800: How to Get Better at Asking for Help with Dr. Heidi Grant

Pete Mockaitis
Heidi, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Heidi Grant
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m really excited to dig into your wisdom, and, first, I want to hear a little bit about you and science fiction.

Heidi Grant
Oh, I’m a huge science fiction nerd. It’s my favorite thing on the planet. Science fiction and fantasy. I’m one of those people that refuses to pick sides on the whole Star Wars-Star Trek debate because they’re both amazing, so it’s like choosing between children. You just can’t do it. And, also, Lord of the Rings, I think I remember I had a boyfriend in college who gave me a birthday card that was actually written in Elvish runes. He probably lasted longer than he would have normally. That was such a cool thing.

So, yeah, big science fiction nerd, big comic book nerd as well – Marvel, DC, all of those things. Those are the things that are sort of my brain candy where I do a lot of hard thinking during the day and the night. I relax by watching people in spaceships do cool things and meet aliens. That’s very relaxing to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good. That’s good. Well, it’s funny, we’re talking about your book Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You and I’m thinking about, right now, I read a book, this is my nerdiness, I read a book in college entitled Make It So: Leadership Lessons from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Heidi Grant
Oh, that’s amazing. That’s amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think Captain Picard was great at getting people to help him.

Heidi Grant
Absolutely. Jean-Luc had so much to say. Absolutely. And he was a fantastic mediator as well so he could help you to choose sides. Both kind of come together over an issue. Very wise man. I’m sure that was an excellent book, actually.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I really did enjoy it. Well, let’s talk about how one gets people to help you. Any particularly surprising and fascinating discoveries you made as you did your research here?

Heidi Grant
Yeah, I think you have to start from…and I wrote the book, this was a book I wrote because this was something I was so good at. In fact, the opposite is true. There’s a running joke amongst psychologists that all psychology is me-psychology because we, like most researchers, are either interested in things they are very good at or things they’re very bad at.

And this was one of those cases where I was interested in this topic because it was something that I, to this day, even I struggle with feeling comfortable asking other people to help me. And I couched in all these positive terms, “I’m very independent,” “I’m very self-reliant,” and that’s what we say to ourselves. When, really, what it is, it’s like, “I’m very deeply uncomfortable making myself vulnerable in that way.”

And so, I wanted to kind of understand it, and I had colleagues who, we were doing research at Columbia that we’re kind of digging into sort of the first piece of the puzzle, which is trying to understand why it is that we’re so uncomfortable with asking for help and why it is that we’re so wrong about the chances of actually getting help.

A colleague of mine did a ton of research that was really interesting, she’d bring people into the lab and she’d ask them to go out, and they would be paid to do this, they would be tasked with going and asking strangers for various forms of help, asking them if you could use their cellphone, if they would fill out a survey for you.

There was one where she had people go into the Columbia library and ask people who were in the library if they would write the word pickle on the inside of a library book, so the requests were odd, and everyone hated it. The minute when they found out what the study was about, they were just absolutely filled with dread because it’s, again, very human to be very uncomfortable with the idea of asking people for help, particularly strangers.

And she would ask them, “What are the odds you think people will help you? What percentage of people will say yes? Or, how many people will you have to ask before someone says yes?” They would go to like Penn Station or Grand Central, these are very public places, and just walk up to strangers and ask for help.

And what she found was that first of all, they were filled with dread, and then they would wildly underestimate the odds of actually getting help, that typically by a factor of, like, roughly 50%. So, people are at least twice as likely to say yes than we realize. And what was so interesting about this was that they would go out, and they would say, “Well, nobody is going to say yes to this,” and, in fact, a whole bunch of people said yes and were very helpful.

So, they would leave the lab full of dread that this was the thing they had to do, but then they would come back filled with this, like, warm glow of just how wonderful people turned out to be. Everyone had this experience of thinking, like, “Huh, human beings are a lot better than I thought they were.” And so, this was sort of one of these fundamental truths that one of the big obstacles we have to asking for help is that we tend to think we’re much more likely to get a rejection than we actually are.

And, of course, very few people, willingly walking to a situation where they think the odds of rejection are high. So, the beginning of the book is just sort of unpacking, like, actually, human beings are kind of wired to be helpful. It is our natural state. It’s one of the things all humans find most rewarding, or at least most humans who aren’t sociopaths, which is most of us.

