Interview with author Adam Grant
2015
Grant is the youngest full professor at the Wharton School and has been recognized as Wharton’s single-highest-rated teacher, and one of Malcolm Gladwell’s favorite social science writers. Before taking up a career in academia, Grant was the advertising director at Let’s Go Publications, an All-American springboard diver, and a professional magician.
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In his best-selling book Give and Take, he examines how being generous with our time and expertise impacts on our personal success. Grant identifies three groups of people – givers, takers, and matchers. Givers are inclined to give their favors generously, while matchers look for a quid pro quo. Takers, on the other hand, are in it for themselves and only help others if there is something more in it for themselves. Interestingly, his research indicates that the most successful people are often givers – but givers also run the risk of being doormats for others.
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And you found that people who give back are more successful? So good guys can finish first which is a life affirming discovery.
Yes it is, although I always want to convey that enthusiasm with a bit of caution, because there are about as many givers who sink to the bottom. But yes, it’s pretty exciting that people who put others first most of the time can actually end up finishing first themselves.
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And, when you looked at people’s profiles, you found that there were three distinct types, the givers, the takers and the matchers. Can you say just a little bit about each of those?
These styles of interaction turn out to be universal, as far as we can tell, across industries and cultures. The people who operate primarily as takers are always trying to get as much as possible from others. They never want to give anything back unless they have to.
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At the other end of the spectrum, we have these people that I call givers, and I’ve been really working to redefine giving as not just about philanthropy or volunteering, but as you said, these everyday acts of helping others with no strings attached.
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And then, in the middle we have most of us – matchers. In the majority of our interactions, most people operate like matchers, trying to keep an even balance of give and take, quid pro quo. If I were a matcher, and I were to do you a favor, I would expect an equal one back, and if you did me a favor, I might feel like I was in debt until I had settled the score.
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It will vary from one organization, industry and culture to another. But, across the board, the data that have been gathered suggest that on average about 55 to 60 percent of the population are matchers, and the remainder are a pretty even mix of givers and takers.
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Most people think that they’re very good at recognizing who is a giver and who is a taker. Unfortunately, the evidence shows that until you know someone well, most people do no better than random chance. One of the biggest reasons we get fooled is a personality trait called agreeableness.
Agreeable people tend to be warm and friendly and nice, and welcoming and polite, whereas more disagreeable people are likely to be critical, sceptical, and challenging with others. Most of us associate these personality traits with giving and taking: if you’re a nice guy — if you’re agreeable — I will assume that you’re a giver, and if you’re a little bit more tough and gruff in your interaction, I might assume that you’re a taker.
Yet when you look at the data, the correlation between agreeable-disagreeable and giving-taking, is basically zero. Agreeable and disagreeableness is about your outer veneer, whereas giving and taking is about your inner motives, your intentions.
Agreeableness is what we sometimes call charm?
Exactly. Of course, there are agreeable givers and disagreeable takers, but we forget that there are disagreeable givers, who are the most undervalued people in an organization. These are the people who are not always pleasant to interact with; they often get described as prickly or overly harsh in their judgements. But they have other people’s best interests at heart. They’re often the ones who are willing to blow the whistle, ask the tough questions, play devil’s advocate, in the service of organizational goals, even though they might be not that easy to deal with on an everyday basis.
The people we have to watch out for are the agreeable takers who I call the fakers. They’re nice to your face but perfectly willing to stab you in the back.
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So if we were going to adopt a strategy, how do we ensure that we’re the ones that rise to the top rather than the ones that just end up being the doormat?
That’s a great question. I think it comes down to being thoughtful in three ways: about who, how and when you give. The givers who get themselves in trouble are the ones who are constantly helping takers. You can waste a lot of your time and energy helping people who are very selfish. It is easy to get burned and burnt out, so the idea is to focus on having givers and matchers around you. The beauty of helping matchers is that they tend to feel really motivated to pay it back, and make sure that what goes around comes around.
The givers actually do less of that, but they really focus on paying it forward, allowing whatever you contribute to spread.
As far as the how is concerned, the basic advice is to be a specialist, not a generalist when you give. The givers who try to be all things to all people end up spreading themselves really thin, and it’s not very efficient or energizing to help in hundreds of different ways. Successful givers focus in on one
The third part is the when. Failed givers are the people who are willing to drop anything at any time to fulfill a request, whereas successful givers block out time in their calendar to get their own goals accomplished, finish their own work. They have separate windows set aside to be helpful.
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There’s no doubt that there are some very selfish people that do get on in life. What sets the alarm bells ringing with you?
There are a couple of sneaky ways that takers manage to fool other people. One is a pattern that I call kissing up, kicking down. Takers are really good fakers when dealing with powerful people, because it’s advantageous for influential people to think that you’re generous. But it’s a lot of work to fake concern for others in all your interactions, so takers tend to let their guard down a little bit with peers and subordinates. If you really want to know somebody’s style, don’t ask their bosses; ask the people who work across from and below them.
Also, takers often will give first, and then make a bigger ask later. A lot of us have learned to have an alarm go off when we just meet somebody, and all of a sudden they’re over-eager to help us. Sometimes, because they’re charming or because they manage to ingratiate, we get fooled by them. That’s something we have to be careful about.
Third, over time, takers give off more of a transactional impression. Initially takers are quite charming, because they know that’s what they need to do to get ahead. But you will find that you only hear from them when they want something.
