PDF Summary:Give and Take, by Adam Grant

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But givers are sometimes afraid of giving in the workplace, as it may signal weakness or naivete. When people perceive the workplace as zero-sum and other people as matchers, they want to respond in kind. This perpetuates a matching culture.

Examples of Givers

President Lincoln was a giver, known to be among the least self-centered US presidents. In his first Senate run, he gave up his 2nd place position to support the 3rd place candidate to defeat the 1st place candidate (he believed this was better for the state). When he won the presidency, Lincoln gave cabinet seats to his Republican opponents. In contrast, a matcher might have reciprocated allies’ support by appointing them, and a taker would have appointed “yes men” to build his power. Lincoln believed he had “no right to deprive the country” of the services of the best men.

Venture capitalist David Hornik was cited as a main example of an inveterate giver. His reputation for being hardworking and helpful gives him a signing rate of 90%, compared to an average 50%. Examples of his giving include starting a blog and openly describing how venture capital works (thus giving away trade secrets and weakening their...

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Adam Grant introduces a type of a weak tie – a dormant tie, someone whom you used to see often but have since lost touch with. Givers and takers both tend to have more dormant ties than matchers, as explained above.

But takers and matchers are disadvantaged in reactivating dormant ties.

• Takers may have carried a bad reputation with them, prompting matchers and givers to punish the taker.
• Matchers have an easier time because there’s less ill will. But they feel uncomfortable reaching out to weak ties, because they may already owe a debt to the weak tie, dislike the creation of a debt, or never have developed a warm trusting relationship rather than a transactional one.

In contrast, givers have major advantages in reconnecting. Givers a history of helping you, so you feel happy when they contact you again. Givers tend to be asking for help for someone else, not themselves, prompting people to add value rather than trade value. Also, since most people tend to prefer justice, they’ll reward givers who have a reputation of acting generously to others.

Says LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman: “The more altruistic your attitude, the more benefits you will gain from...

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Idiosyncrasy Credits

Giving also gives you a personal benefit - it increases the group’s reception to your personal ideas. Givers earn “idiosyncrasy credits” – positive impressions that allow a giver to deviate from group norms or expectations.

When givers voice their opinions, other members of the group are less entrenched in a competitive mood and can be more objective about ideas, because they know the giver is earnestly acting in support of the team. And when the idea is controversial or threatens the security of other team members, it’s understood that the giver is posing an idea primarily for the sake of the team, not for her own ego. This also applies to feedback – the recipient understands the giver wants her to succeed, rather than giving feedback to harm.

In contrast, when takers voice opinions, jealousy can spur collaborators to shoot them down in fear of competition or out of punishment for previous bad behavior. And when takers express threatening ideas or give constructive feedback, others can be skeptical of motives and reflexively dismiss it as self-serving.

Success Requires the Team

Much knowledge work relies on collaboration and working...

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In contrast, to someone of low promise, a teacher does the inverse: she attributes failure to the person’s low promise, gives fewer chances to succeed, and gives less feedback (likely out of belief the advice will be wasted). Similarly, this leads to a vicious cycle where the student feels less motivated, and each progressive failure is more evidence of low promise.

Takers, Givers, and the Pygmalion Effect

So it’s shown that trainees develop differently in response to the teachers’ beliefs. How do takers, matchers, and givers perform differently in this framework?

Takers assume that most people are takers and thus place little trust in other people. When they see someone with high performance, they see this person as a threat, which prevents them from whole-heartedly supporting the person. Furthermore, takers tend to dismiss low performers as not possibly being able to help the taker. This creates vicious cycles where takers fail to provide encouraging support.

Matchers value reciprocity, so when they see someone of high potential, they do provide support in hopes of returned favors later. But **matchers tend to wait to see evidence of performance before...

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Powerless communication only works, however, if you signal your competence in other ways, such as credentials or the content of your speech. If you’re competent and vulnerable, audiences like you more. But if you’re incompetent and vulnerable, audiences like you less. This is the pratfall effect. In other words, mistakes amplify the audience’s prior conception about you.

