Adam Grant Says You're Doing Relationships Wrong

Dan Harris (0:04)

Hello, everybody, welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Today, we're going to debunk some myths about how to manage your relationships at home and at work.

Here are some myths. Never go to bed angry. Agreeing to disagree is the right way to resolve conflict. It takes a long time to develop a close relationship. If you want to have good teamwork, you should all be in the office together. And this is the one that really got me. In order to have good teamwork, you need to like your colleagues. My guest today is Adam Grant, who's a professor at the Wharton School. He's written many, many, many best-selling books. His latest book, sure to be a best seller, is called Vibe, The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World. Adam Grant, welcome back to the show. I think this is your sixth time on the show.

Adam Grant (0:46)

It's always a pleasure to be here, Dan, but I'm especially looking forward to this one because I feel like we built a connection through podcast conversations, more or less. And so this is a little meta to be here and talk about connections.

Dan Harris (1:00)

You're absolutely right. I think we've met in person, like, a grand total of three or four times. You say this book, which again is called Vibe, you say it's your most personal yet. What do you mean by that?

Adam Grant (1:12)

I think writing about this topic, it forced me to be more vulnerable than I've been before. And frankly, one of the voices in my head while I was writing this book was yours, which is you gave me some very direct and helpful feedback that I'm pretty comfortable talking about my past struggles and mistakes, but I'm overly guarded when talking about my current challenges and sometimes that puts distance between me and other people. I don't want to be someone who puts distance between me and other people.

And I took this topic on because we're in, I think, a lonely divided world. A lot of us are experiencing that. And in the age of AI, human connection is more important than ever before. And yet a lot of us are struggling at it. And I started thinking about my struggles with it. And yeah, it sort of smacked me right in the face that I had a really hard time making and keeping friends as a kid, as a very shy, nerdy introvert. Now I'm in this incredibly fortunate position where people didn't want to talk to me when I was a kid. And now they show up to listen to me talk to other people.

And sometimes that goes really well. And other times it's a train wreck. And I care a lot about having effective interactions and meaningful relationships. And it's something I've been working on my whole life. And every time I think I figured it out, I stumble again. And so I think this is just a topic that's, you know, it's complicated, it's messy. But there was no way to write about it other than to say, yeah, and here's how I've fallen flat and continue to do that every day, even as somebody who professes to have some expertise on it.

Dan Harris (2:49)

I think you're making the right decision personally. I obviously lean on vulnerability myself, but I do think deployed correctly, and we'll talk about its uses and misuses at some point in this conversation. But deployed correctly can be really, really powerful.

I mean, as we've discussed, we haven't spent unlimited amounts of time together. I think the first time we met was in 2018 when I came to Wharton to shoot a story with you, to interview you. And I've found you charming and engaging right from the jump. Are you saying that before that, you actually, or as a younger man or a child, you weren't that way, and you really had, by the time I met you, learned some new skills?

Adam Grant (3:33)

I think so. I hope so. I think where you saw me was probably a big driver of whether you found me charming or not as a kid. I think when playing sports or trading baseball cards, I got along fine with my friends. In school, I think I was a little annoying, and some of that spilled over into actually baseball card trading. My friends called me Mr. Facts, and that was not a compliment.

We would organize our own fantasy football and basketball leagues and keep track of the statistics by hand. I was always jumping in and correcting people and wanting to be right, even when I wasn't, and I think that was off-putting, and I got a lot of feedback that I needed to think about whether I wanted to be liked and respected, not just whether I wanted to have the answers. I think that was something I had to unlearn.