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Any one style used inflexibly is risky. You do have to get smart at adjusting and adapting without losing sight of your values and your character. The evidence suggests that the best thing to do when you encounter a taker, is operate more like a matcher, and it becomes very much tit for tat, if this person gives, then I will give back, but I’m not going to do it without some kind of quid pro quo. But a lot of givers feel really uncomfortable with that and they don’t want to have to be constantly keeping score. One way to navigate this dilemma is instead of asking the taker to help you, ask them to help somebody else. In that way, you’re holding them accountable, but you don’t feel like you’re stepping out of your own value system.
The nice thing is that, if you’re a giver, an ask feels like helping when it’s on behalf of someone else.
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http://onbeing.org/program/adam-grant-successful-givers-toxic-takers-and-the-life-we-spend-at-work/transcript/8064
Transcript for Adam Grant — Successful Givers, Toxic Takers, and the Life We Spend at Work
October 22, 2015
Krista Tippett, host
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Ms. Tippett: Adam Grant is the youngest tenured and highest-rated professor at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. And he’s consulted for numerous organizations including Google, the United Nations, and the U.S. Army. He became known to many through his popular book, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success.
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Ms. Tippett: And one of the things that you have demonstrated in your research is that givers are over-represented among the people who are least successful. And I — by certain measures that we use. They can be people who burn out and stay behind while other people get ahead for various reasons. But, they are also over-represented at the other end of that spectrum of people who, by certain metrics, we qualify as successful.
Dr. Grant: That’s right. I think that was one of the biggest surprises here, is that people who are generous were the most likely to fail big and succeed big.
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Dr. Grant: And I’ve gotten a lot clearer about this since I wrote Give and Take. I think that it fundamentally comes down to the choices we make every day about who we help, when we help, and how we help. So the “who” is, I think, pretty simple. Failed givers are the people who help anyone. Successful givers are much more likely to be thoughtful about what is this person's history and reputation like? Before I go and overextend myself and give you 17 hours, I might want to find out if you’re likely to take advantage of me.
And exercise just a little bit of caution or self-protection there. The “when” is basically about protecting time to make sure that you achieve your own goals. One of the mistakes that failed givers make is they drop everything for any request that comes in.
And what you see with successful givers is they’re much more likely to prioritize and say, “OK, I’ve got these windows blocked out to make sure I can progress on my own tasks.”
“And then I have other periods of time set aside to try to be helpful and responsive to others.”
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there was a software engineer at Google who had a great way of describing them. He said, “Oh, a disagreeable giver is somebody who has a really bad user interface, but a great operating system.”
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Ms. Tippett: Yeah. Another thing you talk about that’s — I just have to say, I find very refreshing — is you have found that we tend to think that what we are looking for as human beings, as professional people in particular, is work that is interesting that leads to advancement. You say that a sense of being of service to others is, on balance, a greater motivator than those things, and actually makes people more productive.
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Dr. Grant: We think that people are fundamentally selfish. And that’s the value you ought to appeal to if you want to motivate people. And yet, look at all the things that people would never do for themselves that they constantly do for others. Whether it’s something as simple as a boring task where you persist, because you really care about the client who might benefit from it, whether it’s all of the hours you might spend in the car driving your kids from place to place that you just wouldn’t have bothered if it was only for you. Working in a job that’s extremely difficult to sustain, because it’s physically taxing, it’s exhausting, it’s degrading, because you’re trying to provide for your family. But these are all things that people struggle immensely to do for themselves, but they readily do for others. And when I studied this, it was with fundraising callers who were doing a pretty...
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Dr. Grant: Well, I guess, if you look at the evidence on this, the thing people want most in a job is a sense of meaning and purpose. They want to know what they do matters. And that’s been true for literally generations across the American workforce. And you find similar things in other parts of the world. We want to contribute to others. That’s the biggest source of meaningfulness.
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Ms. Tippett: That’s great. So givers inhabit the world together with what you call takers and matchers. As you say, this makes sense to me. Matchers follow the norm. So if they’re in the presence of givers — so givers and takers have impact because the tone they set, or the presence they set, will be matched. I mean, it is sobering, and I think again, we’ve all had this experience and I — tell me if this is correct. I think what you say is that it’s possible for one taker to dominate and ruin an organization or an experience. It takes more givers — it’s not possible for givers to redeem the whole in the same — in quite the same way.
Dr. Grant: Yeah. The way I like to put it is that one bad apple can spoil a barrel, but one good egg does not make a dozen.
But it does — when you study this in teams, for example, one really selfish taker is enough to leave everybody else paranoid, making sure that they don’t get taken advantage of, and can really depress the generosity of a whole group. Whereas, you put one generous person in the group, and more often, people are like, “Great, you can do all my work,” instead of saying, “I’m now inspired to give, too.” And I think we have to be very careful about that bad-is-stronger-than-good effect, because it is possible that takers can really pollute a culture or a community.
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And then a lot of people think that power corrupts, but I think, if you look at the evidence on this, it’s more likely that power reveals — in the sense that if you’re a taker, you don’t have to pretend to be a giver once you’ve gained a lot of status and influence. Now you have the freedom to express your values. And so I think what happens is takers often rise by being fakers, and then you get to see their true colors once they’re in a top leadership position.
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So I think that it’s extremely important for children to see their parents giving, and not just giving to them, where they can take it for granted, but to see them helping other people. That’s actually part of how children learn values associated with generosity.
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Ms. Tippett: You’ve been writing recently about friendship at work. And how fewer Americans now than 30 years ago will say that they have a close friend at work, and fewer Americans say this than people in other countries.
Dr. Grant: I think it’s unfortunate, both from a happiness standpoint, because the evidence is overwhelming that people are more satisfied in jobs where they can make friends.
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Ms. Tippett: Adam Grant is a professor of psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and he’s a regular contributor to The New York Times. He is the author of Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. His forthcoming book, Originals, will be out in February 2016.
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