They find most rewarding, and it is one of the strongest sources of self-esteem and wellbeing and life satisfaction to feel like you are doing things that have a positive impact on other people. So, people actually love to say yes, they love to help one another. And even though we each know this about ourselves, that we all like helping other people, somehow, when it comes to other people, we think, “Well, they don’t though and they’re going to probably reject me.”

So, part of it is it’s just kind of understanding that we’re often approaching asking for help kind of with the idea that we’re not going to get it, and that it turns out to largely not be the case.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s super helpful, and, yet, you say that, here, you’ve written the book on the subject and you still feel discomfort. So, knowing that is great, like, “Okay, cool. I have some logical, rational, sort of prefrontal cortex reassurance and reasons that it’s all good to ask for help, and people actually enjoy helping, and yet I still feel uncomfortable.” It sounds like that can take a while to master. But do you have any pro tips on how we can nudge it a little bit more there?

Heidi Grant
Sure. Get a little more. Well, I think, like anything else, practice makes perfect. And so, and certainly practice makes comfortable. Like, the more we do a thing and we realize we didn’t die, everything works out okay, the world didn’t open up and swallow us, then we get a little bit more comfortable with it.

I think it also helps to actually have, be armed with a few strategies that increase your chances of success. One of the things that I talk about in the book is, and I mean this in a very helpful way, is that if you aren’t getting the help and support that you need in your life, odds are good it’s kind of your fault. And it’s not something people want to hear.

Each of us runs around thinking that we’re not getting…very few of us, actually, I feel like, I think we’re getting the support and help that we could certainly benefit from. And a lot of times, we should have these stories in our heads about how that’s not, like, “Oh, it’s so terrible that I’m not getting the support, and other people should be giving it to me.”

So, one of the other things I talk about in the book is sort of what a potential helper needs in order to help you, and that very often we don’t give them those things so that’s why they don’t help us. So, it’s not that people get lots of help. It’s that when they don’t get it, it’s kind of because there’s something they’re not doing, or something they’re doing that’s actually kind of counterproductive.

So, in terms of the things you need to do, we can kind of start there, what you need to do in order to actually get help, your helper kind of needs four things, I talk about in the book. So, the first is to actually know that you need help. This is already, foundationally, one of the biggest problems and one of the reasons why we don’t each of us get the help, either personally or professionally, that we need. We feel like that our need for support is obvious to other people.

The psychologists call this particular bias the allusion of transparency. We feel like our thoughts and our feelings and our intentions and our needs are very obvious to other people because they’re obvious to us, “So, clearly, you must know that I need help.” Especially true, of course, or with the people that we’re around the most, so with our closest coworkers, with our partners, with our family, our closest friends. We think they know, like, “I need help and you can tell.”

In fact, there’s tons of research that shows that nothing could be farther from the truth. Even the people that know us well and are around us every day often actually just simply do not see that we are in need of help because each of us, ourselves very much included, is mostly focused on our own needs, and so we do not see everything there is to see, and it’s very easy to miss the fact that somebody actually could use your hand with something. It’s really easy to skip that.

And we don’t say anything. And we say things to ourselves, like, “Well, it should be obvious to you,” “It should go without saying that I need your help with that.” No. By the way, one of the expressions, as a person who studies communication and sort of social interaction for a living, I would tell you the most annoying phrase in the world is “It goes without saying,” because nothing goes without saying. Everything goes with saying, like everything all the time goes with saying.

So, I think the first piece is actually we have to say it. And nobody likes hearing that because we won’t want to live in a universe where our needs are obvious to other people so we don’t have to, again, make ourselves vulnerable by actually saying them out loud. But the very first step to getting help is actually asking for it, which actually solves the second problem as well, which is that even if someone happens to see that you need help, they don’t actually know that you want it.

And if you have ever tried to give help to someone who didn’t want your help, like I have teenagers and I see that they’re struggling with something, and I offer unsolicited help to them, and it does not always go well, and so, again, that need to ask for it so that people know that you need it and want it is just an unavoidable fact of the universe of support. We have to ask for help if we want it.

Pete Mockaitis
What’s really ringing true for me here is I’ve just sort of learned, like, I have a background in strategy consulting and coaching, and so I see all the time, it’s like, “Oh, you’re engaging in behaviors that are counterproductive to your stated goals.” It’s like, “But if I tell you about it, you’ll probably bite my head off, so I’m just going to hang back.”

