Ted Audio Collective

Hey everyone, it's Adam. If this is your first time listening to Work Life, don't start here.

This is a bonus episode. To get the full Work Life experience, start with hot-a-love criticism, your hidden personality,

the creative power of misfits, or the real reason you procrastinate. Don't put that one off.

Four years ago, when I was working on my first TED Talk, I invited some colleagues to a practice session.

One of those colleagues was Esther Perel, the relationship therapist and host of the popular podcast, where should we begin?

We'd only met once before, but she didn't hold back in her feedback. She told me my talk was all facts, no feelings.

That if I wanted to reach people, I couldn't stop it information. I needed to inject some emotion into the talk.

Right then, I knew I had found a great new member of my challenge network. Someone with common interests, but a very different style and worldview.

It was clear that her work on the couch reached far beyond what happens at home. So I was excited to learn that she has a new podcast, How's Work?

It turns out, personal and professional relationships have a lot in common.

I'm Adam Grant, and this is Work Life, my podcast with TED, sponsored by Accenture, Better Up, Hilton, and SAP.

I'm an organizational psychologist. I study how to make work not suck.

And one of the reasons work sucks for so many people is other people. So I sat down with Esther for a lively discussion about how we can get better at managing our work relationships.

So Esther, I was hoping you would bring a couch.

So that you could lay down?

Yeah, are we not doing therapy tonight?

Where should we begin?

I feel like you should probably tell me. But we're not doing therapy.

We may do therapeutic maneuvers.

Okay, good. I feel like I could use some.

I'm excited to have this conversation because every time I've heard you talk about romantic relationships, I find myself substituting in work relationships and thinking that a lot of the wisdom applies.

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