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”; 17 must-follow Twitter accounts; 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 and Maurice 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
17 PEOPLE (AND NON-PEOPLE) YOU SHOULD BE FOLLOWING ON TWITTER
Twitter. When I first heard about it, I thought it was ridiculous. Now — seven years and 14,000 Tweets later — I can’t live without it. For my money, it remains the finest listening post on the Internet. Below (in random order) are 17 accounts that always teach me something new or point me in an unexpected direction.
Marc Andreessen — Sure, the guy helped invent the web browser. But his super-smart tweets will help you figure out what’s coming next.
Michiko Kakutani — The fearsome NY Times book critic turns out to be awesome at Twitter.
Adam Alter — Great stuff on social psychology (by yet another social psychologist named Adam).
Derek Thompson — A senior editor at The Atlantic, he’s one of the very best young writers around and always worth hearing from.
Ta-Neishi Coates — This guy’s been having a good year — a blockbuster book, a MacArthur genius award. He’s also a master of the Twitter form.
Hidden Brain — Stories and studies from NPR’s social science correspondent. Also check out the podcast.
Springwise — A team of spotters all over the world discover the coolest new inventions and business models.
Max Roser — An Oxford researcher offering up charts galore often showing — surprise! — the word is making more progress than we think.
Michele Norris — Another NPR correspondent. Her Tweets on her Race Card Project are always fascinating.
Tech Crunch — Essential news and analysis about the tech world.
The Onion — America’s finest news source.
Pew Research — Great data on attitudes, issues, and trends around the world.
Francesca Gino — A very smart and interesting Harvard Business School professor
Maria Popova — The publisher of Brain Pickings offers up great links all day long.
Tom Peters — The Red Bull of management.
Vox — Their Twitter feed keeps me up to date the stories they’re publishing.
Waffle House — A good example of a corporate account that doesn’t take itself too seriously. (I also love Waffle House almost as much as pencils).
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