Heidi Grant
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’s like I’m just sort of made peace with it, and at first, it really bothered me, it’s like, “Oh, am I being selfish? Is this wrong?” But it’s like, “They didn’t ask.” And, actually, when people do ask, I’m delighted.

Heidi Grant
It’s the best, right?

Pete Mockaitis
And I’ve had some really cool experiences with folks that I had sort of good mentoring going on with them because they asked, it’s like, “I’m so glad you asked why I rejected you in an interview. I have much to tell you.” And they said, “Oh, wow, thanks. That’s really awesome. Thanks.” And then away they went.

Heidi Grant
It’s a wonderful gift when you actually ask for help because, very often, people, like I said, they see the need, like you could use some support, but it’s a terrible situation to be into to feel like that may not be welcomed. And, in fact, people generally like it is counterproductive, in fact, to give people help they didn’t ask for, nine times out of ten.

So, it’s a very real and legitimate concern, which means we do have to get past this reluctance to ask for it. And the other couple things that it’s good to bear in mind are that people need to know. So, they need to know you need help, they need to know you want it. They need to know that they, specifically, are the person you’re asking for help from. I cannot tell you how many times I see this, like, blanket emails go out to 20 people, or like BCC, which isn’t fooling anybody. We know there’s a ton of people on that email, saying, like, “Hey, could someone help me with this?”

And there’s a phenomenon in psychology called diffusion of responsibility. It’s a reason why, on an airplane, the flight attendant will say, “Is there a doctor on board?” because if you don’t say that, then there may be doctors on board but they won’t realize like they should do something. So, it’s that idea that you have to kind of say.

I always say to people, “Don’t send an email to 20 people. Send 20 emails to one, each one to one,” because then that person realizes, “Oh, you’re talking specifically to me.” Because what happens to the 20-person email is that we all sort of sit there, and we go, “Well, somebody else probably responded already,” and then we just kind of let it float down in our inbox.

So, make sure that they know that they are themselves the person you’re asking for help. And then the last thing, again, it’s something that’s wildly overlooked when we ask in this sort of realm of support-seeking, is you want to make sure the person feels like they can give you effective help. Nobody wants to give bad help. Nobody wants to be asked to do a thing and then fail at delivering on it. The amount of, like, guilt and shame you would feel is sort of staggering.

And so, one of the things I’ve noticed that people often do, a mistake we make when we ask for help, is that we don’t kind of enable the person to actually be effective. I can’t tell you how many requests I get to just like connect, like on LinkedIn, or an email, you’ll get something, like, “Hey, we’d love to just connect,” and it’s like, “Okay, you want something.” Very few actually just want to connect. There’s something.

Pete Mockaitis
With a total stranger, you know, not such a human need but, yeah.

Heidi Grant
Right, like, we’re hoping to achieve a thing, like we’re hoping to learn something, or we’re hoping to get an introduction to something, or get access to a resource. There’s always an agenda with human beings. Like, we always have some goal. And when you don’t tell me what it is, my discomfort immediately is, “Am I going to get into this conversation with you and then, in the conversation, you’re going to ask me for help that I can’t give for whatever reason, and I’m so uncomfortable, and I do this?”

“I’m so uncomfortable with the idea that you might ask me for help that I can’t give, that I don’t do the connecting because I don’t want to be put in that position where somebody asks me for something, and it’s like I’m the wrong person.” But I do say yes when people kind of reach out to me, and they say, “Hi, I want to connect because I’d like to learn X, because I’d like to know Y, because I know that you know this person and I’m hoping you’ll make an introduction.”

Okay, now I know what you want, so now I know whether or not I can be effective in giving you the help you’re seeking, so now I have a lot more confidence. People often shy away from giving support because they think they might fail. And so, we should always be thoughtful about being very explicit in helping the person understand how they can help us so that they have confidence going into it that it’s something they’re actually going to be able to do.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful stuff. Maybe you’re kinder than I am, Heidi.

Heidi Grant
Probably not.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I’m assuming if someone asks to connect with no context…we had a great conversation with Rene Rodriguez about stories and frames, and how we just need them. And if there’s not one provided, we just invent one, and I’m so guilty of this.

Heidi Grant
Oh, and it’s always…almost always negative.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and I invent the frames, like, “You want to sell me something. It’s unclear what that is,” because I have been grateful…you know, I’ve been cold-approached on several occasions, bought the thing, and was delighted I bought the thing, was delighted I’ve had the cold approach. But I also know, statistically, hmm, less than a 1% chance, the cold approach to sell me a thing is the thing I happen to want to buy in that moment.

