PDF Summary:Rebel Talent, by Francesca Gino

In Rebel Talent, Francesca Gino argues that no matter who you are, you can push yourself out of your comfort zone and live a more productive and fulfilling life by tapping into your constructive inner rule breaker. Gino is a Harvard Business School professor and award–winning researcher who focuses on ways that business leaders and employees can improve their professional lives. Rebel Talent profiles talented standouts who, throughout history and across the world, have broken the rules productively to innovate and make transformative change.

This guide examines the five elements of “rebel talent,” as well as three principles of “rebel leadership.” To complement Gino’s ideas, we’ve also added context and tips to help you access your productive inner rule breaker, push yourself out of your comfort zone, and step into a richer, more fulfilling work and personal life.

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If You Think You Know Everything, Look for These Blindspots

Gino’s findings may be explained by the “Dunning-Kruger Effect.” This effect is typically understood as a phenomenon where less knowledgeable people overestimate their competence, and people with greater knowledge underestimate theirs. But it can also impact highly intelligent, experienced people who lack insight into, and the capacity to reflect on, their abilities. In fact, findings of two studies suggest that people who are less open to questioning and revising their ideas are more likely to overestimate their performance.)

In Multipliers, Liz Wiseman offers a different take from Gino on the problem of knowing it all, saying that “knowledge diminishers” (leaders who operate under the false assumption that they know or have to know more than everyone else around them) compromise their teams’ ability to perform at their peak. Knowledge diminishers show off how much they know, devalue their team members’ intelligence, and engage in practices that curb their team members’ autonomy and independence.

Gino adds that believing you know something with absolute certainty can also lead to the curse of knowledge, a phenomenon where people with expertise in a particular area assume that everyone they talk to knows exactly what they’re talking about. This makes it harder for people with less expertise to understand, make decisions, and take action based on the information being communicated to them.

(Shortform note: Arizona State University researchers are fighting the curse of knowledge head-on—in academic writing. They developed an online “Writing Clarity Calculator” that analyzes text that scholars submit, to help them understand how accessible their writing is to others. The tool scores their work in three areas reputed to make scholarly writing hard to understand: its level of abstraction, technicality, and use of passive voice.)

Gino says you can avoid problems that stem from believing you know everything by employing counterfactual thinking, a strategy where you consider the different ways a situation you went through might have unfolded instead. This can make you more aware of alternative choices you might make in future situations.

(Shortform note: Gino points to the benefits of counterfactual thinking, but she doesn’t mention a possible downside: The process may have detrimental effects on people with anxiety and depressive disorders, for instance by triggering feelings of helplessness and powerlessness.)

Rebel Tip 3: Expand your knowledge base by practicing habits of lifelong learners:

• Read daily.

• Take different courses.

• Challenge yourself with specific goals.

• Remind yourself that it’s never too late to start something.

Element 4: Rebels Fight Categorization and Stereotypes

The fourth way rebels break the rules is by rejecting labels assigned by others and embracing different viewpoints. Gino notes that rebels refuse to be limited by others’ definitions of them because they understand that people’s greatest potential and strength lies in their individuality, and that bringing unique voices and perspectives into conversations leads to innovation.

Why Resisting Labels and Welcoming Different Viewpoints Is Important

Reason 1: When you refuse to let people assign you a lane, you can create your own lane and help others do the same.

Gino says that when you push back against restrictive and damaging assumptions that other people make about you and focus on possibilities instead of limitations, you can chart your own course and blaze a trail for others.

For example, tennis great Serena Williams defied categorization and obliterated the constraints of social norms, both on and off the tennis court, since she rose to prominence in the world of tennis at age 17. The winner of 23 Grand Slam titles, Williams has carved her own path by refusing to let others pigeonhole her as only a powerhouse athlete. She is also an advocate for racial and gender equality, a challenger of mainstream beauty norms, and a highlighter of racial health inequities. In her defiance of categorization, Williams has created a path for others to follow in her footsteps.

Push Boundaries to Create Your Reality and a New Model for Others

Gino says that when you reject other people’s efforts to limit you by telling you where you do and don’t belong, you can chart your own course and blaze a trail for others. You can start by focusing on four things that Serena Williams says helped her create her own path:

• Believe in yourself.

• Focus on taking things one step at a time and one goal at a time.

• Love who you are, because when you do, others will also love who you are.

• Let criticism be the fire in your belly that helps you achieve what others say you can’t.

