Adam Grant in conversation with Jennifer Garner at Live Talks Los Angeles

[Music] hi I'm Ted hapt gabber founder and producer of live talks Los Angeles thanks for joining us since we started over a decade ago we have brought you hundreds of conversations with story ERS writers actors musicians humorists chefs and thought leaders in business and science you can watch and hear most of these in our YouTube channel and our podcast for details visit livet talks la.org and now here's the show you've tuned in to [Music] see I do have a text from rain he says the truth is I canceled tonight because I couldn't get through your book Thank You rain Wilson um I felt like we should line up a surprise guest to take rain's place so this morning I S sent a hell Mary to somebody I've admired for I don't know 25 years who I've never met in person who wrote back within an hour and said I got you and rearranged uh a very very busy schedule Post strike uh in order to come here now I should say this person is no Dwight Sho um has never sold paper to my knowledge but uh could destroy Dwight in a martial arts competition judging by several roles this person has mastered and also in addition to being a brilliant award-winning actor is one of the only humans I've ever met with a heart as big as Reigns so ladies and gentlemen thank you for coming tonight and please welcome Jennifer [Applause] Garner hi W thank you that's so nice thank you thank you hi well I'm Jen hi Adam great to meet you hi nice to meet you um eat that rain Wilson yeah my gosh I'm such a fan of his how about his book rain Wilson's book The what was it the soul boom I loved the I loved his book I loved it until he canceled but I still love it I still love it well um your book Adam you see I've come out with all of my my stuff your book has a lot to do with discomfort and I just feel like I should be celebrated as the person who is the most uncomfortable in the room because the time I've spent with this book was the time it took me to drive from the west side but you know what we're going to be fine you guys just hang in we've got Adam Grant here you know I I I understand thank you all I understand that someone melted the free to give you extra reading time which I didn't even know was a thing it's great to be in La yeah we can invent all kinds of ways to [ __ ] up your day wait Jennifer Garner swears only a k don't let it leave this room okay okay I have a I have a reputation to aold here um you know what I'm going to dive in okay guys cuz I'll feel better once I've asked a legitimate question so bear with me we're just going to dive in you start off cuz I did read the [Laughter] prologue something you said early on really [Laughter] hit it's great don't worry okay ah it's it's it says you're a somebody was able to predict the success uccess that students achieved as adults simply by looking at who taught their kindergarten class that's so cool kindergarten teachers are amazing you just see them like tying shoes and wiping noses and Counting lost teeth and but they're they're amazing so can I ask you please Adam Grant um why what is special what is it about kindergarten teachers and tell us about your kindergarten teacher because they must have been bang up thank you I think okay so let's let's start with the data so Raj shed and his colleagues a great team of economists they show that the more experienced kindergarten teachers set you up for adult success not by teaching you cognitive skills first and foremost not by math and reading which they they convey but the edge they give you in that wears off over time what they really instill that matters is are character skills um they teach you to be proactive and pro-social and disciplined and determined um I don't know my kindergarten teacher Serita Baghdad I remember wow um I I remember being really mad we had to do a career day and uh everyone wanted the football player and I got the young executive and I had to walk in with a briefcase and I I walked I walked in like a I looked like a muppet um there's there's a video of it I've watched it and um I forgot the briefcase and I had to be reminded to go back and it was mortifying and that was the beginning of in my fear of public speaking is it really was it really yeah wow well I don't want to freak you out but there are some people here tonight listening to you speak so what was the leap from that to TED talks to blah BL blah blah to this yada yada yada here we are what how did you become comfortable was it because of your kindergarten teacher no it doesn't sound like no what makes you think I'm comfortable you're claiming to be uncomfortable but you do this for a living Jen come on I don't do this for a living I learn my lines dude I don't this is this is not how I show up to set but um okay yeah so I do this for a living but tell me you are so much edgier than you claim to be I love it okay so yeah I I did get more I got less uncomfortable can we go with that okay okay okay so I was it was my first semester at grad school I realized like I'm supposed to be a professor professors profess um I should probably learn to get over my fear of public speaking and I went through all of college where if I even thought about raising my hand I would literally start to shake and so I felt like I had to do something about it and I asked a bunch of my friends if they would let me give guest lectures in their classes don't know why but they said yes and so I I tried to instead of like dipping my toe in the shallow and I was like I'm diving head first into the deep end I'm just going to stand in front of an audience give an hourlong lecture um and suffer through it until I get over my fear wow okay so how did it go not well okay uh there was one student who wrote that I was so nervous I was causing them to physically shake in their seats and so what did you do did you do it again or did your friends start saying no thanks dude or were you making them look good so they were into it no I didn't um I didn't tell anyone that I asked other people so the word didn't get out so I I was able to do a few of these and um it it was it was really uncomfortable for a long time and I guess that was foreshadowing because I don't know three four years later I was in my mid 20s and I got asked by um the Air Force to teach a 4-Hour class on motivation and I'm like this is my only shot to serve my country okay I I will do this but I'm terrified these people are going to be twice my age and they all have um like scary Top Gun nicknames yeah uh they have thousands of flying hours bar they wear bars on their you know yeah I I have no business but I they asked me to do it so I show up and I I literally pour everything I know into four hours four hours dude that's a lot of public speaking it was a lot of time but there were only there were like 50 of them and I got the feedback forms afterward and they were less kind than the students uh one one of the generals wrote more knowledge in the audience than on the podium well and I was like facts yeah that's not obviously I mean come on so what did you learn from from pra from practicing and getting feedback you changed your approach right a little bit so yeah yeah well okay so the since we're still early days I'm still up to date the thing the thing that that uh that I think really moved the needle for me was the the one Colonel who wrote I gained nothing from this session but I trust the instructor got useful Insight so here's the problem I wanted to quit but I had I had committed to do a second session for a different group in the Air Force and I only had a week I didn't have time to reboot my content I couldn't change really any of it except the way I introduced myself so I asked everybody um at the session that I could find like what is the one thing I can do better next time and they said all of them said change the way you introduce her yourself like you're as this kid you're trying to establish your credentials you're trying to prove your expertise and like in the room if you look around Striker and sandune we having none of it yeah so so you got to do something about this and I'm like all right what do I do so you like a movie joke here you can keep that coming okay um that that by the way has exhausted all my pop culture knowledge so uh but there are some people in the audience who can help with that I hope and maybe maybe you can too I don't know uh anyway long story short I walked in the next week and did what went against every fiber of my being I said um I've got to I've got to call out the elephant in the room and admit that I don't know what the hell I'm doing so I walked in I looked out at the audience all these stone-faced uh senior Military Officers and I said look I know what you all are thinking right now what could I possibly learn from a a professor who's 12 years old they did not find that amusing at all at all and then after what felt like an eternity one of them said ah ridiculous you got to be at least 13 and that broke the ice and I had a completely different interaction with them and the feedback was much more positive and I learned that it's much better to admit what I don't know than to claim that I know a lot of stuff oh wow okay that's a good one you got us there didn't you pal okay great great great wait a minute okay so Jen let me let me uh let me turn this around on you because uh you told