Adam Grant Speaker Profile
Professor, The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and Author, Give and Take and Originals
Named one of the world’s 25 most influential management thinkers and one of the 100 most creative people in business, Adam Grant is a leading expert on how organizations can motivate employees, align teams, and innovate to achieve success.
Named one of the world’s 25 most influential management thinkers and one of the 100 most creative people in business, Adam Grant is a leading expert on how organizations can motivate employees, align teams, and innovate to achieve success.
MEET ADAM GRANTAdam Grant is Wharton’s top-rated professor and a New York Times writer on work and psychology. He has been recognized as one of the world's 25 most influential management thinkers, the 100 most creative people in business, the 40 best business professors under 40, and Malcolm Gladwell’s favorite thinkers. Previously, he was a record-setting advertising director, a junior Olympic springboard diver, and a professional magician. Adam is the author of two New York Times bestselling books translated into 35 languages. Originals explores how individuals champion new ideas and leaders fight groupthink; it is a #1 national bestseller and one of Amazon's best books of February 2016. Give and Take examines why helping others drives our success, and was named one of the best books of 2013 by Amazon, Apple, the Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal—as well as one of Oprah's riveting reads and Harvard Business Review’s ideas that shaped management. Adam received a standing ovation for his 2016 TED talk on the surprising habits of original thinkers and was voted the audience's favorite speaker at The Nantucket Project on the success of givers and takers. His speaking and consulting clients include Google, the NBA, Merck, Goldman Sachs, Pixar, Facebook, Johnson & Johnson, the United Nations, the U.S. Army and Navy, and the World Economic Forum, where he has been honored as a Young Global Leader. His New York Times articles on Raising a moral child and How to raise a creative child have each been shared over 300,000 times on social media. Adam was profiled in The New York Times Magazine cover story, Is giving the secret to getting ahead? He was tenured at Wharton while still in his twenties, and has received the Excellence in Teaching Award for every class that he has taught. He is the founder and host of the Authors@Wharton speaker series, and co-director of Wharton People Analytics. He has designed experiential learning activities based on The Apprentice in which students have raised over $325,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation while developing leadership, influence, networking and collaboration skills. He serves on the Lean In board and authored a New York Times series on women and work with Sheryl Sandberg, including Speaking while female and Madam C.E.O., get me a coffee. Adam earned his Ph.D. in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan, completing it in less than three years, and his B.A. from Harvard University, magna cum laude with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa honors. He has earned awards for distinguished scholarly achievement from the Academy of Management, the American Psychological Association, and the National Science Foundation. He has more than 60 publications in leading management and psychology journals, and his pioneering studies have increased performance and reduced burnout among engineers and sales professionals, enhanced call center productivity, and motivated safety behaviors among doctors, nurses and lifeguards. His studies have been highlighted in bestselling books such as Quiet by Susan Cain, Drive by Daniel Pink, and David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success In an interdependent world, interactions are a fundamental building block of success. To be effective in teams and service relationships, employees need skills in building networks, collaborating, talent management, persuasion and negotiating. Is there a consistent interaction style that drives both individual and organizational performance across these domains? Drawing on his new book, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success (April 2013 from Viking), Adam introduces three fundamental styles of professional interaction, and demonstrates their profound implications for individual and collective performance. Adam reveals surprising insights about what it takes to develop productive interactions, and how leaders, managers and employees can use this knowledge to build richer networks, more innovative teams and more rewarding service relationships. Innovation, Collaboration and Social Networks: Where Do Good Ideas Come From? To innovate, organizations need access to fresh ideas for developing original, useful products, services, and process. Many of these ideas are hidden in our professional networks, but most of us fail to access them. We make the mistake of relying on close colleagues, whose knowledge and perspectives tend to be redundant with our own. Although we can gain more efficient access to novel information through our acquaintances, these weak ties pose a different challenge: it is difficult to trust them. Synthesizing new evidence and the habits of exceptional networkers and innovators, Adam examines strategies for managing this innovation paradox of balancing trust and novel information in our networks. Adam shows audiences how to identify the key contacts in their networks and leverage untapped opportunities for innovation. To the Giver Go the Spoils: Driving Organizational Success by Building a Culture of Contributors Culture is a foundation from which successful organizations are built—but many struggle in creating an environment in which employees can be both fulfilled and effective in their work. What exactly is it that makes some organizations paragons of growth and success, while others have a hard time getting the right things done? Based on a decade of research and consulting with Fortune 500 companies, Wharton professor and author Adam Grant argues that the highest-performing organizations are the ones that embrace an ethos where helpfulness—and sharing knowledge and skills across an organization—is at the core of organizational values and norms. In this dynamic presentation, Grant outlines the strategies and practices that leaders can use to build a culture of contributors, which in turn proven to increase revenue, efficiency, and stakeholder satisfaction. The Power of Powerless Communication: The New Rules for Influencing Others In the quest for influence, we often strike a dominant pose, relying on assertiveness and authority to overpower others. Although this approach can succeed in the short run, it often sacrifices the respect and trust of the very people we hope to influence in the long run. Is there a more sustainable path to influence? Using revolutionary studies and rich stories from inside companies, Adam highlights the power of powerless communication. He shows how counterintuitive techniques such as asking questions, expressing uncertainty, and talking tentatively can actually increase success in selling, persuading, and negotiating. Adam delivers actionable insights for leaders, managers and employees about how to be modest and influence people. Building and Leading Effective Teams: How to Foster Teamwork and Collaboration We regularly rotate people in and out of teams, assuming that employees can carry their knowledge and skills with them. Yet pioneering evidence shows that in a wide range of settings, from surgery and software development to airline cockpits and professional basketball, when it comes to teamwork, the whole is usually less than the sum of the parts. Combining cutting-edge science and experience consulting with renowned organizations, Adam highlights pitfalls and best practices in designing and managing teams, outlining novel, practical steps for increasing team performance. Originals: How Non-Conformists Rule the World To survive and thrive, organizations need original thinking. Yet most individuals stay silent instead of voicing their best ideas—and many leaders stifle dissent rather than encouraging it. Drawing on his blockbuster new book, Originals, Adam Grant explores how we can all get better at recognizing and championing new ideas, how to overcome fear and doubt and how to build cultures that welcome diverse perspectives and honest feedback. He reveals why late entrants typically beat first movers, friendly managers end up being the least supportive, devil’s advocates often backfire but contrarian opinions are useful even when they’re wrong, and the values that help organizations prosper early on are the same ones that thwart their growth later. Grant’s insights on unleashing originality have been praised by J.J. Abrams, Richard Branson, Malcolm Gladwell, Sheryl Sandberg and Peter Thiel, and this talk brings them to life in ways that are both surprising and entertaining.
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Adam Grant was fantastic and response from the audience was also extremely positive. We had good engagement from the audience during the Q&A, and the majority who responded to our post-event survey rated Adam as Excellent. All in all, I'd say it was a success. |