In the meantime, Williams continues to push the boundaries of what’s “expected” of female athletes, recently announcing that she plans to retire from tennis and focus on being a mother, designer, and venture capitalist.

Reason 2: When you invite people with a range of experiences and viewpoints into the conversation, you come up with better ideas.

Gino says that bringing new voices to the table disrupts and challenges old and stale ways of thinking, which leads to innovation. She argues that disagreement and conflict, which are a natural part of having a range of viewpoints in the room, are in fact necessary, because they push groups to question basic assumptions and ideas and lead them to stronger, more well-thought-out conclusions

(Shortform note: In Principles: Life and Work, Ray Dalio explains that you can have “productive conflict” by focusing on what the right goal is, instead of on being right. Key ingredients to having “thoughtful disagreements include trying to understand where other people are coming from while being clear about how you see things; talking respectfully and without emotion; and bringing in an objective mediator if you’re unable to arrive at a consensus.)

Gino says that companies often shy away from including different voices and viewpoints because people are most comfortable when surrounded by others who think like them and agree with their ideas. This is partly because humans are hardwired to assess threats, so they don’t always trust people who don’t look or sound like them. Also, people often genuinely believe that processes are working best when everyone in the group is on the same page and getting along well—which is more likely to happen when everyone in the room thinks the same way.

Darwin Said We’ve Evolved to Mistrust

In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt echoes Gino’s argument that it’s not in our nature to include multiple viewpoints, and he offers an explanation for why we often don’t trust people who seem different from us—he points to Darwin’s explanation for why people first came together in groups:

• Groups offered us greater protection from predators than being on our own.

• When we helped someone else, they helped us in return.

• We developed a desire for social approval, and groups became a home for that.

Haidt further asserts that it’s no surprise that groups think and act in tribal ways that exclude people who are “different”: Evolution taught humans that cooperation within our own group helped us dominate over rival groups, and we were made to feel closest to, and look out for, people with traits most like our own.

But, Gino asserts, when groups are composed of only like-minded individuals, they’re at risk of “groupthink,” which curbs independent thought and the ability to innovate.

(Shortform note: Groupthink is a phenomenon where members of a group reach a consensus not because they’ve critically examined issues, but because they have a strong need or desire to conform. Groupthink is problematic because it can lead to ill-informed decisions and create a self-perpetuating cycle that fuels group homogeneity and more groupthink. Because people engaged in this type of thinking prioritize group identity over independent thinking and different voices, they aren’t inclined to welcome “outsiders.”)

Finding Common Ground Is Good for the Greater Good

Embracing a range of different viewpoints is perhaps more important now than ever. A 2018 study of online chat groups found a connection between mood and affect disorders and “absolutist” thinking—seeing the world through a rigid, “all or nothing” lens. Absolutist thinking prominently contributes to the highly polarized, divisive conversations that dominate social media and the airwaves today. Homogenous groups reinforce absolutist thinking by repeatedly reiterating in-group opinions and ideas without challenge. You can avoid absolutist thinking by embracing different viewpoints.

In addition to avoiding absolutist thinking, you can also avoid “negative conflict” in the workplace by choosing to engage in “positive conflict,” which focuses on genuinely trying to understand divergent viewpoints in order to come to a resolution rather than arguing your point in order to “win.” Positive conflict can increase efficiency, trust, emotional intelligence, and alignment on teams. It centers on six key steps: Listen to others so they feel heard, use “I” statements rather than point fingers, identify the root of the conflict, praise people with dissenting viewpoints to gain their trust, and look for opportunities to compromise.

Rebel Tip 4: Fight Categorization and Stereotypes by Defining Yourself:

• Ground yourself by working to be the best you can at the thing you want most.

• Believe in yourself, not in what the haters say about you.

• Understand that you are not your work or your relationships.

• Adapt when change calls for it.

Element 5: Rebels Show Their True Selves to the World

The fifth way rebels break the rules is by being open about who they are and the challenges they face, even when they know they’ll face backlash for bucking social norms. Rebels say, “This is who I am, in all my imperfect glory,” because they understand the power of vulnerability to connect them with other people, and they know they bring their greatest strengths to the table when they are truly being themselves.

Why Being “Truly You” Is Important

Reason 1: Showing your vulnerability and owning your flaws makes you more relatable to other people and deepens your connections with them.

Gino says that when you’re open and honest about your failures and the challenges you’ve faced, you can inspire and be a role model for others.

