How to love criticism

This is the first episode of a new podcast from TED: WorkLife with Adam Grant. In most workplaces, criticizing your boss is a great way to lose your job. At Bridgewater Associates, you can be fired for NOT criticizing your boss. We grill founder Ray Dalio and a series of employees to figure out how this kind of radical transparency works in real life -- and how we can all get better at dishing it out (and taking it). (Audio only)

When I was 26 years old,
barely out of grad school,

I was asked to come teach
a half-day class about motivation.

I was excited for it.

And then I found out my audience
would be generals and colonels

in the US Air Force.

I was way underqualified.

And I wanted to back out,
but it was too late.

So I walked in,

and I was staring at a room
full of people twice my age,

wearing full military garb
with all their medals on display.

They had nicknames like Gunner,
Striker and Stealth.

By the end of the first hour,
I felt like I was bombing.

And sure enough, in the reviews
they wrote after class,

they bombed me.

One wrote,

"There was more quality information
in the audience than on the podium."

Another said,

"I gained very little from the session,

but I trust the instructor
did gain useful insight."

(Music)

It felt like a punch in the stomach.

And I couldn't get it out of my head.

So I did what any self-respecting
organizational psychologist would do:

I started studying why it's often
soul-crushing to receive criticism.

And whether we could
actually learn to like it.

(Music)

I'm Adam Grant.

This is WorkLife, my TED podcast.

I study how to make work not suck.

Organizations like Google,
the NBA and the Gates Foundation

have invited me in to help
make jobs more meaningful,

teams more creative
and cultures more collaborative.

In this show, I'm inviting myself in
to some truly unusual places,

where they've mastered something
I wish everyone else knew about work.

Today, the art and science of criticism.

Thanks to Bonobos
for sponsoring this episode.

(Music)

Adam Grant: Hey, Kiran.
Kiran Rao: Hello, Adam.

AG: How are you?
KR: Doing well, and you?

AG: Good.

This is Kiran Rao.

He used to be a manager
at a financial company.

Like most managers,
he spent a ton of time in meetings.

And most of them
were pretty run-of-the-mill.

But there's one meeting
that Kiran will never forget.

Here's Kiran, breaking down
a recording of that meeting for us.

KR: We were in this large white tent,

200 people sitting around,
the top 200 or 300 managers.

Audio clip: Man: So the next two sections

are going to be
about practical application.

KR: We'd been talking
about multiple strategic points,

and up comes a chart --

Audio clip: Man: This is a list

of forced-ranking the people
in this room by performance.

KR: Which was labeled
"the worst managers."

Audio clip: Man: So these are
people we love.

Some of the people in this room,
these names, probably shouldn't be here.

KR: And I was number one on the list.

Audio clip: Man: I look at this name --
I hired Kiran.

Apparently in his first couple years,
he's not doing that well.

AG: Wow. So you're totally
caught by surprise.

You're staring at a room of 200 people,

and being told you are the single
worst manager in that room.

KR: That's right.

AG: What was that like?

KR: Um ...

It was intense.

(Music)

AG: We'll hear more from Kiran later.

But right now, I want you to imagine
you're Kiran, right in that moment.

Think about what happens
when you get criticized.

Like, physically: your shoulders tighten,
your breath gets shallower.

Negative feedback sets off alarm bells.

It actually touches a nerve in your body.

And psychologically?

Your mind races.

You start to put up shields
and mount a counterattack.

If you were a peacock, you'd strut.

If you were an ape, you'd beat your chest.

But humans have another kind of reaction.

There was a study a few decades ago

that said our ego can get
so defensive in these situations

that it becomes its own little
totalitarian regime.

It starts to control the flow
of information to our brains

the way a dictator controls the media.

Think about that.

Your own ego is censoring what you hear.

But if we never hear criticism,
we'll never improve.

What would it be like in a place

where people constantly
criticize each other --

and crave that kind
of feedback for themselves

in order to make everyone better?

I've worked with hundreds of organizations

and I found only one
where that's truly the norm.

Ray Dalio: You could say to me,
"Hey, jerk, you're being an asshole."

And then we'll say, OK,
am I being an asshole?

AG: This is the guy in charge.

His name is Ray.