me backstage that you are MH you are somebody who uh has frequently put yourself in uncomfortable situations yeah I want to hear more about that I want to hear about that in acting I also want to hear about learning to ski as an adult um I feel that way at work all the time I mean I think probably a lot of us do where we we are terrified and that's why we take the job and then we get there and we think why did I do this and you spend kind of of half of your time getting your feet under you and feeling like that's I'm in over my head but wait did you feel that way on Felicity wait is anyone in the audience also old enough to have watched Felicity in college okay my wife and I both love that show and we've been fans of yours ever since we watched it oh my gosh good old Hannah I just rewatched it um recently because there's a Felicity podcast that I needed to know what I had done to talk about it and um you have notes yes as a matter of fact but yes of course I felt that way I I I just I always do I don't think I ever don't I think that's what keeps me interested is that I will never perfect it like men feel about golf or some people feel about golf you know I'll never fully there I know enough things to feel like okay I can Master how to do this like if there's a hallway and there's a door and you want me to enter the door and look back over my my shoulder at camera just before I enter the door to tell you hey I'm sneaking I can do that better than anyone I've got that down that spy kind of stuff I can do it but um other than that I always feel off my rocker but no I I learned to ski at 40 and I had never skied really and that was um I learned on a mountain that didn't have a lot of beginner slopes and that was just constant fear but there was something about it and just Terror and discomfort and rage at myself for being out there at all but something about it made was compelling that I just I wanted to figure it out and so um I was the geek under the ski slope um or under the you know what's it called where the the lift doing doing drills I would do the same run again and again and do a drill 10 times and then be like okay so I've started to get that I'm going to go take a break and then go back out and I don't know so interesting okay so I have to ask ask you um your uh your co-star Ryan Reynolds has said that when he gets nervous he goes into character so like he did all his Deadpool interviews in character as Deadpool apparently um I have this image doesn't he live his life as Deadpool in a little bit of a way I mean you would know I don't know tell us um I have this image of you like going on the skis slope for the first time and being like what would Sydney Bristo do is that what happened Sydney really changed me as a person because she had so much more bravado than I did and she was she believed in herself in a way that I I don't know that I did at that age at that time um yeah walking like her it it affected me it changed it changed me gave me more confidence but anyway we're here to talk about you so I have more questions but keep going okay okay okay can we talk about the the process of writing itself and the process and just the stumble the block of procrastination I mean how do you procrastinate what does it look like for you what's the way past it what's the Magic Bullet so I I've I've gone on the record saying I'm not a procrastinator I'm the opposite I'm a precrastinator when I have a deadline I'm finishing at least three months early maybe six months early and us too right no no no wait this is this is not as great as it seems one because um it made me a really annoying College roomm I I learned the hard way and two um it kills creativity because you rush in with your first idea instead of waiting for your best idea um and a an amazing PhD student m g Shin had to do the research to prove to me that I was stifling my own creativity By Doing Things Early um but I think more importantly I learned while writing this book that I was wrong I am not always a procrastinator there are things I procrastinate on and um one of them is editing I hate editing more than any other part of my job so maybe you shouldn't have become a writer is the first thought that goes through my head kind of like the you shouldn't have gotten on stage if you're afraid of public speaking but I seem not to consider these things before I commit so um editing is super boring and um I feel like I've already figured out the idea I know the study I've captured the story like this I'm like on the one yard line and that extra bit takes a ton of work and I don't care about it but I know the reader does I hate that so what do you do um well used to just turn in the book that's what I did for my first book and then people actually read it and I was like oh no I have a responsibility this is not just academic colleagues this is real people reading my work and I need to make sure that I can stand by the structure and the flow and the phrasing not just the content and so um I really struggled through that I hated it for a couple of books and I loved every other part of writing and then on this one I finally figured out how to solve it uh so the the editing thing I really struggle with is um is imagery like I'm way too cognitive and abstract and I need to get the vividness and the story and the emotion and I need to over index on that and um normally I just find that really boring and repetitive and stressful and this time what I did was I um I tried to impersonate different different writers that I admire and um write in their voice so one morning I got up and I was like okay I'm going to rewrite this paragraph in the voice of Maya Angela wow really if there is one thing that none of you ever want to it's me trying to impersonate My Angel um that has been deleted from all hard drives it will never see the light of day um but I picked a bunch of my favorite fiction writers who are really good at that kind of imagery and I thought to myself okay um can I write the John Green version of this can I write the Maggie Smith version of this um I tried uh like okay how would JJ and Brian Burke write this um how would uh my friend Mark Goffman who I think is here tonight write this um and that is a really good exercise because at forces me to enjoy editing and it makes it fun and playful and would you find something in there that you could use or did it just unlock you going back in your own voice if I'd given you more advanced notice on page 137 you would have found no uh yeah I think in a lot of cases what it's done is it's allowed me to step outside of my hyperlinear like let me give this the academic treatment and into the let's be a little more playful and let's uh let's tell a story that may not have a perfect resolution okay very cool um so thinking about that how much of a perfectionist are you can you talk about just perfectionism and the block of it um I think you know everybody has their own struggles with it I I always say I am not type A I'm Type Z I forget things I send the kids kids to school without the very homework that I was supposed to sign that they said they took care of and said mom please sign and then I sign it and I leave it in the wrong room you know like I just am not but at the same time I think I might be a little bit of a perfectionist sometimes and get my own way so can you talk about that when is perfectionism mucked with you I can try so uh I was really excited to write this chapter because I felt like I had transcended perfectionism turns out I'm still in recovery uh I one of the ways I discovered it was I I wrote a little um a little quiz that people could take to figure out how they scored on the different character skills in the book and as you always do when you write an assessment you take it yourself and I took it and my lowest score was on accepting imperfections don't I failed my own test I could have I I knew what the questions were I still could not do it so this is really embarrassing um so I think when it first it first got me in trouble was when I was a springboard diver um which was also a bad choice of sports because I was afraid of heights um and also uh my teammates called me Frankenstein it's something that I consistently Frankenstein yeah cuz I I walked bending my knees yeah can you show us um there there are a couple people in the audience who could actually do a demo but I literally walked down the board like this which is ironic because I had to bend my knees to touch my toes I was so inflexible yeah that seems like um you needed to are you still infle can B let stand back up let's see nope can't do it okay all right we have some work to do okay noted um so you decide to be a diver you saw someone Dive Right you saw you saw someone dive you said that looks cool and then the next thing you know some mom of yours was like I know let's have a diving lesson we do that to our kids you know they seem they seem a little interested in the next thing you know they're having a diving lesson and what what was it just can you tell us about your coach and about what was special about him and perfectionism and other things that take up some [Laughter] time uh I I feel like we're done yeah uh yes I certainly could so I have so many thoughts right now um so yes let's start with perfectionism um and then uh we could talk about some other things so I I really thought that