Daniel Pink's Thinking

I really love Daniel Pink’s thinking and this is timely!

Welcome to the latest edition of our irregular and irreverent newsletter. In this issue, you’ll find: another installment of our new interview feature, “Four Questions For” and 5 books, docs, and podcasts I’ve recently discovered. Let’s get started. WHEN TO COMPETE AND WHEN TO COOPERATE:  4 QUESTIONS FOR ADAM GALINSKY & MAURICE SCHWEITZER One of the questions we face — in business, school, or  just about any human system — is this: Should we cooperate? Or should we compete?  Now two eminent social scientists, Adam Galinsky andMaurice Schweitzer  have mined the research and discovered the answer: Well, you should kinda, sorta do both. Actually, the answer is far more sophisticated and fascinating than that. And they reveal it one of my favorite books of 2015, Friend & Foe. (Buy it at Amazon,B&N, or IndieBound.)  The book is rich with research, crisply written, and packed with shrewd advice. I asked Galinsky and Schweitzer to be our latest participants in 4Q4, a new feature where I ask authors four questions about their book — the same four questions every time.  Gentlemen, what’s the big idea? We are hardwired – in the very architecture of the human brain – to both cooperate and compete. We do both all the time, in every relationship, often unconsciously. That means that all of our relationships are characterized by the tension between being a friend and being a foe. At work, we collaborate with our colleagues to complete projects, but we compete for raises and promotions. As new parents, we cooperate to raise our infants, but compete for sleep. As siblings, we experience both “brotherly love” and “sibling rivalry.” Simply recognizing that this tension exists in every relationship can help us find the right balance between these forces and  achieve better outcomes at work and at home.   How do you know? Our book draws on hundreds of studies from the social sciences, animal studies, and neuroscience. Beyond the scientific evidence, we supplement our findings with real-world stories from a wide variety of areas. So you’ll read about how both airline pilots and Capuchin monkeys react furiously to unfairness, how cuckoo birds and Bernie Madoff engaged in deception, and how hierarchy helps bees, basketball teams, and Wall Street researchers succeed.   Why should I care? By understanding the tension between cooperation and competition, you will become a better friend and a more formidable foe.   What should I do? Because every relationship faces the competing forces of cooperation and competition, we need to find the right balance between being a friend and a foe. Here are some practical pieces of advice from three of the chapters.   How to nail a job interview: Balance confidence and deference. For confidence, just before the interview use our validated method: think of a time you had power. To be properly deferential, be sure to ask knowledgeable questions about the interviewer’s experience. How to apologize: Be fast, candid, focus on the victim, offer penance and articulate a commitment to change. How to negotiate:  If you have full information and know the other side deeply values what it seeks from you, make the first offer. When you make the first offer, present a choice among multiple offers. This allows you both to anchor the negotiation to your advantage and to signal cooperation. More: Friend & Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both   5 MORE THINGS YOU MIGHT LIKE Here’s some other stuff I’ve enjoyed recently: BOOK: Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking.  The work of renown social psychologist Richard Nisbett, this somewhat loosely organized book is a smart primer on how to avoid thinking mistakes and reason more rigorously. NEWSLETTER: Next Draft. I’ve recommended this before, but it bears repeating: This free daily newsletter offers the finest (and most eclectic) collection of stories you’ll find anywhere. VIDEO: Being 12: The Year That Changes Everything. What’s it like to be 12 years old? This 7-minute video, from WNYC, captures the essence. DOCUMENTARY: The Battered Bastards of Baseball. A Netflix documentary about a remarkable independent minor league baseball team in the 1970s. You might think it’s about sports. But it’s really about the importance of taking risks, defying convention, and serving others. STORE: CW Pencil Enterprise. Folks, you should know this about me: I write with a pencil (and not the mechanical ones, which are Satan’s favorite tools). I use the old-fashioned wood kind. And I now buy them from this one-woman store, a veritable Valhalla for pencil nerds. That’s all for this edition.  As always, thanks for reading our humble newsletter. Cheers, Daniel Pink