Heidi Grant
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I just assume, “You want to sell me a thing and that’s very likely I don’t want it. Therefore, I’m not interested in connecting.” So, I just invented that frame, may or may not be accurate, but if they told me, you’re right, something, like, “Hey, here’s a thing that I’d like your help with,” I’ve really gone into great detail talking to total stranger, “Oh, you want to start a podcast? Let me send you a huge email about how to do that.” And it’s like, “I don’t know you, and this just felt good. I thought you had a cool idea and I’d like to see it in the world, and if I could help a little bit, that feels awesome.”

Heidi Grant
It does feel awesome, and I think that is exactly the thing that a lot of times we shy away from being specific for all the wrong reasons. We sort of feel like, “Oh, well, ease the person into the request,” and it’s like, “No, no, no, you’re actually just scaring them away from even having the conversation with you.” Or, people will say, like, “Oh, it feels a little aggressive to just come out with what it is that I’m looking for,” and it’s like, “No, you’re creating clarity and certainty for people, which they really, people like. Human beings like certainty. We like to know what we’re getting ourselves into.”

And, like I said, there’s almost always an agenda, and people aren’t just looking to make new friends, generally, right? There’s something they’re seeking. And so, I think it’s a really super common mistake. I categorized this into sort of, I call this “You made it weird” things, where it’s like, “I would’ve helped you but you made it weird,” or, “I would’ve helped you but you were weirdly reticent to tell me what it was that you wanted help with, and so that was off-putting for me.” And certain kinds of rejections are quite painful, like if someone says, “Oh, I wanted to connect with you because I wanted a job on your team,” and it’s like, “But I’m not hiring, so this is going to be painful for everybody involved.”

So, it’s really, really good to be upfront and to create that clarity for people so they can be comfortable, or they can do something. If they can’t help you, maybe they can tell you. Like, I love it when people actually tell me what they’re looking for because sometimes I can’t help them but I know someone who can, and so I can kind of redirect you to the person who can actually help you, which also feels good.

So, that’s one of those “You made it weird” where it’s not kind of coming out with it what it is that you’re seeking. Another “You made it weird” that it is just absolutely tragic is when people apologize constantly when asking for help because it’s sort of ruins it. Giving help is very satisfying, innately satisfying to do things that benefit other people. But there’s a lot of research that shows that you can kind of spoil it by either kind of making people feel coerced, so making people feel like they didn’t have a choice but to help you. That’s never a good thing.

And then the other thing is by constantly apologizing because, when you think about it, people ask you for help, and they say things like, “Oh, I hate that I have to ask you for this. I feel so terrible. I’m just so embarrassed that I have to ask you for this support.” And it’s like, “How am I supposed to enjoy this now?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true, “You hate this and you’re embarrassed. This is real fun for me.”

Heidi Grant
Like, “If you hate having to ask me, if you feel terrible but I’m supposed to feel good.” So, a lot of times that’s another “You made it weird” where we were apologizing because we don’t want the person to think badly of us, but all we’re really doing is ruining it for them because they never thought badly about you in the first place.

Again, a common misconception that people will think less of you because you need support. Actually, if anything, the research suggests that people think more highly of people who are willing to ask for help and support because they feel like that’s a sign of confidence, where people are willing to be vulnerable in that way.

Like, we admire people who are authentic and vulnerable, and say, like, “Yeah, I’m not perfect. I could actually use…” or, “I have too much on my plate, and I need your support.” We admire people who do that. So, we tend to actually think more highly of them but we’re so convinced that people will think less of us that we get into this word apology game. And all of that is just based on, really, honestly, foundationally a failure of perspective-taking.

We do a very, very bad job at ima gining what the situation is like from the helper’s perspective. And if we could just pause and…but it’s weird because we are all helpers. So, if you just took a minute to say, “How would I feel being asked for this help? How would I feel about it? What would I think of this person?” then you have a pretty good gauge of what they think of you, and it’s pretty positive actually. But we just don’t do that perspective-taking and so we make it weird over and over again.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, the “You make it weird,” I’m also thinking about just that theme associated with destroying the opportunity for joy in that helping exchange. It’s like robbing them of that joy.

