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January 29 - February 20, 2022
highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability, and opportunity.
success depends heavily on how we approach our interactions with other people.
being a giver doesn’t require extraordinary acts of sacrifice.
givers sink to the bottom of the success ladder.
they make others better off but sacrifice their own success in the process.
The worst performers and the best performers are givers; takers and matchers are more likely to land in the middle.
Receiving is accepting help from others while maintaining a willingness to pay it back and forward.
diplomacy involves taking ten times as much as giving.
giving may well be incompatible with success.
“If I have one vice,” Lincoln said, “and I can call it nothing else—it is not to be able to say no!”
Only 8 percent described themselves as givers; the other 92 percent were not willing to contribute more than they received at work.
“My focus was entirely on creating value
Hornik planned his first annual conference. It was called The Lobby,
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. —Martin Luther King Jr.,
networks come with three major advantages: private information, diverse skills, and power.
“If you set out to help others,” he explains, “you will rapidly reinforce your own reputation and expand your universe of possibilities.”
the vast majority of people in this position reject proposals that are imbalanced to the tune of 80 percent or more for the divider.*
“If we create networks with the sole intention of getting something, we won’t succeed. We can’t pursue the benefits of networks; the benefits ensue from investments in meaningful activities and relationships.”
Since takers tend to be self-absorbed, they’re more likely to use first-person singular pronouns like I, me, mine, my, and myself—versus first-person plural pronouns like we, us, our, ours, and ourselves.
When takers and matchers network, they tend to focus on who can help them in the near future, and this dictates what, where, and how they give.
people were significantly more likely to benefit from weak ties.
Strong ties provide bonds, but weak ties serve as bridges: they provide more efficient access to new information.
Weak ties are more likely to open up access to a different network, facilitating the discovery of original leads.
reactivate their dormant ties.
Dormant ties are the neglected value in our networks,
The givers were suns: they injected light around the organization.
“You should be willing to do something that will take you five minutes or less for anybody.”
you can be a genuinely kind-hearted person and still get ahead in the world.”
the most productive were those who gave often—and gave more than they received. These were the true givers, and they had the highest productivity and the highest status: they were revered by their peers.
“I’ll sum up the key to success in one word: generosity,”
Up Your Giggy. In his monologues, he called God “a ridiculous superstition, invented by frightened cavemen” and referred to marriage as “a stagnant cauldron of fermented resentments, scared and judgmental conformity, exaggerated concern for the children . . . and the secret dredging-up of erotic images from past lovers in a desperate and heartbreaking attempt to make spousal sex even possible.”
code of honor, and he lives by this code,
Givers reject the notion that interdependence is weak. Givers are more likely to see interdependence as a source of strength, a way to harness the skills of multiple people for a greater good.
Expedition behavior involves putting the group’s goals and mission first, and showing the same amount of concern for others as you do for yourself.
As a result, givers earn the respect of their collaborators.
Meyer summarizes his code of honor as “(1) Show up. (2) Work hard. (3) Be kind. (4) Take the high road.”
Tim Long adds that “there’s something magical about getting the reputation as someone who cares about others more than yourself. It redounds to your benefit in countless ways.”
The thing about credit is that it’s not zero-sum. There’s room for everybody, and you’ll shine if other people are shining.”
We see all of our own efforts, but we only witness a subset of our partners’ efforts.
The key to balancing our responsibility judgments is to focus our attention on what others have contributed. All you need to do is make a list of what your partner contributes before you estimate your own contribution.
psychological safety—the belief that you can take a risk without being penalized or punished.
when we’re not experiencing a psychologically or physically intense state, we dramatically underestimate how much it will affect us.
successful givers shift their frames of reference to the recipient’s perspective.
when we take others’ perspectives, we tend to stay within our own frames of reference,
When you start out, you see other people as obstacles to your success. But that means your world will be full of obstacles, which is bad.
interest is what drives people to invest their time and energy in developing particular skills and bases of knowledge.
grit: having passion and perseverance toward long-term goals.
When people focus on others, as givers do naturally, they’re less likely to worry about egos and miniscule details; they look at the big picture and prioritize what matters most to others.
“It’s not what a player is, but what he can become
givers are more receptive to expertise from others, even if it challenges their own beliefs.
