Winning in Life by Thinking Big with Dr. Grace Lordan

Founding Director of The Inclusion Initiative, Associate Professor in Behavioural Science at LSE, Dr. Grace Lordan shares her views on diversity, cultivating a growth mindset and why people succeed. She is the author of “Think Big”, a book about giving tips to people who want to achieve their goals in life.

Graham and Grace start the podcast by talking about issues on diversity and taking risks in career advancement.

'If you have skills, talents, and ability, even if they don’t match the role that you’re actually going for, a risk-loving person is much more likely to get it because they’ll be putting their hat in the ring much more often.'

Grace then discusses why diverse thinking is not confined to race or gender alone.

'Diversity is really only a pulse point for diversity of thinking. So, all the evidence that we have that says diversity is good in business comes from diverse thinking, and having people who have these different perspectives.'

Describing the book, Think Big, Grace breaks it down into how thinking big and acting small can help with achieving life goals.

'It’s about kind of reframing how we think about big achievements and demonstrating through behavioural science that it’s possible to have big achievements... if you’re a bit more patient with yourself and you commit to very, very small changes every week.'

Graham also asked about time auditing and how important it is to make time for other people and things in your life. Grace comes up with a great tip for those struggling in this area.

'If you’re somebody who says to yourself routinely, “I don’t have time to commit to small steps for my future.”, take a week and write everything that you actually did in the week and then look back and see whether things were actually productive, and what things you can actually cut out.'

Grace shares her battle with procrastination.

'With procrastination, just because you’re aware of it doesn’t mean that you will actually ever do anything about it. And not even that you’ll ever do anything about it, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll actually overcome it.'

Graham and Grace end the conversation by listing down valuable skills one can learn for the future.

'Definitely more tech and digital. But I really like soft skills. And the other reason why I like them is because, actually, they’ve been shown to be malleable across our lifetime. So, whereas it’s harder to teach people as they get older, digital skills, it’s very easy to teach them and to get them to improve on things like creativity, adaptability, and, curiosity.'

Graham Allcott is the founder of time management training company Think Productive.

This podcast is produced by Riz Paredes and is hosted by Podiant.

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