Adam Grant

Adam Grant
  • The Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management
  • Professor of Psychology

Contact Information

Research Interests: generosity and helping, job design and meaningful work, leadership and culture, originality and non-conformity, work motivation and success

Links: CV, Personal Website, TED talk: Are you a giver or a taker?, TED talk: The surprising habits of original thinkers

Overview

Adam Grant has been recognized as Wharton’s top-rated professor for seven straight years. As an organizational psychologist, he is a leading expert on how we can find motivation and meaning, and live more generous and creative lives. He has been recognized as one of the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers and Fortune’s 40 under 40.

​Adam is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 5 books that have sold millions of copies and been translated into 35 languages: Think Again, Give and Take, Originals, Option B, and Power Moves. His books have been named among the year’s best by Amazon, Apple, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

He hosts WorkLife, a chart-topping TED original podcast. His TED talks on original thinkers and givers and takers have been viewed more than 25 million times. He received a standing ovation at TED in 2016 and was voted the audience’s favorite speaker at The Nantucket Project. His speaking and consulting clients include Google, the NBA, Bridgewater, and the Gates Foundation. He writes on work and psychology for the New York Times, has served on the Defense Innovation Board at the Pentagon, and has been honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He has more than 4 million followers on social media and features new insights in his free monthly newsletter, GRANTED.

Adam received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and his B.A. from Harvard University. He has received awards for distinguished scholarly achievement from the Academy of Management, the American Psychological Association, and the National Science Foundation, and been recognized as one of the world’s most-cited, most prolific, and most influential researchers in business and economics. He is a former magician and Junior Olympic springboard diver. For more details, see www.adamgrant.net

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Research

  • Justin Berg, Amy Wrzesniewski, Adam Grant, Jennifer Kurkoski, Brian Welle (2022), Getting Unstuck: The Effects of Growth Mindsets About the Self and Job on Happiness at Work, Journal of Applied Psychology, 108 (1), pp. 152-166.

    Abstract: Past research on growth mindsets has focused on the benefits of viewing the self as flexible rather than fixed. We propose that employees can make more substantial agentic changes to their work experiences if they also hold growth mindsets about their job designs. We introduce the concept of dual-growth mindset-viewing both the self and job as malleable-and examine its impact on employee happiness over time. We hypothesize that fostering a dual-growth mindset yields relatively durable gains in happiness, while fostering a growth mindset about either the self or job is insufficient for sustainable increases in happiness. We tested these predictions using two experimental studies: a field quasi-experiment in a Fortune 500 technology company and a controlled experiment with employees in a variety of organizations and occupations. Across the two experiments, fostering dual-growth mindset yielded gains in self-reported and observer-rated happiness that lasted at least 6 months. Fostering growth mindsets about either the self or job alone did not generate lasting increases in happiness. Supplementary mediation analyses suggest dual-growth mindsets boosted happiness by enabling employees to plan more substantial job crafting. Our research suggests that durable gains in happiness at work depend on holding flexible mindsets about the job, not only the self.

  • Constantinos Coutifaris and Adam Grant (2021), Taking Your Team Behind the Curtain: The Effects of Leader Feedback-Sharing and Feedback-Seeking on Team Psychological Safety, Organization Science, forthcoming ().

  • Jihae Shin and Adam Grant (2020), When putting work off pays off: The curvilinear relationship between procrastination and creativity, Academy of Management Journal.

    Abstract: Although it is widely assumed that procrastination is counterproductive, delaying task progress may have hidden benefits for creativity. Drawing on theories of incubation, we propose that moderate procrastination can foster creativity when employees have the intrinsic motivation and opportunity to generate new ideas. In two experiments in the U.S., we tempted participants to engage in varying degrees of procrastination by making different numbers of funny YouTube videos easily accessible while they were supposed to be solving business problems. Participants generated more creative ideas in the moderate rather than low or high procrastination conditions. This curvilinear effect was partially mediated by problem restructuring and the activation of new knowledge. We constructively replicated and extended the curvilinear effect in a field study with Korean employees: procrastination predicted lower task efficiency, but had an inverted-U-shaped relationship with creativity. Employees who procrastinated moderately received higher creativity ratings from their supervisors than employees who procrastinated more or less, provided that intrinsic motivation or creative requirement was high. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for time management, creativity, and motivation in organizations.

  • Jihae Shin and Adam Grant (2019), Bored by interest: Intrinsic motivation in one task can reduce performance in other tasks, Academy of Management Journal, 62 (), pp. 1-22.

    Abstract: While existing research has demonstrated that intrinsic motivation can increase task performance, jobs are composed of multiple tasks, and it remains to be seen how intrinsic motivation in one task affects performance on other tasks. Drawing on theories of psychological contrast, we hypothesize that high intrinsic motivation in one task reduces performance on less intrinsically motivating tasks. In a field study at a Korean department store, employees with the highest maximum intrinsic motivation in one task had lower average and minimum performance across their other tasks and more performance variance across their tasks. In a laboratory experiment in the U.S., working on a highly intrinsically motivating initial task led participants to perform worse in a subsequent task if it was uninteresting but not if it was interesting. This effect was mediated by boredom but not by a range of other psychological processes. Across both studies, moderate intrinsic motivation in one task was associated with better performance in less interesting tasks than high intrinsic motivation, revealing a curvilinear cross-task effect of intrinsic motivation. Our research advances knowledge about the dark side of intrinsic motivation, the design of work, and the drivers of task performance.

  • Edward Chang, Katherine L. Milkman, Dena Gromet, Reb Rebele, Cade Massey, Angela Duckworth, Adam Grant (2019), The Mixed Effects of Online Diversity Training, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (15), pp. 7778-7783.