Heidi Grant
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m reminded when I was in Prague, we were at a bar, and I had purchased a beer, and I was ready to give, leave the change type tip to the bartender. And so, she took the coin and she extended her hand toward me, and then brought it back, almost like a fishing reel, and said, “For me to keep?” And I was like, “Well, I was planning on doing that but, now, when you did this, I don’t feel as great about doing it,” but I’m not going to say, “No, no, not for you to keep.” I was like, “Okay, sure.” Whereas, before, I would’ve felt great, like, “Well, hey, that’s yours, and you should say thank you,” and then we would’ve had a fun moment.

Heidi Grant
So, here, this is one of those things. So, there are techniques, and people will always say, like, “Are there things you can do to get people to help you?” like kind of forced compliance. And, yes, there are, frankly. There’s all kinds of tricks you can use that make people more likely to say yes, that are also more likely to make them feel coerced. They make them feel like they didn’t have a choice.

So, what happens is they will say yes in that moment, and then the other thing that happens is they will never say yes again. So, it’s interesting. In the case of the bartender, did she get the tip? Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
She did, yeah.

Heidi Grant
But she might’ve gotten another one, like, later on. Like, if you were like, “Oh, I really love this bartender, and I’m here and I’m having another drink.” So, helping and support can delightfully build on itself and be reciprocal, or it can just happen the one time, and then that person is done with you because you made them feel coerced. So, that’s another thing, that’s a really common mistake people make.

If the one time is all that matters, fine. But if you really want to have an ongoing relationship that has mutual ongoing support in it, you really do want to use the techniques that I’m talking about which are the ones that make people feel really glad that they helped you, very satisfied, very effective in giving that help that really lands when they can imagine.

This is another thing, honestly. If someone helps you, one of the most impactful things you can do is go back and tell them about the impact they had, not as a gratitude per se, although gratitude is lovely, but, again, related to that effectiveness idea, like, “The help you gave me had these results.” Because if you do that, if you go back and you help people understand the impact that their help had, that is a well that you can turn to again and again because that person will love helping you in the future because you made them feel very, very effective as a helper. You really ramped up that warm glow. And I think that’s a mistake we often make.

I was a college professor for years. I wrote tons of letters of recommendation to medical school, graduate school, law school. Probably 5% of those students actually came back to tell me whether or not they actually got into the program. And, for me, that was the moment that was very rewarding, knowing that I had helped them to actually achieve the goal. But, too often, people don’t circle back, and you’re really missing an opportunity to create an ongoing supportive relationship with someone when you don’t do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. So, then we’ve got some great principles in mind and some key don’ts as well. I’d love it if you could give us a demonstration or share any favorite phrases so we can make this come to life with actual verbiage.

Heidi Grant
The truth is there are not really sort of magical words to use about this because it really is just about candor. It’s that sort of taking a deep breath and saying, “Okay, I’m going to just be honest. This is the help that I need. I need it from you. This specifically is the thing that I’m looking for. And this is the reason why, this is the impact it’s going to have on my life if you do this. This is the impact it’s going to have.”

And it can be as simple as coming home to your partner, and saying, “I know that I’m usually the one that handles the recycling but I would really like it if you would chip in and maybe we could take turns because that would give me one last thing to do, and that would kind of make me feel a little bit more supported at home.” Okay, great. Like, it’s very specific.

If you come home to your partner, and you say, “I’d love you to do more around the house,” don’t expect anything to happen. First of all, if you say nothing, I promise you, nothing will happen. If you say nothing and you’re just going to passively-aggressively sigh a lot, your partner is not…

Pete Mockaitis
“She should know.”

Heidi Grant
Right, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“She should know.”

Heidi Grant
Yeah, your partner is not going to pick up on that. If you do the only slightly better thing, which is, “I need your help around the house,” that’s probably not going to work either because, again, what specifically do you need? The more specific we are about exactly what it is we want the person to do, both the more effective they feel doing it and the more likely they are to actually do it because, again, it’s that allusion of transparency.

If say, “I need more help from you around the house,” and you fold some towels, you might feel like, “I have achieved what she wanted.” And it’s like, “I kind of was looking for something more than that.”

Pete Mockaitis
Mission accomplished.

Heidi Grant
Exactly, “I feel so satisfied.” So, it is that asking explicitly, being very, very clear about what it is you’re looking for. And then, by the way, when they do the thing, coming back and saying, like, “Wow, that really made a difference. I really thank you so much for making that effort. This made a huge difference in how I feel. Coming home, I feel so much more supported, etc.”