RD: One of the biggest
tragedies of mankind

is people holding in
their opinions in their heads,

and it's such a tragedy
because it could so easily be fixed

if they put them out there

and stress-tested them in the right way.

They would so raise their probability
of making a better decision.

Everybody's giving high fives,
they're all smiling at each other.

But they're not dealing with the things
they need to deal with.

AG: It's incredibly fun
to think about, like,

you can go around calling people assholes

and their default response
is supposed to be, "Tell me more."

Is that really how you want
people to react to criticism?

RD: Well, I want to put that
on the table together and look at that,

because maybe I'm the one
who's being a jerk or misunderstanding.

AG: In the mid 1970s,

Ray Dalio started a financial firm
called Bridgewater Associates.

At first, he was working
out of a barn with his friends.

He got really successful really quickly.

And then he got cocky.

He placed a bad bet.

It tanked his firm.

He had to fire his friends.

RD: And I was so broke

that I had to borrow
4,000 dollars from my dad

to help pay for my family bills.

And that was extremely painful.

It turned out to be terrific.

AG: I'm sorry, you just said
it was terrific that is was so painful?

Because normal human beings
don't feel that way.

RD: I mean, like,
I was absolutely miserable.

But it gave me the humility that I needed
to deal with my audacity.

It made me want to find
the smartest people I could find

who disagreed with me.

AG: Ray realized that he crashed

because there wasn't anyone
around to check his ego

when he was on top of the world.

He only listened to himself
or people who constantly said yes.

Now, he was on his own.

RD: So that experience was the one
that really kind of, drove it home for me.

And I say, if you don't look back
on yourself and think,

"Wow, how stupid I was a year or two ago,"

then you must not have learned much
in the last year or two.

AG: Ray decided that the next
version of his company

would have a different kind of culture

where everyone would be
brutally honest with each other.

And that's what Bridgewater does today.

Ray calls it radical transparency.

Every criticism, every opinion,
out in the open.

You're comfortable just putting that
out there, transparently?

RD: Why shouldn't we be?

AG: Embarrassment, pain,
you know, ridicule, cruelty.

RD: OK, but it's not those
kinds of things, right?

We recognize that it can be
a difficult moment.

Before people come here,
we ask them, do they want to do that.

Isn't this good,

to make them partners in that
self-discovery of what is actually true?

AG: Bridgewater Associates
is now considered

the most successful
hedge fund in the world.

And Ray believes the culture
is the driving force behind their success.

They manage 160 billion dollars in assets,

and Ray has become one
of the richest people on earth.

If you can't tell by now,

Bridgewater is also one of the strangest
workplaces I've ever seen.

Feedback is only one piece
of what makes them different.

I'm not here to analyze
all their practices,

dissect their performance
or suggest you copy them.

But I do believe that if we want
to get better at something,

we should go and learn from the extreme.

You know, the same way you might try
and pick up a workout tip

from an Olympic athlete.

Bridgewater goes
to the extreme on criticism.

They think you can learn
to dish it out and even crave it.

Over the years, they've had some
high-profile senior leaders.

Including James Comey,
the recent FBI director.

He even talked about Bridgewater
at his Senate confirmation hearing.

James Comey: I went to Bridgewater

in part because of that culture
of transparency --

it's something
that's long been part of me.

AG: Today, about 2,000 people work there

and every single one of them is expected
to put criticism out in the open.

Even if the billionaire founder
is the target.

Here's an email Ray got one day
from a colleague named Jim Haskel.

"Ray, you deserve a 'D-minus'
for your performance today.

You rambled for 50 minutes.

It was obvious to all of us
that you did not prepare at all.

Today was really bad,
we can't let this happen again."

When Jim sent his scathing review,
Ray decided to get a few more opinions.

He asked his colleagues
to rate his performance that day

on a scale from A to F.

Then he shared the feedback
with everyone else.

And let me tell you, Ray did not get
any As for that meeting.

RD: I sucked!

AG: I think a lot of people
in that situation

would have just sorted
the conversation out with Jim.

And you replied and you said,

"Hey, everybody else in the meeting,
I'm looping you in."

RD: No, the whole company.

AG: That went to the whole company?
RD: Yeah.

AG: A to F?
RD: It's very important.

AG: This kind of thing is happening
constantly at Bridgewater.

What would you do
if someone gave you a D-minus?