perfectionism was going to help me as a diver because I thought it was it's a sport where you it's all about perfectionism it's like they do such a good job and there's a tiny little squi of water and it's just like nine8 six or perfect tens when it goes really well um and I found out that perfectionism was a huge problem for me because I spent all this time trying to fix little things I could control and then not improving the big things that were were hard um and I I would just stop and start over all the time because I didn't like my takeoff and my Approach and so I would waste half of practice just like boing walk to the end jump turn around and rinse repeat over and over and over again and um I think I benefited from two things one was uh I had an exceptional coach Eric best who said um listen there's no such thing as a perfect ten in diving that's a misnomer uh in the rule book a 10 either means excellent or very good depending on which book you're using and so even a dive straight tens I can find dozens of things wrong with it wow oh that's liberating and then when I would stand at the end of the board Frozen he would ask me um Adam are you going to do this dive and I remember being like ever like yes of course one day I will do this dive and he's like great then what are you waiting for I have heard that voice in my head every single time I've been afraid to try something new when I was hesitating to write my first book I heard Eric's voice are you going to write this book one day yes then what are you waiting for when I was terrified to get in the red circle and give a TED Talk Eric are you going to want to do this one day yes then what are you waiting for and I thought that was such a valuable lesson the lessons of coaches and teachers aren't they amazing and it they seem to be able to impart those character lessons better than anyone I have a daughter who's a debater and her she'll say you know she's a senior yes my daughter's a senior and she'll say um oh I can't miss debate today because Ton's giving the kindness talk and it's like the kindness talk and she said oh he gives it every year but I don't I can't miss it I have to be there for it or she'll say he's giving the social media talk I have to I I want to hear it I want it I want the younger kid Debaters to see me hearing it again and that is what this dude has done for our kids it's amazing he's given them these talks you know like my ballet teacher growing up I was never ever going to be a dancer but she did work so hard and with so much Integrity that it made me feel like well I just want her to be impressed by me that just a little bit not I knew I couldn't impress her with my dance but that she saw I mean you know facts but just that she saw that I cared enough right that's amazing and you talk about that those those soft skills what are the other ones well I I actually want to call out something that I think is really powerful in this in this example of yours which is I think so often parents think that's on me yeah and the reality is that your kids usually don't want to hear it from you first of all they think that you're biased like you have to tell me I'm special and so they often discount it and secondly because they don't want to be controlled by their parents they often resist the very thing you're trying to motivate them to do and so one of the it's so frustrating it is cuz you know and they don't want to listen well or maybe you don't know and you think you know is the thing I always have to remind myself of um but I feel very confident in my in my knowledge yes uh but I think so often what a what a parent has to do is get out of the way and say let me find that coach who's the right source for the message that I think is really important so how do you know when you find that coach I mean is it that they're fun is it that they are tough is it that what what is it that you look for I don't know if there's one one magic ingredient I think from the the Benjamin Bloom research I think the most important thing is a first teacher or coach who makes learning fun um that's what predicts better than anything anything else that I know of that you can measure whether you go on to achieve greater things in the anything whatever it is you're learning even piano yes even piano did you not like the piano damn it no no I I mean no I liked piano fine I just think I I don't know because you seem to have some unresolved issues I do you know I was I do because here's my thing about piano okay guys is that I feel like having to practice something you don't want to practice and being as uncomfortable as you are sitting in front of a piano when your hands won't do what you want them to do and having to break it down into two bars one hand two bars the other then plunking it together and being like you want to flip it you know the whole thing I think that's just the most valuable grip building thing in life and I find it really hard to um I know go ahead give me the phone but I find it really hard to convince children of mine the value in it and I don't I just don't understand so then I decided if they if they have that about something else that isn't piano like say they have it about learning to solve a Rubik's Cube or say they have it about I don't know I don't know all kinds of kid things is that applicable is it it's just having it right yeah it's I I think the so many parents I think the Mozart effect is one of the worst things that's ever happened to parents you're like oh my kid is only going to going to become like really impressive and Achieve whatever their potential is if they get into music it's like no whatever the activity is it's a trojan horse what you're smuggling in or a set of character skills and I mean honestly Jen I I don't say this publicly generally but I think before diving like the best place for me learning character skills was video games I know blasphemy right no one show this to my son what why what because you lose and it's really frustrating and you have to build the resilience and the grit to try again and then improve your skills and then you get reinforced for that and you level up and like I would sit there for 7 hours trying to be that's what I do as a writer now like I have to sit there at the blinking curs and try to defeat it okay what were you playing was it Frogger no uh it started out with the Super Mario Brothers of course and then graduated okay go ahead yeah um then it was Zelda then it was uh Mario Kart and Mortal Kombat um Mortal Kombat yeah yeah first person shooter it's not a shooter it's a fighter come on I don't know I don't watch I don't do these things okay all right you literally you literally have played Mortal Kombat characters almost multiple times you did it on Alias you did it in Daredevil and you did it in Electra and some of us hope you will do it in the Marvel Cinematic Universe again interesting um okay all right that well you know what that's a real key Insight we just learned here about the video games I I have to tell you I I did a whole podcast on this last year because so many parents uh were upset about the initial post but um there's a really a good set of meta analyses studies of studies longitudinal studies and randomized controlled experiments showing that video games actually build willpower and self-control so uh I think they're a net positive actually if you look at the evidence wow surprise surprise every 11year old boy's best friend which which to be fair was my life dream given that I didn't have very many friends as an 11-year-old boy oh my god oh man wow you can come you can hang with Sam maick anytime um okay so rain sent uh rain sent me I asked rain for a couple of questions cuz I was like okay um here we go okay all righty okay no we did kind of that all right what gives one says rain Wilson determination when do you quit what's the difference between determination and endless fool hearty Pursuit and I think that's apt for all of us what is the difference between determination and an endless fool heart Pursuit that is a great question rain I'm so glad you asked yes I think that's a great question I think that it um I worry a lot about this because I think there's a fine line between what might be heroic grit and a really dysfunctional what's called escalation of commitment to a losing course of action where you make a decision it does not work out as you hoped and then instead of questioning it you double down and invest more time and energy and resources um I I think that that's a it's a hard thing to see um without the benefit of hindsight I think the the best thing that I can say on this there's there's a whole body of evidence on this um the biggest thing I learned is if you're the one who made the initial commitment you are now compromised you cannot judge whether you should continue persisting or not because you have a vested interest in proving that your baby is not ugly uh um yeah if you made the initial commitment to do whatever the the project or the task is um you don't get to decide then whether okay you you hit a bump in the road like should I keep going or should I give up um you need somebody else who is neutral oh I get it to weigh in on that yeah and I think that person can tell because they don't have a vested interest in proving that you were right or proving that you're smart or you're capable of turning things around