(Shortform note: To work toward embracing your vulnerability, you need to: believe you’re worthy of being vulnerable, push through the discomfort of being vulnerable, and accept that change comes with vulnerability.)

For example, gymnast Simone Biles showed her vulnerability when she cited stress, not physical problems, as the reason she was pulling out of two competition events at the 2021 Olympics. Biles’s announcement that she wouldn’t compete, and her honesty about why, were risky, given the pressure on her to bring home gold and the stigma surrounding mental health issues. Her decision to be vulnerable, even in the face of inevitable public scrutiny and attacks on her character, demonstrated her strength and humanity and made her a role model for others.

(Shortform note: Biles was called a “selfish, childish, national embarrassment” for pulling out of competition, but she was also praised for taking care of herself and setting an example that could encourage others to do the same thing.)

In contrast, Gino says, when you act in ways that don’t show others what you’re truly feeling and experiencing, when you “fake it” or do things to make other people happy, your health and well-being can suffer.

Why You Shouldn’t Fake Your Emotions

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls the phenomenon where workers either suppress negative emotions or put on a “happy face” to perform required duties at a job, “emotional labor,” and says that putting on a facade can lead to feelings of frustration, anger, worthlessness, and emotional exhaustion. According to Hochschild, you can combat emotional exhaustion at work by:

• Determining whether you’re engaging in “surface acting” or “deep acting” (“surface acting” is being polite to a difficult customer in order to placate them and keep the peace; “deep acting” is making a concerted effort to genuinely understand where that difficult customer is coming from).

• Focusing on engaging in deep acting, which is less associated with burnout.

It’s not entirely clear why deep acting is less associated with burnout than surface acting, but the subject remains ripe for further exploration given the long-term changes to workers’ interactions with the public, including as they relate to emotional labor, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reason 2: When you’re truly yourself, you bring your greatest strengths to the table, which can increase your satisfaction and improve your performance at work.

Gino says that when workers are able to focus on what they’re doing well instead of what they’re not, their attention turns from worrying about their weaknesses to being the best they can be.

• Gallup: Workers report less anxiety and stress, and are six times more likely to experience fulfillment at work, when they engage their strengths on a daily basis.
• The Corporate Research Council found that employees’ performance declined by 27% when managers focused on their weaknesses, but increased by 36% when managers focused on workers’ strengths.

Gino also says that when you can identify and understand your strengths, you gain confidence that helps you achieve your goals.

Strengths-Based Approach: Popular, but Not Proven?

If you want to figure out what your strengths are, you can learn more about your innate action-oriented, cognitive, belief-based, and people-oriented abilities in StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup’s companion book to its online strengths test.

In The Effective Executive, Peter F. Drucker builds on Gino’s assertion that employers’ work lives improve when they’re able to focus on their strengths, arguing that organizations also get the best results when they focus on workers’ strengths rather than their weaknesses.

Others recommend a careful approach. The social work profession has long relied on a “strengths-based approach” to help people facing challenges in their daily lives, but a 2021 study argues that policymakers and people in the helping profession have promoted the strategy (which focuses on people’s assets rather than their deficits) too casually and somewhat blindly, and that more research needs to be done to assess its actual effectiveness.

Rebel Tip 5: Learn How to Be Yourself

• Get to know and appreciate who you are.

• Say what you mean.

• Stop trying to please everyone else.

• Live in the moment, not in a state of hyperanalysis.

Part 2: The Principles of Rebel Leadership

Becoming a Rebel Leader

Now that you’ve learned how and why you should embrace the five elements that compose rebel talent, we’ll discuss Gino’s principles of rebel leadership.

Gino says that rebel leadership is for everyone, not just leaders with a staff. Being a rebel leader involves adopting a mindset and way of functioning that centers on challenging the status quo in pursuit of your goals, and then helping others do the same—even when the road to reach those goals is bumpy.

As is true with rebel talent, the benefit of rebel leadership is the potential it offers for innovation and transformative change.

Rebel Leaders Tap the Power of Rebel Workers’ Talent

In a 2018 interview, Gino asserts that one way rebel leaders can cultivate rebel talent on their teams is by presuming that every employee has it and tapping into that talent whenever possible.

