Adam Grant
In 2021, Adam Grant published Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know, a book that brought his work as an organizational psychologist to a broad readership. Grant was born on August 13, 1981, in West Bloomfield Township and attended West Bloomfield High School and Puyallup High School before going on to Harvard College and then the University of Michigan, where he continued his education in psychology.
Working in English as a psychologist, university teacher, and writer, Grant has built a career at the intersection of academic research and accessible nonfiction. His books include Give and Take, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, and Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, each drawing on organizational psychology to examine questions of human behavior and achievement. The range of these titles reflects a sustained engagement with how people and institutions function, though Grant's identity as a researcher has remained central throughout.
That research dimension received formal recognition when Grant was awarded the APA Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology, a prize given by the American Psychological Association to acknowledge significant work produced early in a psychologist's career. The award marked Grant's standing within the discipline at a point when he had already demonstrated productivity across both scholarly and popular writing. A United States citizen writing in English, he continues to hold his position as a university teacher while producing work that spans the academic and public-facing sides of organizational psychology.
Quotes by Adam Grant
Adam Grant's insights on:
When writing 'Give and Take' and 'Originals,' the predominant emotion for me was curiosity.
You want people who choose to follow because they genuinely believe in ideas, not because they're afraid to be punished if they don't. For startups, there's so much pivoting that's required that if you have a bunch of sheep, you're in bad shape.
Teams need the opportunity to learn about each other's capabilities and develop productive routines. So once we get the right people on the bus, let's make sure they spend some time driving together.
When I think about voting, I can skip it and still see myself as a good citizen. But when I think about being a voter, now the choice reflects on my character. It casts a shadow.
If we want girls to receive positive reinforcement for early acts of leadership, let's discourage bossy behavior along with banning bossy labels. That means teaching girls to engage in behaviors that earn admiration before they assert their authority.
When young women get called bossy, it's often because they're trying to exercise power without status. It's not a problem that they're being dominant; the backlash arises because they're overstepping their status.
Instead of assuming that emotional intelligence is always useful, we need to think more carefully about where and when it matters.
Leaders who master emotions can rob us of our capacities to reason. If their values are out of step with our own, the results can be devastating.