they have a vested interest in helping you succeed we're very confused about that out here we we not not you we because we're told over and over again you know ignore the person who doesn't want your your script your talent your looks your this you're that and keep going and keep going and so it's it's a little bit trickier for our population that we yeah got it yes yeah I mean I look but you have to find that neutral person who's going to be honest with you yeah and sometimes that honesty is not accurate yeah like not not all critics are looking in a crystal ball I think what's what's helpful though is to triangulate across multiple people who you think have really good judgment and taste who want to see you succeed and if all those people point out the same problem then you know you're not dealing with with just idiosyncratic opinion you have a quality control issue that doesn't mean you have to abandon the project but you have to probably rethink the project I would imagine but I don't know you're you're the I don't I don't live in LA I don't know anything about Hollywood you welcome you do now um so can you tell me you know as a big big fan of up to page 73 what's your favorite story in the book favorite story in the book um it's hard to argue with uh with the Raging Rooks in the prologue I love them I was even tempted to carry them through the whole book but then I realized it's too much writing on one story uh for someone who wants to lead with ideas and have stories as like the Supporting Cast uh I felt like that would reverse um like stories are supposed to be they're not supposed to have main character energy in my books well the Raging Rooks are they have main character energy so tell us a little bit about them um I think the main thing to know about them is uh their Coach Maurice Ashley change the way that I think about coaching uh so Maurice took a bunch of poor racial minorities in Harlem he helped them see more potential in themselves than anyone saw in them including their parents and their te teachers and them and um one of the things he did that I thought was brilliant was he taught them chess they were trying to learn chess against all these rich ritzy private schools he taught them chess backward instead of teaching like okay here's an opening move like you can move your King's Pawn up two squares he would put a few pieces on the board and have them just try to Checkmate I was like wait this is this is really dumb like they're G to get into a chess match and they won't know how to play and he said I don't care if they know how to play what I want is for them to get the of Victory and the pain of defeat and I want them to be motivated by feeling like they can win and motivated by the fact that they just lost and once you have that satisfaction then and also that frustration then you can rewind and start learning the skills to get the game going I thought that was ingenious and I think that everything should be taught endgame first so good it's so good you and they won they did win yeah uh which was one of my favorite parts of the story but I think the the interesting part which we won't spoil here is why they won uh but more on that in the book for those of you who want to read it but they also they had the character oh that's why they won okay forget it he just said we're not talking about it no no no no I'm good I'm good I'm good I'm good don't you worry I gotcha um okay um that's what you typed this morning when I asked you to do this I love it y can Jen can I ask you why did you say yes to this because I no I don't mean it that way I I don't I don't what I what I mean is I didn't even know we were friends and and you said of course I would do this for a friend and I was just blown away by your kindness you really were helpful to me I you remember that I did nothing yes you did we had a phone call I was trying to figure out how to give a TED talk as an univen Ted talk about still GNA happen one day rural poverty in the United States and um you took time to help a stranger and to talk to me for a really long time and talk me through it and then I think we spoke again and then emailed I mean that's friendship right guys that's like out here like we're we're [Applause] besties um no but I also first of all I saw your email and I thought at first that it was um kind of just a like that you just had my email address as a fan and that it was um you know one of those kind of spam things and then and then I just caught the first sentence which seemed a little more personal and and then I just I could really feel the desperation and I don't know there are so many of you here and I didn't want you to spend your day stressing and I feel like if you're going to give a yes give a yes right away you know just be a fullon you got it but you I mean I think you've you've invested what five or six hours just to do this that's okay it's totally my pleasure and now I got to be with all you guys and now i' I'm well into an awesome book that rationalizing your decision right here uh no I just um I I was really stunned that you were willing to do it and you did you saved at least one person in this room who was going to last minute get drafted if needed just to come out of the audience and be on stage so um I I won't name said person but uh he's going to be very grateful does his last name rhyme with jerk um no because uh he only found out about this an hour ago oh okay he would have been a great person to enlist uh anyway I think um I just I I really was struck by that I think that so often people tell you don't meet your Heroes and Your Role Models because they're only going to disappoint you up close and you are one of the rare people who's actually more impressive up close than from a distance oh my gosh that look so nice thank you that's that's undeserved and very kind of you it's true actually that's very nice I have it on good authority from a number of people who know you wow that's very nice that's very nice can I ask you another question about your book are we done talking about me if you want to okay I do I have more I have more questions um these are audience questions that I was given as I walked out and they said choose from these I was great wa that's we'll get there um but I want to know is there a story that you didn't put in the book but that you loved that you want to share with us oh there's so many that didn't make make the book Cutting Room floor is like my favorite place to live I guess um yeah I think probably I never I never knew what to do with this one and I think a lot of people are not going to like it but I have to say this as somebody who grew up in Michigan and um between my wife and I we have five six of of our degrees from Michigan like I bleed Maze and blue except for the one time that when I had hair and I was 12 um I went with Maz and blue hair to the game against Michigan State and the sun melted it and it turned green and everyone booed me but that aside um I really was taken with um with a story about Tom Brady uh which is like you may hate him in a lot of different ways but um he was dramatically underestimated and he was underestimated because uh his talent was assessed and his character skills were not and a lot of the quarterbacks who were picked ahead of him the opposite happened and one of those guys is a goat farmer now wow um which apparently also requires a lot of character skills but um I thought what was really interesting is you had all these Scouts saying like he's too slow and then Tom Brady at 40 runs a faster um faster Sprint than he did when he was 20 although although when you're as slow as Tom Brady let's be honest it's not that hard to get faster um but also I think um I think it was it was really amazing that this should have upended the way we think about Talent like players should have been assessed on character um job interviewees should have been assessed on character um College admissions uh for your high school senior character should be in that equation and we have not learned this lesson and I think that's a story for all of us to say like going back to where you know where we started um motivation really matters um and we shouldn't judge where people will Land by where they start wow thank you so if you were um if you were designing a school your perfect school what would it look like what would be different about it than than what we have now are we primary secondary col your choice um I think if so I would start with primary school I would um I guess I would I would do a couple things one I'd reverse the trend for kindergarten to be more like first grade and I'd make kindergarten more like recess oh yeah I would even say before that I would add all the way down to babies to Mommy and me to B Universal moving your way up to very early preschool it child care can we just say that if with like if wishes grew on trees high quality Early Education high quality child care so that moms could could be there and so that the brain architects of daycare workers and of you know Preschool teachers could be in there bringing these kids brains to life I mean that seems no pun intended like a no-brainer yeah uh you you were just with Nick Kristoff right yes so Nick wrote I thought the best article I've read on this topic it's called too small to fail yep and it the science is so clear the science is solear early