    Abstract: We present results from a large (n = 3,016) field experiment at a global organization testing whether a brief science-based online diversity training can change attitudes and behaviors toward women in the workplace. Our preregistered field experiment included an active placebo control and measured participants’ attitudes and real workplace decisions up to 20 weeks postintervention. Among groups whose average untreated attitudes—whereas still supportive of women—were relatively less supportive of women than other groups, our diversity training successfully produced attitude change but not behavior change. On the other hand, our diversity training successfully generated some behavior change among groups whose average untreated attitudes were already strongly supportive of women before training. This paper extends our knowledge about the pathways to attitude and behavior change in the context of bias reduction. However, the results suggest that the one-off diversity trainings that are commonplace in organizations are unlikely to be stand-alone solutions for promoting equality in the workplace, particularly given their limited efficacy among those groups whose behaviors policymakers are most eager to influence.

  • Adam Grant, What straight-A students get wrong in The New York Times,.

  • Adam Grant, Those who can do, can’t teach in The New York Times,.

  • Adam Grant, Can your job make you a more controlling parent? in Salon,.

  • Allison Sweet Grant and Adam Grant, The little psychological tricks that will make your marriage happier in Redbook,.

  • Adam Grant, Coax generosity out of your grumpiest coworker in Fast Company,.

Teaching

Adam Grant teaches MBA and undergraduate courses in leadership and teamwork, negotiation, and organizational behavior.

Current Courses (Fall 2024)

  • MGMT2950 - Synchrony At Work

    One of the great barriers to success and happiness is being out of sync. When individuals and groups fail to get on the same page about their missions, values, and routines, their performance and satisfaction suffer. In your career, your progress will depend on your ability to adapt yourself to tasks and cultures—and adapt the context around you to suit your strengths and goals. The purpose of this course is to enrich your knowledge and skills for achieving individual, interpersonal, and collective alignment. The content is evidence-based, and the learning method is experiential. In a diverse and inclusive learning community, you will be challenged to question your assumptions and test your ideas. The focus is on synchrony across a wide range of work settings—not only businesses, but also governments, sports teams, and nonprofits.

    MGMT2950002 ( Syllabus )

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  • MGMT2380 - Organizational Behavior

    Management 2380 is an organizational behavior course, examining individual, interpersonal, and group effectiveness at work. Topics range from decision- making, motivation, and personality to networks, influence, helping, leadership, teamwork, and organizational culture. The learning method is heavily experiential, with a focus on applying key principles to the human side of management in role-play exercises, simulations, a mini-TED talk, and group projects in local organizations. Other Information: This course is open to juniors and seniors across Penn.

  • MGMT2950 - Synchrony at Work

    One of the great barriers to success and happiness is being out of sync. When individuals and groups fail to get on the same page about their missions, values, and routines, their performance and satisfaction suffer. In your career, your progress will depend on your ability to adapt yourself to tasks and cultures—and adapt the context around you to suit your strengths and goals. The purpose of this course is to enrich your knowledge and skills for achieving individual, interpersonal, and collective alignment. The content is evidence-based, and the learning method is experiential. In a diverse and inclusive learning community, you will be challenged to question your assumptions and test your ideas. The focus is on synchrony across a wide range of work settings—not only businesses, but also governments, sports teams, and nonprofits.

  • MGMT6100 - Found of Teamwrk & Ldrsh

    MGMT 610 is the first core course in the MBA Program and it cannot be waived. The first week of the fall term (in August) is dedicated to this formative and foundational experience. This course focuses on developing students' knowledge and skill set for teamwork and leadership. It is meant to be an intense immersion experience that draws strongly on the pedagogy of the Wharton Teamwork and Leadership Simulation, a team-based, highly interactive simulation that was custom-designed specifically to allow students to experience the core concepts they learn in this class. The three goals of this course are for students to learn: 1. Leadership behaviors: how to enact the skills that contribute to a team's effective performance. 2. Team dynamics: how to be an effective team member, as well as how to best design work teams; 3. Organizational awareness: understanding organizational culture. Format: A custom-designed Wharton-only simulation is paired with course sessions to deliver a unique learning experience. Classes will include experiental learning combined with debriefings, lectures, readings, class discussion and personal and group performance feedback. This course reflects the realities that informal leadership occurs in teams on an ongoing basis, that being a good team player is a part of leadership, and that many of one's early experiences with leadership will occur while working on teams. Because of the team-based nature of this course, and time intensive nature of this experience, attendance is mandatory for ALL five sessions of this class.

  • PPE3999 - Independent Study

    Student arranges with a faculty member to pursue a research project on a suitable topic. For more information about research and setting up independent studies, visit: https://ppe.sas.upenn.edu/study/curriculum/independent-studies

In the News

Knowledge at Wharton

Wharton Stories

Activity

Latest Research

Justin Berg, Amy Wrzesniewski, Adam Grant, Jennifer Kurkoski, Brian Welle (2022), Getting Unstuck: The Effects of Growth Mindsets About the Self and Job on Happiness at Work, Journal of Applied Psychology, 108 (1), pp. 152-166.
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In the News

How to Make Your Team Smarter

Wharton's Adam Grant explains how leaders can unlock the hidden potential of their teams.…Read More

Knowledge at Wharton - 12/15/2023
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Wharton Magazine

Adam Grant on How to Reach New Heights
Wharton Magazine - 10/20/2023

Wharton Stories

Two people are shaking hands, symbolizing agreement or partnership in a professional setting.The Key to Becoming a Better Leader? Question Your Assumptions

When Wharton Professor Adam Grant sat down to write his new book, “Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know,” he wanted to make the case for why executives should reconsider their approaches to how to manage people in a modern workplace and embrace new ideas, based on…

Wharton Stories - 05/14/2021
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