There are actual studies showing
that when coworkers criticize us,

we tend to drop them from our lives.

Or at least avoid them at all costs.

Instead, we go straight
to our cheerleaders

to complain and get reassurance.

Our friends, our favorite
like-minded colleagues, mom.

That's our support network.

(Music)

But there's another kind
of network that we all need:

a challenge network.

A challenge network is the group of people
that you trust to push you to get better.

They tell you the stuff you don't want
to hear but need to hear.

And Bridgewater
is one big challenge network.

RD: I want Jim's critiques.

Because I might be inclined to ramble,

and because I might be inclined
to not be prepared.

AG: So Ray made a promise to Jim:
he'd do better the next time.

RD: He said, "Listen,
I can't trust you to do that.

And I say, "Great, I can't trust me
to do that, either."

And so as a regular protocol,
he'll call me up,

because he understands
that it works well for both of us

and works well for the company.

AG: A challenge network can only help you
if you're ready to listen.

RD: It's particularly important for me
to be showing anybody what I'm doing,

including my failures, my successes.

Yes. Why would you not do that?

AG: Well, because
you're afraid of the answer.

RD: What are you afraid of?

AG: Of the emperor
being discovered to have no clothes.

RD: If your objective is to be
as good as you can possibly be,

then you're going to want that.

AG: I think a lot of people
would rather maintain

at least the illusion of a decent image
than to actually improve.

RD: But then they care
more about their image

than they care about results.

AG: And you're not willing
to tolerate that.

RD: You know, life's much better
with good results.

(Laughter)

AG: The idea of criticizing
each other this openly

might sound terrifying.

I get that.

In lots of workplaces,
it would be painful at best

and abusive at worst.

There's a bunch of work by economists

showing that rankings
generally demotivate people.

People, even at the top, are like,

"I expected to be further at the top."

And everybody at the bottom
doesn't enjoy the experience

of comparing themselves negatively
to everyone else around them.

RD: In normal companies,
I suspect that they don't prepare people,

agree on it, say, "Is this a good thing?"

(Music)

AG: What about your workplace?

What would happen
if you just decided one day

to be radically transparent?

It might not go so well.

AJ: I was working at "Esquire"
magazine at the time,

and I said to my editor
in a meeting at one point,

"You know what, I really
would rather be at the 'New Yorker,'

and if they offered me a job,
I would take that."

And he was stone-faced,
he did not like it.

AG: That's AJ Jacobs,

a writer who thinks it's fun
to live his life as an experiment.

For a story he was working on,

AJ committed to being 100 percent
transparent for a few weeks.

AJ: If you hate your boss,
tell your boss, "I hate you."

AG: AJ did that
with everyone he talked to.

His mother-in-law, elderly neighbors,
his kids, his wife's friends.

AJ: I was out with my wife
at a restaurant,

and we saw some friends of hers
that she hadn't seen since college.

And they were all excited
to see her and they said,

"Oh, we should all get together
and have a play date with our kids."

And I had to say what was on my mind,

which was, "You guys
seem like nice people,

but I really don't want to see you again."

AG: (Laughter) Oh, no!
AJ: Oh, yeah.

They were offended, rightly,
and my wife was furious.

So it was a disaster.

I mean, we never did see them again

so it is efficient, it was effective.

Kim Scott: (Laughter) So in my parlance,

saying something like that
is not radical candor,

it's obnoxious aggression.

AG: Kim Scott is an executive
coach in Silicon Valley.

She works with CEOs and managers

on being radically candid
in their feedback.

KS: Be a kick-ass boss
without loosing your humanity.

AG: I asked Kim how we can all
get better at providing criticism.

And guess what.

It's about just blurting out whatever
pops into your head, like AJ did.

KS: The idea of radical candor

is that you're caring personally
about the other person

at the same time that you're
challenging them directly.

AG: I guess then, how do I get comfortable
you know, challenging directly?

When I do challenge,
how do I make sure that I show care?

KS: My biggest piece of advice

is eliminate the phrase
"Don't take it personally"

from your vocabulary.

It's OK if somebody's getting upset
or having an emotional reaction,

it's normal.

It is inevitable.

What you want to do is you want to react
with compassion to them.

If I had emotional Novocaine,
I would give it to you.