childhood education investment and we don't spend descent on kids until they're five as a country crazy yes especially when you're in places in this country where parents haven't had it modeled haven't had they don't have books in the home they haven't had Early Childhood singing playing um reading to modeled for them they don't have neighbors they don't have um Community to lift them up and Mommy and Me classes or anything like it they're just alone in their little spot uh under a barrel of stress and trying to wake up enough to really pay attention to This Little Critter they're not thinking about I need to read to a 10-month-old that's not you know that's not on their of course nor would it be on yours nor would it be on mine or any of ours you know that's the thing we all think we're somehow above um you know we just there's an intrinsic Judgment of people in poverty in this country and we think we're somehow like oh you know well we pull ourselves up by the bootstraps but it's just not it's not fair and it's not true and you don't have a shot if you don't have a shot right if you get to kindergarten if all of us got to kindergarten and we were all in remediation the first day we started kindergarten and we know how smart we are we would hate it and your brain has to do something so it's got to think of ways to hate school then right because you're never going to make it up so you have to go in ready to learn so in our school Adam we're going to start with babies and we're going to get them into kindergarten ready to learn we just started a school I love this yeah yeah um okay no I mean this like I I do not understand how this doesn't compute for people I'm like you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps but what if you didn't have any boots yeah how are you going to do that um I think I I actually I think this is I want to give you a chance to to talk a little bit this is one of your areas of expertise so one of the things I've admired about you aside from just your extraordinary range in the kinds of characters you play um and the way that you make us believe you could be literally anyone um from the kindest person on Earth to deeply evil um is uh I think I I don't I don't want to diss any celebrities who create their own foundation around themselves but I think it's it's really telling that you picked a cause that you're passionate about that was already doing really great work and said I want to use my platform and my knowledge and my passion to elevate that um can you tell us a little bit about your work with save the children I'm so happy to but we're kind of here to talk about you um okay but I'll be I'll be really brief because what a kind offer to get to talk about save the children um so I grew up in West Virginia I was surrounded by rural generational poverty but I grew up in a middle class house my mom grew up in Oklahoma on a farm where she was really really happy but they didn't have much at all and she kept getting a little bit of luck her way that led her to college and then that changed everything everything for my sisters and me and I was very aware that there were kids in my class who were not going to have that same kind of luck and in a first and second grade and it felt really unfair to me then and it kept feeling unfair and it kept feeling like people like my mom or people like these kids are not talked about enough you don't hear them talked about in presidential debates you don't hear us all constantly saying what are we doing for people in Lake Los Angeles in rural Los Angeles County a couple of you know an hour and a half from here what are we doing for people behind the town behind the town behind the town like away from Walmart in the middle of nowhere because we're a big country and when I had a little bit of you know um gosh right after Alias people kept asking me to help with their Charities and I loved them all they're all this is such a philanthropic Town there's so much good work being done it's all necessary but I felt like the only thing I can speak to is what I've seen and I went looking for the organization with the most efficacy in Rural America America and it would save the children because saves overall mission around the 160 countries where we are um in the Hundred Years of helping over a billion kids is to go where nobody else wants to go and in America that's Rural and so I just started kind of doing site visits and learning and that's still what I do tomorrow I'm going to Central Valley California couple weeks ago I was in Kentucky before that I was in Mississippi and I just go and sit with people and learn and see what they're lives are like and then I watch the magic that the save the children home visitor um creates in their house just by encouraging the mom or the caretaker or the dad to um sing to their baby play with them just encouraging them to show them they have all the tools they need to raise a successful kid who's ready to learn and it's pretty um it's pretty cool work and it's it's amazing to also get to be in the bo board meetings and hear about the 71 staff members we have embedded in Gaza and who have been there since the 50s and all the work that they're doing to try to help people there and across the Middle East and um yeah wherever there's trouble Dar for I mean and everywhere kids are in crisis across the world and so it feels really good to just be around the people who are doing the good work well I I feel better thank you um I know kids are better off with you on that board so gosh thank you um can we go back to our school though yes okay so we we've got the Early Childhood [ __ ] but that's we got that figured out all right now what uh now what now uh we're g to have a program where I just actually heard about this from a teacher today um I got a great email from a teacher this morning who said like loved your idea of letting kids choose their own books instead of like shoving the classics down their throats like simple not rocket science she said what I do is I hide books in the classroom for kids to find it's like we're g to do that we're g to play book hide and seek or like scavenger hunt um and we're going to get kids excited about reading that way I love that okay all right great Keep It Coming okay uh what else are we going to do so they're going to play outside they're going to have recess all for a whole year and just play and then they're we're going to hide books and they're going to run around and find them we're going to wait until they're seven to teach reading okay great um it there there's actually really surprising research on this that suggests that kids actually might be better off waiting because first of all the books are really Bor like have you ever read Run Spot Run I mean it's awful it does not get anyone excited about anything um and secondly if they don't have a big vocabulary it's actually really hard for them to read a book and so there we don't need to rush into that I think is is what I've learned from that research uh what else can we do we can um I become really enamored with looping in the idea that you should have the same teacher for multiple years yeah um and uh think we could try more of those experiments to figure out how to make that work yep what else do you want to do in our school in our school um I just think imagination and play has got to be a really big part of it and I there everybody just has to find something they're interested in and follow it I could get behind that um I had a student years ago learn mccan who came up with this great idea for college seniors to write letters to their freshman selves and then give them to end during freshman so that they could avoid the mistakes of their predecessors I would love to do that for graduating Elementary schoolers and middle schoolers and high schoolers wow yeah okay all right so where is the school going to be um you know Santa [Laughter] Monica um where's it going to be I don't know pick a spot I like this um to be continued I think I I do think it's we don't have enough of these kinds of experiments in education I think a lot of people are dissatisfied with many features of the current system like let's pilot something better and see how it goes please yeah so what else do you want to talk about because I have more questions for you you do wait I have more questions it's not like I don't have questions I thought a lot about questions um can we talk about you're overpreparing for a second overpreparing what are you talking about I I oh my gosh I told you this morning you do not have to read the book in fact I prefer that you don't read the book because then I'm going to tell you stuff that you already know okay as opposed to you being surprised and yet you defied my instructions you read a lot of the book you have it underlined and their Corners folded so why why did you ignore my advice like I I I did write the book I think I would know if you need to read it because I've never I've never shown up to anything that's unprepared in my whole life I mean except for a couple of auditions let's face facts but yeah oh so this is you learning your lines yeah exactly this is me learning my lines in the cab on the way to audition um okay so hang on I like this one I underlined this one I like these two things ready Go Don't hold yourself Hostage to a fixed routine and that's kind of like you writing