Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success

by Adam M. Grant

Reid Hoffman. “If you set out to help others,” he explains, “you will rapidly reinforce your own reputation and expand your universe of possibilities.”

Although takers tend to be dominant and controlling with subordinates, they’re surprisingly submissive and deferential toward superiors. When takers deal with powerful people, they become convincing fakers.

This is another sign that Lay was a taker: he was obsessed with making a good impression upward, but worried less about how he was seen by those below him.

In networks, new research shows that when people get burned by takers, they punish them by sharing reputational information. “Gossip represents a widespread, efficient, and low-cost form of punishment,”

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.

The takers saw themselves as superior, so they felt entitled to substantial pay discrepancies in their own favor.

First, when we have access to reputational information, we can see how people have treated others in their networks. Second, when we have a chance to observe the actions and imprints of takers, we can look for signs of lekking.

“Social networks have always existed,” write psychologists Benjamin Crosier, Gregory Webster, and Haley Dillon. “It is only recently that the Internet has provided a venue for their electronic explosion.

Matchers tend to build smaller networks than either givers, who seek actively to help a wider range of people, or takers, who often find themselves expanding their networks to compensate for bridges burned in previous transactions.

we can’t always predict who can help us.

Although they’re the faster route to new leads, we don’t always feel comfortable reaching out to them. The lack of mutual trust between acquaintances creates a psychological barrier.

Fred Goldner wrote about what it means to experience the opposite of paranoia: pronoia.

“the delusional belief that other people are plotting your well-being, or saying nice things about you behind your back.”

givers showed respect for the people who spoke up, rather than belittling them.

His giving is governed by a simple rule: the five-minute favor. “You should be willing to do something that will take you five minutes or less for anybody.”

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, “I’ll do this for you without expecting anything specific back from you, in the confident expectation that someone else will do something for me down the road.”

When people walk into a new situation, they look to others for clues about appropriate behavior. When giving starts to occur, it becomes the norm, and people carry it forward in interactions with other people.

Highly creative scientists were rated by observers as creating and exploiting dependency in others. Even the highly creative scientists themselves agreed with statements like “I tend to slight the contribution of others and take undue credit for myself” and “I tend to be sarcastic and disparaging in describing the worth of other researchers.”

It’s unlikely that a giver would have ever been comfortable deviating so far from a client’s expectations, let alone convincing him to endorse it enthusiastically and charging extra for it.

On average, firms lost about $24 million by hiring star analysts.

The star analysts who moved solo had a 5 percent probability of being ranked first, while the star analysts who moved with team-mates had a 10 percent probability of being ranked first—the same as those who didn’t move at all.

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.

This is a defining feature of how givers collaborate: they take on the tasks that are in the group’s best interest, not necessarily their own personal interests.

Takers no longer felt that they needed to compete with him, matchers felt that they owed him, and givers saw him as one of them.

highly talented people tend to make others jealous, placing themselves at risk of being disliked, resented, ostracized, and undermined. But if these talented people are also givers, they no longer have a target on their backs. Instead,

when people act generously in groups, they earn idiosyncrasy credits—positive impressions that accumulate in the minds of group members.

“People tend to come up with ideas and jealously guard them, but George would create ideas, give them to someone else and never take credit.

Salk never acknowledged “the people in his own lab. This group, seated proudly together in the packed auditorium, would feel painfully snubbed. … Salk’s coworkers from Pittsburgh… had come expecting to be honored by their boss. A tribute seemed essential, and long overdue.”

Professional relationships disintegrate when entrepreneurs, inventors, investors, and executives feel that their partners are not giving them the credit they deserve, or doing their fair share.

In Hollywood, between 1993 and 1997 alone, more than four hundred screenplays—roughly a third of all submitted—went to credit arbitration.

This is a perspective gap: when we’re not experiencing a psychologically or physically intense state, we dramatically underestimate how much it will affect us. For

when managers were randomly assigned to see employees as bloomers, employees bloomed. McNatt concludes that these

Success doesn’t measure a human being, effort does.

They typically took their first piano lessons with a teacher who lived nearby in their neighborhoods.

When the pianists and their parents talked about their first piano teachers, they consistently focused on one theme: the teachers were caring, kind, and patient. The pianists looked forward to piano lessons because their first teachers made music interesting and fun.

Her research shows that above and beyond intelligence and aptitude, gritty people—by virtue of their interest, focus, and drive—achieve higher performance.

This is why givers focus on gritty people: it’s where givers have the greatest return on their investment, the most meaningful and lasting impact.

really want to grab their attention, you have to know the world they live in, the music they listen to, the movies they watch,” he explains. “To most of these kids, accounting is like a root canal. But when they hear me quote Usher or Cee Lo Green, they say to themselves, ‘Whoa, did that fat old white-haired guy just say what I thought he said?’ And then you’ve got ’em.”

One is anticipated regret: will I be sorry that I didn’t give this another chance? The second is project completion: if I keep investing, I can finish the project. But the single most powerful factor is ego threat: if I don’t keep investing, I’ll look and feel like a fool.

Once they felt criticized, they were less willing to accept the recommendation

Liles was responsible for one region, but he went out of his way to promote other regions too. “Everybody started to look at Kevin as a leader, because they all looked to him for direction. He gave until people couldn’t live without him.”

Speak softly, but carry a big stick.

Research suggests that there are 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. In an effort to claim as much value as possible, they strive to be superior to others.

When our audiences are skeptical, the more we try to dominate them, the more they resist. Even with a receptive audience, dominance is a zero-sum game: the more power and authority I have, the less you have.

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.

credentials, I made myself vulnerable, and called out the elephant in the room.

they’re interested in helping others, not gaining power over them, so they’re not afraid of exposing chinks in their armor.

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

Expressing vulnerability in ways that are unrelated to competence may build prestige, but it’s only a starting point for givers to exercise influence.