Though Gino doesn’t offer specific suggestions on ways that rebel leaders can get the most out of their teams, Rebel Leadership author Larry Robertson asserts that rebel leaders can problem solve more effectively and increase innovation, productivity, and profitability by:

• Acknowledging that they’re not superheroes with the answers to everything

• Empowering employees to step into the fold and lead in areas where they have innate strengths and talents

Robertson argues that when you give workers more opportunities to demonstrate their natural capacities, they have a greater stake and sense of investment in your company and work.

Gino lays out eight principles necessary to become a rebel leader, five of which closely mirror the rebel talent elements she explores in the first part of her book. To limit redundancy, this section will review the three principles of rebel leadership Gino explores that don’t overlap with the five previously discussed rebel talent elements.

Principle 1: Rebel Leaders Ask for Feedback

The first way rebel leaders lead is by seeking out information that will help them understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and those of their company, to achieve better results.

For example, seeking feedback from an executive coach, career counselor, or therapist can be a challenging process, but it can make you a better leader and person. It can be uncomfortable when someone tells you things about yourself that you don’t want to hear. But if you act on suggestions they’ve made to help you in your work and life, you can become a more well-rounded and functional leader and person, which will make others want to spend time with you and learn from you.

How to Encourage Feedback

Asking for and receiving feedback can be difficult and uncomfortable. Here are four things you can do to make the process of soliciting feedback at work easier:

• Make receiving feedback part of a routine, not a “one-off” experience.

• Ask people for specific, not general, feedback to make it simpler for people to give it.

• Positively reinforce people for giving you feedback.

• Keep feedback anonymous so people can be honest with you.

Rebel Leadership Tip 1: Know How to Use the Feedback You Receive:

• Recognize that you are not your performance.

• Don’t take feedback personally.

• Be aware of your own biases.

• Ask for time to reflect on the feedback you’ve been given.

Principle 2: Rebel Leaders Treat Obstacles as Opportunities

The second way rebel leaders lead is by seeing constraints as a chance to be resourceful and produce creative results.

For example, let’s say a designer is working with a manufacturing company to build an innovative product, and he receives word that the company no longer wants to make the product because it’s too complicated and costly. The designer, convinced that the product is valuable, returns to the drawing board to redesign it. He discovers that tweaking the design makes it an even better product than the last one. He approaches a new manufacturing company and they agree to make the product.

(Shortform note: Want to test Gino’s theory that limitations can make you more creative? Try telling an entire short story in six words, like Hemingway did, or summing up your life in a single sentence, like Stephen Colbert.)

How to Handle Real Limitations

How can a rebel leader make the best of a bad situation that limits their operational abilities, like downsizing? Matt Hoffman, partner and head of talent at M13, says leaders should start by acknowledging the reality that sometimes you have to adjust your expectations to meet the new constraints you’re facing. From this mindset, Hoffman says, constraints become an opportunity to improve your company’s future—they allow you to re-envision your company’s goals and structure, and to foster the talent of team members who remain on your staff by helping them “upskill” and take on new challenges in the company.

Rebel Leadership Tip 2: Work With the Obstacles You Face, Not Against Them:

• Picture the end result you want to see and work backward to identify ways to address the problem in front of you.

• Embrace different perspectives to illuminate solutions.

• Address what you can control.

• Reboot, if necessary.

Principle 3: Rebel Leaders Lead From the Ground Up

The third way rebel leaders lead is by being willing to “get their hands dirty” alongside members of their team, to get the job done.

For example, when a member of a restaurant’s waitstaff doesn’t show up to work on a busy night, a manager can show her rebel leadership skills by stepping in to help bus tables, take customers’ drink orders, and do whatever else it takes to keep things running smoothly on the floor. When leaders demonstrate their commitment to getting the job done—even when that requires them stepping into roles they may prefer not to do—they set a model for everyone else that, “we’re all in it together, and are here to get the job done.”

(Shortform note: Can your efforts to support your team as a rebel leader ever go too far? The answer is “no,” according to Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, authors of Extreme Ownership, who argue that when it comes to leaders, what sets the best apart is a willingness to take responsibility for problems and failures, rather than finding someone else to blame. The authors assert that it’s equally important that leaders allow members of their team to own victories, rather than try to claim credit for those successes, to stress the importance of “team” rather than “individual.”)

Rebel Leadership Tip 3: Earn Your Team’s Respect to Lead From the Ground Up in four ways:

• Model the work ethic you want to see.

• Take risks and responsibility.

• Have your workers’ backs.

• Believe and invest in your employees’ talents.