like Maya Angelo right or not that no no I mean I wish no that's actually it's either that or it's not that that or it's not that at all oh to avoid burnout tell us about that Adam what do you want to know about avoiding burnout I think the like I think the the thing that a lot of people do is they think they have to push themselves in order to to get through whatever is hard in their job or in the skill they trying to build um and what they forget is that pushing yourself through the Daily Grind um is not going to be sustainable in the long run you're much much better off trying to turn the Daily Grind into a source of daily joy and the way you do that is to actually build play into your skill development so this is why like I'm trying to write in different voices it makes writing more fun and more playful and less exhausting and less boring um certainly it does that to editing um and I think people could do that at any job I um I want to study with a couple colleagues of nurses where um there was this uh I remember this one nurse in particular in our experiment to this horrible task of giving kids allergy allergy shots which I did seven years of and that that was I hated every minute of it and this nurse couldn't stand the experience of kids coming in and thinking like this person's trying to hurt me yeah and our experiment was on just reinvent your job title it's really simple it's the first thing that most people learn about you what if you could choose something that was more creative and more self-reflective and a lot of Skeptics said this is never going to work like a title is just a bunch of words it doesn't matter like I've seen this work I saw it work at the Make A Wish Foundation like this is this is interesting let's try it and um sure enough when we randomly assigned people to create their own self-reflective job title their burnout went went down over the next five weeks um in a healthcare setting and the nurse uh who was giving allergy shots helped me understand why her title that she came up with was nurse quickshot she introduced herself to families that way you would walk in and she'd be like hi I'm nurse quickshot nice to meet you the kids lit up all of a sudden they realize this person is actually trying to minimize my pain not not accentuate it um they would ask for nurse quick shot by name when they came back the parents were relieved it was a whole thing and I think that giving people autonomy over how they present themselves is a really basic form of freedom and we ought to have that along with many other kinds I love that thanks look at that all yours I have to say you're really good at taking whatever I toss out there and turning it into gold and I really okay so I feel like I I've started to develop my own job title yeah yeah I I feel like when I get on stage now I've been turned into a human jukebox yeah somebody can give a topic and I'm like here's a study that I once read and now I'm going to not feel like I wasted the time reading the study or doing the study because someone else will Le how do you guys think up your studies where does it come from I mean usually it comes from having conversations with people out in the world who are stuck on something and like seeing in this case um make a wish had reached out for help when I was in grad school and they were all extremely exhausted doing some of the most heartbreaking work I've ever seen and they had this incredibly Visionary leader Susan fenter Lurch and Susan says I want you all to come up with your own job titles and uh there was like a person in accounting who was like I am not part of the make a wish Mission at all and she ended up coming up with her title was keeper of of keys and grounds and she was like the the Hagrid of of make a wish and like it really it just injected some levity and joy into her day and her interactions and I was that's a study we should we should see if that works so that's that's usually where my ideas come from what's it like to be your kid if you're a jukebox for us what do you like as a dad I mean do you do you do you make yourself do you try to temper yes a lot my wife Allison like very often has to say to me like we you don't want to be the psychologist who screws up your kids uh which uh which is a apparently a common thing um yeah I mean I think I think what I've what I've tried to do with our kids and not always succeeded at is uh to to be as open as possible about the things that I'm bad at um I will never forget coming to La uh last winter and um I brought two of our kids and I I had I don't know some big audience there were thousands of people and I was supposed to give a speech and our kids for the first time ever came to one of my talks and afterward our son came up he was nine and he said dad somehow you were actually funny and I was like that is the best backhanded compliment I've ever gotten uh like normally they make fun of my dad jokes and I like I deliberately make more dad jokes because I want them to to see me bad at stuff and willing to laugh at myself and that I guess I'm like the butt of all of our family jokes is um and I'm not funny but they're laughing at me um and I'm secretly laughing inside about two-thirds of the time except that when they tell me that my I'm not only bald but my hair is gray both and I don't even have any hair I'm like H anyway yeah how about you um talk about what you're like as a parent oh I mean I'm kind of what I guess in an just annoying way I'm kind of what you would think I would be you know go on I I want to know what you think our stereotype of you is I just I bake cookies and I like and I like you know a room mom giving it my all and you know I'm kind of your worst nightmare wait why is that bad just because it's so I don't know it's just so typ cast yeah I don't know those are good qualities as far as I'm concerned yeah I don't know ask my kids no I I arranged for my my son's class um to get a special viewing of this movie I have coming out family switch on Netflix November 30th and it's like exactly for his age group exactly all right I'm going to tell you something really really personal and vulnerable here right now my son said he heard about it and he was like Mom it's as if you gave every you're giving every person in my class a cake with your face on it and then they're supposed to tell you how great the cake is and how pretty they think you are and I was like you're not wrong you're not wrong but I think you're going to like the movie I don't know you can be sick that day it's the the teacher asked I set it up it's happening I don't know what to tell you so it's happening wow that that's painful yeah all the cakes I'm passing out all the cakes okay this reminds me of something you said Backstage on our way in um about uh about dealing with age as an actor oh cuz you said said something no you read something that I didn't want you to read but then it it sparked something interesting that I want to hear more about okay well I don't remember where it was but you said something about if you want to appr okay appreciating progress depends on remembering how your past self would see your current achievements so you think that you haven't gotten anywhere but when you were First Learning what would you have thought if you could say right and I said this is the same the inverse is true for aging that at 51 I tell myself if I get like oh my gosh what's happening I one ey squinting and like things are falling it's fine but um I tell myself you know dude it's imagine in 15 years you're going to think I wish I looked like I looked at 51 and a half so you might as well enjoy it cuz it's not like it's going to go the other way so live it up yuck it right on up you're reminded me of one of my college roommates uh who said to another one of our roommates uh listen you should never be down on yourself because you're only going to get uglier from here exactly thank you your college roommates really understood uh that's amazing wait there there's something that you you gloss over which is do you call yourself dude if I need to if it's appropriate in the conversation yeah so interesting you're you're reminding me of Ethan cross's work on selft talk where he finds that if you talk to yourself in the like the second or third person um it's actually more motivating because yeah because it's like it's distancing it feels like someone else is telling you to do the thing brh get it together brh you've never said that to yourself I don't know I I have little kids so yeah it's come across wow that's amazing M okay let's see I love your Segways I mean I don't know okay what else did rain text me anymore no um L I have a question th Adam in my Panic this morning I said would you please send me questions in case I don't have anything this is something he asked me to ask him thrown under the bus wait I'm sorry who invited you to do this we why are you so this community wants to know what's your least favorite food oh oh yeah that that was on there cuz um cuz my kids said it had to be on there um I hate chocolate see bro really yeah it tastes like dirt wow darken milk and it indiscriminate all of it I would literally rather eat dirt if you gave me a choice what's very popular trick-or-treating buddy uh um apparently I'm a super taster I have extra taste buds and certain foods taste really terrible wow chocolate um I've never