technique of motivational interviewing, which is often recommended for the end of a conversation and for transition points: summarizing. The idea is to explain your understanding of other people’s reasons for change, to check on whether you’ve missed or misrepresented anything, and to inquire about their plans and possible next steps.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“there’s another reason stereotypes are so sticky. We tend to interact with people who share them, which makes them even more extreme. This phenomenon is called group polarization,”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“An informed audience is going to spot the holes in our case anyway. We might as well get credit for having the humility to look for them, the foresight to spot them, and the integrity to acknowledge them.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“A few years ago, I argued in my book Originals that if we want to fight groupthink, it helps to have “strong opinions, weakly held.” Since then I’ve changed my mind—I now believe that’s a mistake. If we hold an opinion weakly, expressing it strongly can backfire. Communicating it with some uncertainty signals confident humility, invites curiosity, and leads to a more nuanced discussion.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Experiments show that simply framing a dispute as a debate rather than as a disagreement signals that you’re receptive to considering dissenting opinions and changing your mind, which in turn motivates the other person to share more information with you. A disagreement feels personal and potentially hostile; we expect a debate to be about ideas, not emotions. Starting a disagreement by asking, “Can we debate?” sends a message that you want to think like a scientist, not a preacher or a prosecutor—and encourages the other person to think that way, too.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“If being wrong repeatedly leads us to the right answer, the experience of being wrong itself can become joyful.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“That’s where the best forecasters excelled: they were eager to think again. They saw their opinions more as hunches than as truths—as possibilities to entertain rather than facts to embrace. They questioned ideas before accepting them, and they were willing to keep questioning them even after accepting them. They were constantly seeking new information and better evidence—especially disconfirming evidence.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Yet in a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Psychologists have a name for this: binary bias. It’s a basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories. To paraphrase the humorist Robert Benchley, there are two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Best practices suggest that the ideal routines are already in place. If we want people to keep rethinking the way they work, we might be better off adopting process accountability and continually striving for better practices.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“By admitting some of their imperfections out loud, managers demonstrated that they could take it—and made a public commitment to remain open to feedback. They normalized vulnerability, making their teams more comfortable opening up about their own struggles.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“The standard advice for managers on building psychological safety is to model openness and inclusiveness. Ask for feedback on how you can improve, and people will feel safe to take risks.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“In performance cultures, the emphasis on results often undermines psychological safety.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Edmondson is quick to point out that psychological safety is not a matter of relaxing standards,6 making people comfortable, being nice and agreeable, or giving unconditional praise. It’s fostering a climate of respect, trust, and openness in which people can raise concerns and suggestions without fear of reprisal. It’s the foundation of a learning culture.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Over the past few years, psychological safety has become a buzzword in many workplaces.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“In psychologically unsafe teams, people hid their mishaps to avoid penalties, which made it difficult for anyone to diagnose the root causes and prevent future problems. They kept repeating the same mistakes.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“When she analyzed those data, the results flipped: psychologically safe teams reported more errors, but they actually made fewer errors. By freely admitting their mistakes, they were then able to learn what had caused them and eliminate them moving forward.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“One student put it eloquently: “I need time for my confusion.”31 Confusion can be a cue that there’s new territory to be explored or a fresh puzzle to be solved.32”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“She invited her classmates to write letters to their freshmen selves covering what they wish they had known back then. The students encouraged their younger selves to stay open to different majors, instead of declaring the first one that erased their uncertainty. To be less obsessed with grades, and more focused on relationships. To explore different career possibilities, rather than committing too soon to the one that promised the most pay or prestige.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“In a typical three-hour class, I would spend no more than twenty to thirty minutes lecturing. The rest is active learning—students make decisions in simulations and negotiate in role-plays, and then we debrief, discuss, debate, and problem solve.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“A similar pattern emerged in a study of students who graduated at the top of their class. “Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries,”26 education researcher Karen Arnold explains. “They typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“It turns out that although perfectionists are more likely than their peers to ace school,21 they don’t perform any better than their colleagues at work.22 This tracks with evidence that, across a wide range of industries, grades are not a strong predictor of job performance.23”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know