Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

by Adam M. Grant

two fundamental paths to influence: dominance and prestige. When we establish dominance, we gain influence because others see us as strong, powerful, and authoritative. When we earn prestige, we become influential because others respect and admire us.

Takers are attracted to, and excel in, gaining dominance.

they strive to be superior to others. To establish dominance, takers specialize i...

they speak forcefully, raise their voices to assert their authority, express certainty to project confidence, promote their accomplishments, and sell with conviction and pride. They display strength by spreading their arms in dominant poses, raising their eyebrows in challenge, commanding as much phy...

In the quest for influence, takers set the tone and control the conversation by sending powerful verbal and nonverbal signals. As a result, takers tend to be much mo...

When takers come across someone more dominant, they’re at risk of losing their influence. Conversely, prestige isn’t zero-sum; there’s no limit to the amount of respect and admiration that we can dole out.

The opposite of a taker’s powerful communication style is called powerless communication. Powerless communicators tend to speak less assertively, expressing plenty of doubt and relying heavily on advice from others. They talk in ways that signal vulnerability, revealing their weaknesses and making use of disclaimers, hedges, and hesitations.

I want to trace how givers develop prestige in four domains of influence: presenting, selling, persuading, and negotiating.

Takers tend to worry that revealing weaknesses will compromise their dominance and authority. Givers are much more comfortable expressing vulnerability: they’re interested in helping others, not gaining power over them, so they’re not afraid of exposing chinks in their armor. By making themselves vulnerable, givers can actually build prestige.

But there’s a twist: expressing vulnerability is only effective if the audience receives other signals establishing the speaker’s competence.

the pratfall effect.

Spilling a cup of coffee hurt the image of the average candidate: it was just another reason for the audience to dislike him. But the same blunder helped the expert appear human and approachable—instead of superior and distant.*

Swindlers

To effectively influence people, we need to convert the respect that we earn into a reason for our audiences to change their attitudes and behaviors.

It’s the givers, by virtue of their interest in getting to know us, who ask us the questions that enable us to experience the joy of learning from ourselves. And by giving us the floor, givers are actually learning about us and from us, which helps them figure out how to sell us things we already value.

first salesman. He shows me a snazzy pair of glasses, and swiftly launches into a compelling pitch with powerful communication. The lenses are tailor-made for driving. The contours of the frames accentuate the shape of my face. The color matches my skin tone. I’ve never been mistaken for cool, but I briefly flirt with the fantasy that these shades could transform me into James Bond—or

They fit me so perfectly, he says, that the designers must have had a winning face like mine in mind when they created these shades. I develop a sneaking suspicion that he’s flattering me to make the sale. Taker? At another office, the salesperson offers to do me a favor. He’ll replace my frames for free, if I switch over to his office for eye exams. Matcher

asks me some basic questions before he even pulls out a single tray of sunglasses from the case. Have I ever been here before? Do I have a prescription to fill? What’s my lifestyle like—do I play sports? He listens carefully to my answers and gives me some space to contemplate.

“I don’t look at it as selling,” he explains. “I see myself as an optician. We’re in the medical field first, retail second, sales maybe third. My job is to take the patient, ask the patient questions, and see what the patient needs. My mind-set is not to sell. My job is to help. My main purpose is to educate and inform patients on what’s important. My true concern in the long run is that the patient can see.”

Givers are the top sellers, and a key reason is powerless communication.

The expert negotiators spent much more time trying to understand the other side’s perspective:

instead of telling patients what they want, he asks them what they want.

if I tell you to go out and vote, you might resist. But when I ask if you’re planning to vote, you don’t feel like I’m trying to influence you. It’s an innocent query, and instead of resisting my influence, you reflect on it. “Well, I do care about being a good citizen, and I want to support my candidate.” This doesn’t feel like I’m persuading you. As Aronson explains, you’ve been convinced by someone you already like and trust: Yourself.

“in direct persuasion, the audience is constantly aware of the fact that they have been persuaded by another. Where self-persuasion occurs, people are convinced that the motivation for change has come from within.” By asking people questions about their plans and intentions, we increase the likelihood that they actually act on these plans and intentions.

Persuading: The Technique of Tentative Talk

By talking tentatively, Jamie shows a willingness to defer to you, or at least take your opinion into consideration.

When givers use powerless speech, they show us that they have our best interests at heart.

By speaking with greater speed, volume, assertiveness, and certainty, takers convince us that they know what they’re talking about.

Takers, the study’s authors report, “attain influence because they behave in ways that make them appear competent—even when they actually lack competence.”

Whereas powerful communication might be effective in a one-shot job interview, in a team or a service relationship, it loses the respect and admiration of others.

Speaking dominantly convinces group members that takers are powerful, but it stifles information sharing, preventing members from communicating good ideas.

when most employees in a store are dutiful followers, managers are well served to speak powerfully. But when most employees are proactive, generating new ideas for cooking and delivering pizzas more efficiently, powerful speech backfires.

By conveying dominance, the powerful speakers discouraged their proactive employees from contributing.

Team members saw the powerful speakers as threatened by ideas, viewing the powerless speakers as more receptive to suggestions. Talking tentatively didn’t establish dominance, but it earned plenty of prestige.

Negotiating: Seeking Advice in the Shadow of a Doubt

Entering negotiations, takers typically work to establish a dominant position.

advice seeking is a surprisingly effective strategy for exercising influence when we lack authority.

Asking for advice encouraged greater cooperation and information sharing, turning a potentially contentious negotiation into a win-win deal.

seeking advice is among the most effective ways to influence peers, superiors, and subordinates. Advice seeking tends to be significantly more persuasive than the taker’s preferred tactics of pressuring subordinates and ingratiating superiors.

From a taker’s perspective, asking for advice means acknowledging that you don’t have all the answers. Takers may fear that seeking advice might make them look weak, dependent, or incompetent.

Appearing vulnerable doesn’t bother givers, who worry far less about protecting their egos and projecting certainty. When givers ask for advice, it’s because they’re genuinely interested in learning from others. Matchers hold back on advice seeking for a different reason: they might owe something in return.

When we ask for advice, in order to give us a recommendation, advisers have to look at the problem or dilemma from our point of view.

third benefit of advice seeking kicked in: commitment.

“He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.”

Regardless of their reciprocity styles, people love to be asked for advice. Giving advice makes takers feel important, and it makes givers feel helpful. Matchers often enjoy giving advice for a different reason: it’s a low-cost way of racking up credits that they can cash in later. As a result, when we ask people for advice, they tend to respond positively to us.

advice seeking only works if it’s genuine.

this applies more generally to powerless communication: it works for givers because they establish a sincere intent to act in the best interests of others. When presenting, givers make it clear that they’re expressing vulnerability not only to earn prestige but also to make a genuine connection with the audience. When selling, givers ask questions in a way that conveys the desire to help customers, not take advantage of them. When persuading and negotiating, givers speak tentatively and seek advice because they truly value the ideas and viewpoints of others.

The intelligent altruists, though less altruistic than the unintelligent altruists, will be fitter than both unintelligent altruists and selfish individuals.

Success involves more than just capitalizing on the strengths of giving; it also requires avoiding the pitfalls. If people give too much time, they end up making sacrifices for their collaborators and network ties, at the expense of their own energy. If people give away too much credit and engage in too much powerless communication, it’s all too easy for them to become pushovers

Successful givers, it turns out, are just as ambitious as takers and matchers.