had a sip of coffee also which is really convenient if you're trying to be productive by the way not dependent on caffeine because it tastes horrible Actually I don't even know it smells bad and so I want do you drink do you drink tea barely you just you're like water and spinach and no spinach is also gross so what's your palette are you like a chicken fingers kind of I like a 5-year-old yeah yeah like you need it to be mild yeah okay yeah do you like the taste of char because that's my specialty okay all right but but thank you for offering to burn food for me yeah yes as soon as there's something charred on the table my kids are like oh thanks Mom see things you did didn't know you wanted to know yeah I didn't know that I want I don't know that I wanted to know that about you cuz it conf it confuses me it doesn't fit with how wonderful you are but I'll give you I'll give you a pass wow but okay here's something that I want to know legitimately and so do we um we are aligned um I like how you've co-opted my audience who didn't even know you were going to be here yep keep going okay true they gave me such a nice welcome so how did writing this book change you cuz I imagine each book I mean if I think of Sydney she changed me how did this book change you that's a really good question um I think I didn't expect it to change me because I feel like when I sit down to write a book I want to teach something that I've learned and so I've kind of already figured it out and I've realize that if that's what happens then I'm doing myself a disservice because I ought to learn new things while I'm writing and I think that the biggest thing that this book changed about me is it made me much more comfortable sharing my own stories uh I've been accused of uh of using data is a crutch and I'm like it's not a crutch it's literally how I think like ask me any question and my first instinct is deci a study like that's how I learn um and uh some of my friends did not like that particular behavior and called me Mr fax growing up um luckily I had one friend my best friend Khan who is here tonight um hi con thank you Khan because Khan um decided that it didn't matter that I made him uncool um and he hung out with me anyway and I didn't care about El chocolate he was looking for your 100,000 Grand Bar out of your trick or never mentioned that but now now that you bring it up um anyway I think that I've shied away from telling my stories one because it feels self-centered and two because it feels idiosyncratic and while writing this book I realized hidden potential is something I've lived over and over again I lived it when I wasn't naturally talented as a diver and got way better than I expected I lived it when I failed my college writing exam and was assigned to remedial writing which I was told was for jocks um and people who spoke English as a seventh language um and here I am as an author and it was definitely how I felt as a public speaker and and we're doing this and I thought I I can't keep distance from this topic but more importantly if there's something I've learned from something I've lived why would I not share that so that that the big change I love that you added your own stories in there from what I've seen so far they add a lot of color to it no they really do I appreciate that well thank you yeah thanks um okay um can you tell me something else I think it might be time to go to audience questions is it really I don't know I'm just guessing are we getting the light we were told we were going to get a flashing light I keep thinking is that the flashing light is that the ish let's do it yeah okay I don't see the light Adam I don't okay there are a lot of questions okay okay Liz the same kinds of people seem to keep getting installed in leadership positions what wisdom do you have for midlevel professionals whose senior leadership is stuck in that bias Wow way a bring it yeah all right so Liz wants to know how we can diversify leadership um Beyond people who are selfish Machiavellian narcissistic Psychopathic male and white um which I've been told is redundant but I I I I don't know um oh look I think we've got to stop confusing confidence for competence is the easy answer Whoa stop it like stop falling for The Superficial charm of narcissists uh they don't actually know what they're talking about um stop assuming that the person who talks the most is the most capable that's called the babble effect um and it's a real thing um that's usually the person who's most insecure not the person who's best served to suited to guide the group um let's assess people's character skills let's look at whether people make those around them better whether they're more interested in making the room smarter than being the smartest person in the room I would start there and I mean there are ton of ways to do that but I don't know what else do people want to know wow okay [Music] um wait was that White Lotus yes because we're all trying to find out what you're watching is really what's Happening Here Yeah U for someone who is six months into a startup Kevin wants to know what is your best advice regarding overcoming Perfection to get in the way of progress oh yeah so Kevin people always say like the the perfect is the enemy of the good that's not helpful because they still want you to ship something that's better than good like what do I do um look diving lesson was probably the best one for me here and I would love to hear I think Katrina young one of our Olympic divers is in the room tonight so I would love to hear her better take on this um congratulations Katrina I I think one of the lessons I took away from diving was I needed to sit down with my coach and agree on what's an acceptable score for every dive so you're doing a basic front dive Pike we're aiming for sevens and as soon as I hit a seven we agree it's time to move on uh as opposed to me asking can I do 30 more of them because I didn't point my left pinky toe on the entry uh which was an actual conversation once um for you know a more a more complicated dive like when I was learning reverse two and a half like Target was force like we wanted to be not totally deficient I remember like shaking on a 3 meter springboard having to do a full twisting front two and a half where you do two flips a 360 turn and then a dive and just freaked out out of my mind and Eric says our Target is a 0.5 for this di like if your if your head or your hands touch before your feet and it's a legal dive we're going to count it and I don't think we have this conversation in startups I don't think we have this conversation in our jobs but we should um like I I'll tell you my version of this um aiming for a nine when I write a book uh because hopefully a lot of people are going to read it and I'm going to pour multiple years of my work life into it and I I want it to be something I'm proud of um and I don't want to waste other people's time social media post Target is six and a half which is where I put the line this far above being canceled like I I don't care if I get everything right on social media I don't mind if I learn something and somebody tells me that I screwed something up like I just I can't put that much thought into it and I think that's a startup conversation to have like when do we need a four when do we need a six and a half when do we need an eight and let's calibrate what does that look like for each of the things we're doing very good advice yeah do you have wisdom for one who mentors younger members of a team advice how to how best to constructively handle criticism both of this person Steve hey Steve and of the person of the kids the people the humans the adults the young people the people um that Steve is mentoring okay so let let's do a a quick comment on how to give criticism and then how to receive it um on the receiving side my favorite lesson comes from Sheila Keen uh she calls it the second score and the idea is that when somebody gives you a piece of constructive criticism or advice um what most of us do is we try to convince them if we don't like it that they were wrong and so somebody gives you a D minus and you become the world's most dedicated grade grubber and you're like let me prove to you I actually deserve an A minus and the problem is they've already determined the score they can't there's nothing you can say that will change their mind because the past has already happened the best thing you can do according to Sheila is you can give yourself a second score which is I want to get an A+ for how well I took the D minus I think about this every day every single time I'm make the mistake of reading Instagram comments do you do you read yours by the way I'm so careful about what I take in it I really am careful I read New York Times I read you know like I read nothing where I will accidentally see my damn face or my name or anyone who is related to me in on in print in the computer phone that seems like a very healthy attitude I have not adopted that and every once in a while I go into the comments and end up reading all of them and when I get them I'm like okay if I'm going to respond to this person I cannot convince them that my post was right when they disagreed with it um and I can't like I've been called a logic bully um my wife had to explain to me that was not a compliment I I I was like good I want to I want to hammer you