Selling Powerlessly

Picture a stereotype of a salesperson, and you may picture a hard-charging, gregarious back-slapper who pushes you down a list of features and won’t take no for an answer.

It turns out givers are the most effective salespeople, showing higher results across industries like insurance and pharmaceuticals. Givers want to help their customers solve their problems, and they use powerless communication to achieve it. In sales, givers ask lots of questions to understand the clients’ scenario, customize a solution to best match the client’s needs, then allow the client to make her own conclusion.

Tactically, asking questions allows a salesperson to unearth new customer needs and use cases that wouldn’t have been discovered through a brute force one-size-fits-all approach. Adam...

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Maintaining a balance between self-interest and other-interest is important for mental health. This is true even in trusting relationships like marriages.

Even though otherish givers superficially appear less giving than selfless givers, they have greater stamina and contribute more over time. In comparison to matchers and takers, otherish givers build a reserve of happiness that fuel their work.

Making the Giving Impact Clear

Because givers are motivated by benefiting others, the result of the giving must be made obvious. In the absence of positive feedback, the giving effort seems to disappear into a black hole, risking “compassion fatigue” and burnout.

The author conducted a study of college donation volunteers, where he found givers were over 50% less productive than takers. This was an odd finding in a volunteer setting - you’d expect people with high other-interest to do well. Then he noticed a sign in the call center: “Doing a good job here is like wetting your pants in a dark suit. You get a warm feeling but no one else notices.”

Realizing the lack of feedback on giving behavior, Adam divided students into experimental groups and, for one group,...

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By detecting fakers, givers can screen people to decide where to focus their energy. One manager consultant offers help to every hire and observes their behavior in the first meetings. People who sincerely want to learn ask questions about the nature of their work. Takers tend to ask how to get promoted and spend time brown-nosing. Another consultant resorted to writing advice guides to scale her advice.

Generous Tit for Tat: Trust Most People Most of the Time

Screening can be a first line of defense, but how do you adapt when you’ve already engaged in a relationship with a taker?

One useful tactic is to use matching behavior with takers – tit for tat, in game theory parlance. Start out as a giver, but once your partner becomes competitive, retaliate by becoming competitive yourself. This is a good start, but it can be overly punishing – you may misinterpret a signal, or the counterparty could have made a mistake. When both parties go negative in tit for tat, it can end up in a mutually-destructive deadlock - no person ever takes the high road, and both people are forever locked in taking behavior.

A better strategy is generous tit for tat – **match the...

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The Manchester fan clearly helped a member of his own group. Liverpool is Manchester’s rival, and the research subject essentially treated the person the same as though he were wearing a plain shirt.

But in another experiment, the Manchester fan were instead prompted to ask about why they were football fans and what it meant to them. In this case, the Manchester fan saw the Liverpool fan as being in the same group, raising the helping percentage dramatically.

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Thus, if you’re a matcher, try to start out by giving in ways they find enjoyable, to people they genuinely care about. Then, over time, you might fully adopt being a giver as part of your identity.

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In Organizations

• In reviews, ask people first to itemize what they like about a company and what you or the company has done for them. This will minimize the responsibility bias of their own actions.
• Promote a giving attitude in your org. Set the example for helping people willingly and for focusing on the goals of the group above your own gain. Publicly reward the behavior of people who demonstrate this. Try to develop psychological safety around ideas, so people don’t feel they have to claim credit for ideas. Run a reciprocity ring.
• Try to hire givers. Takers will bring down a culture when people default to tit for tat. One bad actor can really spoil the whole batch.
• to empathize with your subordinates in tough situations, induce the same pain in yourself. Make a list of situations similar to those they’re facing and reflect on these regularly. Eg list one time negative feedback really hurt; when positive feedback made you feel good; when you had a project taken away from you; when your boss or colleague took credit for your work; when you felt underpaid for your work; when you had a deep Mazlow’s hierarchy need that wasn’t fulfilled.