AG: I have seen so many people say,

"Alright, I'm really uncomfortable
challenging directly,

and so one of the ways
I'll show that I care personally is,

I'm going to deliver a feedback sandwich:

you know, open up with some praise,
and then criticism comes in the middle,

and then a slice of praise again,

so we start and end on a high note.

And the research I've read on this
is pretty clear in saying

this is a bad idea, for two reasons.

One, when you lead with praise,

they're just waiting
for the other shoe to drop,

and it seems insincere.

And two is that people
often tune out what's in the middle.

And so, what's your preferred alternative
to the feedback sandwich?

KS: I agree, nobody
really likes a shit sandwich.

And so it's important
for both praise and criticism,

but especially for criticism,

is to go in being humble.

You may be wrong in what you're saying,

and that's OK.

One of the most important things
you can do when offering criticism

is to state your intention to be helpful.

(Music)

AG: There's evidence to back this up.

It's something I heard a lot
at Bridgewater, too.

It's easier to take criticism
when you know it's meant to help you.

From the outside, it might sound harsh.

But they think it's good for them.

KS: If you know that it's healthy,

and you've experienced
firsthand the benefit,

you're going to keep seeking it,

just like, it still hurts
sometimes to go running,

but I know how important that is
to my well-being, so I'll keep doing it,

even though it's always kind of an effort
to get myself out the door.

I think it's the same with criticism.

(Music)

AG: More on that after the break.

This is going to be
a different kind of ad.

In the spirit of exploring
creative ideas at work,

we're going to take you
inside Bonobos, our sponsor.

(Music)

(Music)

Like everyone else on earth,
I hate calling customer service.

It's hard to get a human on the line,

and if you do, they're usually
stuck reading from a script.

If you want to get anywhere,
you have to ask for the manager

over and over and over.

But that's not how things work at Bonobos.

They make great fitting men's clothes,
and if you call them with a problem,

you get a real person
empowered to actually help.

Bonobos calls them Ninjas.

Kelsey Nash: My actual title is Creative
Customer Engagement Lead.

I'm on the management team of the Ninjas.

AG: This is Kelsey Nash.

He and all the other Ninjas at Bonobos

have something pretty rare
in the world of customer service.

Freedom.

KN: Every Ninja is empowered
to take care of a customer

in the moment, in whatever way
that they think is necessary.

There's no real sending it
up the ladder and down the ladder

to find a resolution,

like, "We'll call you back
within 24 to 48 hours."

So every day, we ask Ninjas,

"What would you want
if you were the customer?

How would you feel?"

AG: Which can lead to some
surprising interactions.

Like one Kelsey handled himself.

KN: There was a guy named Derek,
and he wrote in and he said,

"I had a fire at my house

and one of my favorite
flannel shirts was damaged.

Do you know of some way
to recuperate this or repair it,

I see you don't really have any
on the website anymore."

AG: Kelsey at Bonobos
wrote back right away.

KN: "We're happy to replace your shirt,

I'm so sorry about that,
is everybody alright?"

He wrote back and said,
"Actually, everybody's fine,

except our 15-year-old dog
was trapped in the house

and we lost our dog
and that's been the only thing."

AG: Kelsey heard that
and went into Ninja mode.

KN: I got online and I found
his dog on his Instagram account.

So I got a picture of the dog,
I commissioned this portrait

and then I got a couple flannel shirts
and I sent it to the guy.

Derek (on the phone):
I'm not an emotional guy,

but with all that had happened,
it was still very fresh.

I definitely cried
when I saw the painting.

AG: When I heard this story,
I had to get Derek on the phone.

Derek: You know, you're kind of
in a desperate situation.

Just any glimmer of something nice
happening to you at that point

goes a long, long way.

What they did wasn't necessary,
they didn't have to do it,

other than they thought
it was the right thing to do.

KN: What we pride ourselves on,
above everything, is that we're human.

Like, we deal with every contact
on a one-to-one basis:

as a human answering a phone call,
talking to another human, like,

"Yeah, let's work this out."

AG: Which is what you need sometimes.

It clearly meant something to Derek,
who recently started a new job.

Derek: The only picture I've put up
on the wall so far is that painting

and it's right above my desk
on the wall above the window.

When I walk in the door every morning,
that's the first thing I see.

AG: Bonobos makes great clothes,

but my favorite part is that I don't
have to leave my house to get them.

