Amid concerns that AI will disrupt white-collar jobs, many workers are wondering how they can stay socially engaged and protect their careers. Adam Grant recently shared his two cents on the issue.
Grant, a best-selling author and organizational psychologist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke at WOBI’s World Business Forum in New York City on November 5th and shared his top advice for building your future career.
“For those thinking about how to future-proof their careers or make their companies more resilient in times of disruption and crisis, there is no better advice than to think like a scientist,” he said.
What Grant means by this is “recognizing that every opinion you have at work is just a hypothesis waiting to be tested.”
“That may have been true in the past, but it may not be true today,” he says. “What may have been true in one environment does not apply to your current environment or the future you face.”
3 mindsets to avoid
Grant said leaders often fall into one of three camps based on their mindset: preachers, prosecutors and politicians. Of course, he’s not talking about the people who work in those professions, but the people whose mindsets are similar to those professions.
Preachers, for example, are “basically proselytizing their views,” Grant said. Meanwhile, one prosecutor said he was “attacking other people’s opinions” and that leaders, whom he likened to politicians, “don’t listen unless other people already agree with their opinions.”
Leaders who think like scientists, on the other hand, don’t confuse their ideas with their identity, so they’re not afraid to make mistakes, learn from them, and change course when necessary.
“Good scientists are just as motivated to look for reasons why they might be wrong, as opposed to just looking for reasons why they should be right,” Grant said. “They have the humility to know what they don’t know and the curiosity to keep seeking new knowledge. We have a growing body of evidence that if you teach people to think like scientists, they actually make better choices.”
These leaders make employees feel empowered to speak up and try new ideas, Grant said.
“If you learn to think like a scientist, you create a learning culture where people say, ‘I don’t know if this will work yet, but I think it’s worth trying,’ and then you have the opportunity to understand the potential of people and ideas,” he said.
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