Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

by Adam M. Grant

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. In the early years, when some of my colleagues and friends—even close friends—would have a rip-roaring success of some kind, it was hard for me. I would feel jealousy, that their success somehow was a reproach to me. When you start your career, naturally you’re mainly interested in advancing yourself and promoting yourself. But as Meyer worked on television shows, he began to run into the same people over and over. It was a small world, and a connected one. “I realized it’s a very small pond. There are only a few hundred people at any one time writing television comedy for a living,” Meyer says. “It’s a good idea not to alienate these guys, and most of the jobs you get are more or less through word of mouth, or a recommendation. It’s really important to have a good reputation. I quickly learned to see other comedy writers as allies.” Meyer began to root for other people to succeed. “It’s not a zero-sum game. So if you hear that somebody got a pilot picked up, or one of their shows went to series, in a way that’s really good, because comedy is doing better.”