with with evidence and facts Until you realize you were incorrect it's my job um that never goes well and so what I've tried to do instead is to say all right every once in a while it's fun to smack down someone with a an ignorant overconfident opinion but U most of the time what I need to do is I need to convince them that I'm willing to learn and so let me ask a question about like oh that's really interesting what led you to that view um did you not read all the journal articles that I linked to this is not my opinion is is the part I don't write um but that I find that really helpful um and I think trying to Ace the second score and say I want to get an A plus for how I took the D minus is something I would encourage anyone to try if you haven't already on the the giving constructive criticism side my favorite experiment shows that you can say 19 words and people become dramatically more receptive to what you're about to deliver you ready okay okay don't count them Jen because I might I might say 18 but the words are roughly I'm giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I'm confident you can reach them oh oh dog that's so good it changes a word on that it changes the equation now I'm not attacking you high expectation and I'm confident you can reach them so here's the thing I I'm not attacking you I'm not judging you I'm here to coach you I'm trying to help you so I taught this a few years ago um to my undergrads at warten and then about three weeks later I give out these midcourse feedback forms and three different students wrote at the top I'm giving you these comments CU I have very High ex like no you don't have to say the words for btim the point is to communicate that I believe in your potential and I care about your success and well-being you you establish that upfront and all of a sudden you have a relationship as opposed to um uh an attack that you need to defend against do you believe in the compliment sandwich so I try not to believe in things um I try to look at what does the best evidence tell and then form an opinion accordingly and I I think here see this is the logic bullying right I'm doing it right now yeah I'm not I'm not a proponent I'm just asking yeah I think that's a fair question and I think my read of the evidence is that the compliment sandwich does not taste as good as it looks which is why sometimes it gets called a [ __ ] sandwich I think is a better description of it so what goes wrong when you're supposed to like people are like ah I got to you know like I'm going to I'm going to say something really unpleasant so I have to take the meat of the criticism I want to give you and and slice it or hide it between two slices of bread that are the compliment here's a problem when you do that first problem is um a lot of people are just waiting for the other shoe to drop and they're like wait compliment are you just buttering me up so I take your criticism better and they see right through it number two um people who are narcissistic actually have the opposite response which is Primacy and recency effects dominate so you pay you pay attention to the first thing and the last thing and you forget the meat of the sandwich and you come away from the the meeting skewering you thinking like Billy Madison I am the smartest person alive um that explains a lot yeah okay no I don't like it okay good I would not put it on your menu could you tell us more about Allison is wanting to know scaffolding as you call it how it can show someone a path so they can dream of the destination if you build it they will climb she's pithy Allison um yes uh I may have used one too many puns in this book uh which is another antidote to boredom when I'm editing um yeah I think so scaffolding the idea I love of SCA about scaffolding is that you don't need a permanent mentor to get where you want to go and it's it's hard to find somebody who's going to be in it for the long haul with you what you need is is somebody who can put up a temporary structure or give you the the bit of knowledge or instruction that you need to try to get where you want to go so um a piece of scaffolding that was really powerful for me um and this is something I would normally shy away from I'm like don't talk about myself but I'm going to tell a personal story here um because apparently now that's what I do I told the cake face story I love the cake face story um I kind of want a to see the video of what happens um but anyway I think um what what was really valuable for me was uh when I wrote the first draft of given take my first book um my amazing literary agent Richard Pine did not get get back to me and normally 24 hours he has notes and a week went by and it was radio Sil so painful that's really painful yeah and I was wondering what's going on has he decided to disown me like what what's what's happened here and finally I called him I was like Richard I was supposed to write you a book proposal in two months I got so excited about the ideas I wrote the book like I was waiting to like to get the gold star what happened and he was like I don't think even your academic colleagues will read this book wow yeah I was like should I give up on being a writer he like no I like well that's not what I took from what you just said and he's like no no look just write like you teach not like you write research papers Lial it's like oh yes like I'm not writing a journal article I don't need to tell you how many people were in every study oh or exactly I measured each of the variables like most studies unless they're that fascinating you just want to know what the conclusion of them was and that's what I do in the classroom like every once in a while a great study is a story but the rest of the time here's my synthesis of the evidence here are the sources if you want to go read it for yourself um come back and challenge me if you have a different interpretation like oh I could write a book that way and that was all the scaffolding I needed to then write a draft that turned into an actual book that's amazing what was his name again Richard Pine Richard Pine ladies and gentlemen highly recommend five stars highly recommend well you know what we're kind of coming to the end here I because you know why these are the same things printed over and over [Laughter] again well at least you have the questions yeah I'm the person with the questions but I feel like we've covered a lot of it I think we are about at time so um can I just say what a total pleasure and what an awesome way to get to to know you and I'm so grateful for this time I really I don't know why you reached out to me I don't actually it's very rare for me to leave home on a school night I can't believe um that I did but I love that you took you away from your kids I feel even guiltier now they're thrilled they're thrilled out of their minds they couldn't be they they don't want me scaffolding them they want to be left alone why does it sound like a threat when you say it well because it kind of is but um yeah they're they're they're delighted truly um and so am I and so thank you thank you for thank you for reaching out no thank you I I want to say a couple things as we wrap up um the first thing is uh I I'll tell you why I chose you which is um one of the major reasons I wrote this book was um I lost an incredible colleague Seagal barade um last year and um Sagal was a brilliant um worldclass expert on emotional intelligence Ence and organizational cultures and we taught together for over a decade I learned so much from her and one of the biggest things she taught me was to take a second look at people when you doubt their potential um I remember a student applying to our grad program and not doing well in the writing test and what you do as a professor is you have to write papers like that's the ultimate determinant of whether your research has an impact and so bad writing score I was like forget it not not worth another look and Sagal said no this person had really inter ideas and that's just one test and she emailed this person and said can you send me some writing samples I want to read your papers now let's be clear this was before chat GPT but um she really dug into the person's papers and now that person is a tenur professor wow and was a superstar and I had missed out on that um and I thought that was a really powerful lesson and when I woke up this morning and realized we needed a rain who was not rain um to to take his place um I literally made a list of everyone I looked up to in LA and I thought who's the person that sees the potential in every single person she meets and that was you like I think every single time I've had any interaction with you you have looked for the best in everyone um and I think that's such a gift that you give to people and I wanted this audience to get to benefit from it and selfishly I wanted to soak it up too um Jen this is just beyond generous of you to do um and I cannot thank you enough and I really will be trying to pay it back and forward uh for the next few decades so um can we all just give Jen a standing ovation stand up please thank you thank you thank you thank you

Channel: LiveTalksLA

Views: 16,101

Keywords: Live Talks Los Angeles, Live Talks LA, Conversation, TED Talks, inteview, books

Id: __SO26zbKaQ

Length: 81min 51sec (4911 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2024