So, it’s just that simple and it’s really not complicated but we avoid it so much and we tell ourselves so many things that aren’t true. I think 90% of the obstacle is getting the myths out of the way, that people are going to say no, that they somehow intuitively know what it is we need them to do, that they know the impact they’ve had. Once you realize none of those things are true, then you really do know what to do differently.

And I will say that, to the extent that I don’t ask for help, it isn’t because I feel uncomfortable anymore. It’s more that I just sometimes forget to. You can get so used to operating as “independent” – I’m air-quoting right now. You can get so used to not asking for help that even when you’ve gotten comfortable with the idea of it, the challenge becomes breaking that habit of just doing everything on your own.

And so, I find nowadays, for me, I have very little problem asking for help, but I do find myself sometimes kind of full-speeding ahead on things and trying to do too much myself, and it’s just more that I didn’t recognize the moment where I should’ve asked for help. I should’ve stopped and said, “Hey, this is too much. I could use some help from somebody else.”

So, that’s another piece of it I’m realizing as a person who is kind of trying to change my habits about this, that it is a habit to not ask for help, and that, therefore, like any habit, it can be difficult to replace it with a better one and build that new muscle. So, that’s something that, since I’ve written the book, I’m in the process of doing, sort of rewiring my habits a little bit.

Before I am overwhelmed and exhausted, I ask for help instead of after I’m overwhelmed and exhausted, which used to be my cue to ask for help. So, being a little more proactive about that is part of what I’m currently working on.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great. Thank you. Now, I’d love to hear about some of your favorite things. Favorite book?

Heidi Grant
Oh, a favorite book. Well, probably The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’ve read it a million times.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Heidi Grant
I’m still a Post-it person.

My desk right now is littered in Post-it notes, which I know is really old school, and I know that there’s apps that could do this for me, and also all kinds of programs, but I really love the tangible nature of a Post-it, and I really love how satisfying it is to cross things off a Post-it, and then throw it away. That’s the problem with files on a computer. You just can’t have that “I am done with you” moment, where you toss it because you’ve actually completed the task that was on the Post-it, so I do love, I love my Post-it notes very much.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Heidi Grant
Talking about growth mindset and this idea, the sort of background narrative that you have when you approach a task really changes how you approach it. So, growth mindset, basically, is saying, “The point of what I’m doing is to develop, is to improve.” And fixed mindset is really, “The point of what I’m doing is to prove myself, to prove that I’m already good at this thing.”

And how I orient myself, so when I catch myself in sort of a fixed mindset, and I’m approaching something as if the point is to prove myself, and I want to shift into growth mindset, the thing I say to myself, everybody has a thing they say, the thing I say is, “It’s not about being good. It’s about getting better.” And that’s my little mantra that I shift.

After 20 years of doing this stuff, I occasionally catch myself in the mindset I don’t want to be in, and to shift back, I say, “It’s not about being good. It’s about getting better.” And that has been one that people have repeated back to me or I see it tweeted a lot when I’m giving a talk on growth mindset, that it just sort of encapsulates.

I think one of the most powerfully things you can do for yourself motivationally is remember that in every particular moment that you’re in, it can be an opportunity to judge yourself or it can be an opportunity to develop yourself. And the more we can see what we do as opportunities to develop ourselves, the more resilient, creative, and high-performing we are.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Heidi Grant
Well, first, I would point them to my website, so it’s HeidiGrantPhD.com where there’s a ton of stuff, videos, articles that I’ve written and links to them. I write a lot for HBR so you can also find a lot of my blog posts there on various topics. But HeidiGrantPhD.com is a great place to start.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Heidi Grant
I think that idea that going to your job every day, looking for those opportunities to end up better at something than you were before, the more you can do that, and often we don’t think of our jobs that way. We think of our jobs as places where “I’m constantly proving myself.” What we don’t realize is that a lot of it is in your head.

That particular attitude, I try every day to look for ways, even in the tedious aspects of my job, that I feel like I can be better at something today than I was the day before. And the more we do that, the more it engages us, it sustains us, it makes us creative, it makes us feel effective, and it helps us to grow.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Heidi, thank you. This is great stuff. I wish you much luck and much health coming your way.

Heidi Grant
Thank you so much, Pete.