I hate going shopping

almost as much as I normally hate
calling customer service.

Ordering on the Bonobos
website is super easy.

They ship fast, and if it doesn't fit,
you can always call Kelsey.

You know, just to talk.

Try it today at bonobos.com/TED

and you'll get 20 percent
off your first order.

That's bonobos.com/TED for 20 percent off.

(Music)

(Music)

When I was in college,
I was a springboard diver.

I was learning a new dive:

two and a half flips with a twist.

When I tried it out in a meet,
I thought it went OK.

Then I saw the judges' scores:

two, two and a half, and zero point five.

I don't think I'd ever
even seen that score before.

Anyway, when you're flipping
and twisting in mid-air,

you can't always gauge
your own performance.

And I think big parts
of our work lives are like that, too.

We're so immersed in the situation

that we can't see ourselves objectively.

At that diving meet, there were multiple
judges who all saw the same flaws.

When I watched the video
afterward, I saw them, too.

I'd executed a near-perfect belly flop.

(Music)

If you've ever played sports,

you know the value
of reviewing the game tape

with coaches and colleagues
who keep you honest.

Why don't we do the same thing at work?

At Bridgewater, they do.

They're so obsessed
with radical transparency

that they record video or audio
of almost every meeting.

If that sounds a bit
like Big Brother is watching,

well, he is.

But here's the difference --
everyone is watching.

They're constantly going back
to the tapes to learn.

This is what radical
transparency sounds like.

Here's Ray Dalio, the founder,
talking with a colleague.

RD: No, I'm not saying
all your advice is bad.

Colleague: Well, it sounds like
you think it's bad.

RD: Some of it is bad.

All he's saying to you.

You need to display that you know
that you don't know.

AG: In too many workplaces,

people keep those comments
behind closed doors.

Jen Healy: In general
hierarchical structures,

you don't tell people
what you actually think.

AG: Jen Healy is a manager at Bridgewater.

JH: You're always managing
other people's perceptions of you

and what they think of you,
and trying to butter people up above,

trying to make sure they don't think
anything is going wrong,

that you have all the answers.

AG: Radical transparency is designed
to solve for a deadly sin of work life:

office politics.

In too many places,
what happens in the meeting

doesn't matter nearly as much
as secret alliances and conversations

after the meeting.

JH: And so, you're able
to just say what you think

and also be held accountable
if what you're thinking is bad.

AG: But for it to work,
you need all of your colleagues

to get past their knee-jerk
reactions to criticism.

Which isn't easy, especially at first.

Eileen Murray: When I first became
acquainted with Bridgewater,

you know, I wasn't enamored.

AG: This is Eileen Murray.

EM: When I first came up
to Bridgewater for a meeting,

I guess it was a management
committee meeting

and someone was being probed,

basically asking people questions
until you get to a logical answer

as to what might be going on,

and I was like, "I can't wait
to get out of here,

I think I'm going to put my hair on fire.

These people are crazy."

AG: But now, Eileen is one
of the company's two CEOs.

Along the way, she came to hear
the criticism as tough love.

Kind of like what you'd get
from your family.

EM: I have a younger sister
who says things to me

that I sometimes can't believe I tolerate,

but I tolerate it because
she's trying to make me better.

And so once I understood the intention
was to understand what people are like,

for the purpose of them
understanding what they're like,

so that, you know, you basically
are aware of what you do well,

you're aware of what you don't do well,
so you can do things better in life.

RD: It's a little bit like Navy SEALs.

Take the Navy SEAL,
put them in the cold water.

If that's a difficult moment,
let's practice that, right?

AG: Every day at the firm is a new
encounter with your challenge network.

You learn to seek out
your trusted critics,

which means you've opted in.

And little by little, you get
more comfortable hearing hard truths.

Unless you don't.

About a third of Bridgewater's new hires
leave in the first year and a half.

It was right at that year-and-a-half mark
that Kiran Rao, the guy you heard earlier,

found himself being told
he was the company's worst manager

in front of 200 of his colleagues.

Kiran might have been prepared,
but it still hurt.

KR: I was probably turning as red
as my Indian complexion allows me to.

And I was describing it
as like, basically,

dressing for the beach one day,

in flip-flops and your swimwear,

and you swing your door open
and you're in a full-force winter storm.

AG: The thing you need
to understand about Kiran

is that before Bridgewater,
he'd already had a successful career.

Actually, several.

He was a doctor and worked
with the World Health Organization.

He was a principal in a consulting firm.

And he worked at a successful
investment firm.

He'd never failed like this before.

But what happened next was something
I've never seen anywhere else.

Are you embarrassed, you know,
hide from everyone --

how did you move forward?

KR: No, I felt great.

AG: I'm sorry, what?

KR: I felt great.

AG: Do you realize
how strange that sounds?

KR: It does.

AG: You can hear this
in the tape of the meeting,

right after he found out his ranking.

Audio clip: I'm Kiran Rao,

by now probably notorious/famous
number one on the list.

(Laughter)

I think it's a great list.

And I agree that I'm in that spot.

This leaves me more energized versus not.

I get energy from it and I look forward
to helping or leaving,

whichever is the right answer.

AG: So are you just
a glutton for punishment?

(Laughter)

KR: It's just data.

It's just data, objective data
about what I'm like.

I would rather know how bad the bad is

and how good the good is

so I can do something with it.

AG: I think a skeptic, particularly one
with my training, might say,

this is just cognitive
dissonance reduction.

So you're like, "This felt really bad,
but I decided to stay

and so it must have taught me something,
I must have grown from the experience,

otherwise, like, how the hell
do I justify this?"

Do you ever wonder whether
you're just kind of rationalizing

the unpleasant experience?

KR: No.

But Bridgewater is not
about those dramatic moments, right?

The real challenge for people

to figure out if they're fit
for the culture or not

is not the dramatic moments,

it's the daily experience of it.

Right?

That drama is incidental to the real work
of getting to know yourself.

I do believe I've experienced deep,
fundamental change at Bridgewater.

AG: It is interesting,
because it almost sound like

you're trying to rewire
or override an instinct.

KR: When I have somebody
tell me I did something badly,

my ego kicks in, right,

and so my composure
starts to become worse and worse.

"That is so wrong,
how can that possibly be true,

I've done all these things in my life
and how could I be that person?"

AG: That's what I call proving mode.

It's the primal, emotional reaction.

The lower-level you.

But your brain has another
higher-level setting.

Its improving mode.

That's your inner Olympic diver,

who wants to know exactly how good you are

and every single thing
you can do to get better.

Improving mode means
you're always a work in progress.

At Bridgewater, the thinking is

that if you're exposed
to feedback all the time,

you get better at hearing
that improving voice.

KR: There is a much softer voice.

The logical person inside me who's saying,

"Yeah, it's been a rough year.

It hasn't been such an impactful year.

Kiran, you aren't really
accomplishing your goals.

That's not so surprising."

The difference, though,
is that those two voices

are very different
in amplitude at that moment.

The low-level me screaming,

the upper-level me is whispering.

AG: Interesting.

So the two yous will always
still be battling at some level.

KR: I think so.

And to me, the beauty is
I can see that now.

It used to take me a month or two

to recognize that
and come back to an even keel.

And with Ray, it takes a microsecond.

RD: Yes, it's almost exactly that quick.

I go, "Damn, I wish I would have ..."
whatever that thing is,

and simultaneously, "Where's the lesson?"

And I think it's a habit.

AG: OK, that's weird.

Ray is suggesting he doesn't just
feel less pain than the rest of us,

when he gets criticized.

He's trained himself
so that the pain signal

is actually followed by a pleasure signal.

Over years of seeing
that negative feedback

leads to positive outcomes,

he sort of seems to enjoy hearing it now.

RD: When you're getting criticism,
how do you feel about it?

AG: So I think overall ...

I don't think I enjoy it most of the time,

but I crave it.

I started teaching
and was terrified of public speaking.

I remember one of the feedback forms said

that I was so nervous

that I was causing the students
to physically shake in their seats.

At the time, I was like,
"Ugh, I don't want to be that person."

But I need the feedback
in order to not be that person.

I think it was easier to take
because I asked for it.

I don't think I take criticism so well
when somebody just springs it on me

and I don't feel like
I've opted in to it first.

RD: That's beautiful, right?

And it's totally understandable

that when it's sprung on you,
it takes you by surprise,

you know, because
it's an amygdala response.

And the amygdala is the fight or flight
and it is a very short-term thing.

But in some period of time,
that's going to fade

and then if at that moment you reflect,

pain plus reflection equals progress.

Because the pain is signaling you
that something is wrong;

the reflection helps
to produce that learning.

And if you do that over a period of time,
you can't help but learn.

(Music)

AG: That's the goal.

But if you're like most people,

reflection gets hijacked
by your inner dictator,

who immediately goes
into denial and attack.

We need a way to take
a more honest look in the mirror.

In the moment, that's hard to do.

So in psychology, we have a fun way
of making you a little more aware

of how you appear to others.

Imagine that you're sitting at a computer
to take a timed, multiple-choice test.

The instructions say
to answer question after question

until a timer goes off.

But what we haven't told you
is that we're recording your keyboard.

So if you submit an answer
after the timer, we know you're cheating.

It turns out you're significantly
less likely to cheat

if there's a mirror in the room.

It reminds you to reflect
on how your behavior will look to others.

(Music)

At Bridgewater, Ray is constantly
trying to look in the mirror,

so he can see himself
the way others see him.

Psychologists often talk
about a second score.

The idea being that you can't control

your unprepared, long-winded
meeting performance,

the D-minus is done,
that already happened.

The only thing you can do then is say,

"Alright, I can't control
that first score,

I can control the second, which is
how well did I take the first score."

Even if I got a D-minus
for my performance,

I can get an A-plus for how
I took the feedback of my performance.

Do you give yourself those kinds
of explicit evaluations?

RD: Everybody gives those.

AG: If people know they're being evaluated

on how well they learn
and how well they take feedback,

then there's no stable image
to protect anymore.

RD: Well put, it's a good point.

AG: A second score.

Every time I get feedback,

I rate myself now
on how well I took the feedback.

That's a habit we can all develop.

When someone gives you feedback,
they've already evaluated you.

So it helps to remind yourself
that the main thing they're judging now

is whether you're open or defensive.

You don't always realize
when you're being defensive.

So call on your challenge network.

Ask them to give you a second score, too.

"How did I come across
when you gave me feedback?"

And then really listen to what they say.

And respond by saying thank you.

(Music)

The best way to prove yourself

is to show that you're willing
to improve yourself.

Just ask Kiran.

KR: It's funny, I called my wife
on my way home and said this happened,

they put up the list of the worst managers
at Bridgewater and I was number one.

And I had an amazing, energizing day ...

And it felt great.

And she said, "That's wonderful,
Kiran, I'm proud of you."

AG: She said she was proud of you?

For being the worst
manager at Bridgewater?

KR: No, for looking in the mirror,

for not cringing from what I look like,

for being able to see reality
for what it is.

And I probably reached home by then.

It's a short commute.

(Music)

AG: WorkLife is hosted by me, Adam Grant.

The show is produced by TED
with Transmitter Media

and Pineapple Street Media.

Our team includes Colin Helms,
Gretta Cohn, Gabrielle Lewis,

Angela Cheng and Janet Lee.

This episode was produced by Dan O'Donell
with help from Julia Alsop.

Our show is mixed by David Herman
with help from Dan Dzula.

Original music by Hahnsdale Hsu.

Special thanks to our sponsors:

Bonobos, Accenture,
JP Morgan Chase and Warby Parker.

Next time on WorkLife,

we're going inside the writer's room
at The Daily Show

to find out how they do
creative work under the gun.

David Kibukka: The first draft
is not meant to be the last draft.

Dan Amira: Yeah, that's why
they call it the first draft.

DK: That was a big part
of the naming process.

AG: That's next time on WorkLife.

In the meantime, thanks for listening.

And if you like what you hear,
rate an review the show.

It helps other people find us.

See you next week.

(Music)

Ray, this has been fun and interesting

and thought-provoking as always.

RD: So, now what criticisms do I get?

AG: Oh, I have to criticize you?

RD: Yeah.

AG: Ugh. Do we have time for this?

(Laughter)

You stay at the level
of abstract concepts and ideas

as opposed to moving down into
sort of, the experiences that you've had,

the stories that you can tell,

the emotions that are part of that
that really bring your ideas to life.

If you brought more
of the concrete, the emotional in

along with the abstract conceptual,

I think your communication
would be more effective.

RD: Well, thank you.