Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success

by Adam M. Grant

According to conventional wisdom, highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability, and opportunity. If we want to succeed, we need a combination of hard work, talent, and luck. The story of Danny Shader and David Hornik highlights a fourth ingredient, one that’s critical but often neglected: success depends heavily on how we approach our interactions with other people. Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?

Takers have a distinctive signature: they like to get more than they give. They tilt reciprocity in their own favor, putting their own interests ahead of others’ needs. Takers believe that the world is a competitive, dog-eat-dog place. They feel that to succeed, they need to be better than others. To prove their competence, they self-promote and make sure they get plenty of credit for their efforts. Garden-variety takers aren’t cruel or cutthroat; they’re just cautious and self-protective. “If I don’t look out for myself first,” takers think, “no one will.”

In the workplace, givers are a relatively rare breed. They tilt reciprocity in the other direction, preferring to give more than they get. Whereas takers tend to be self-focused, evaluating what other people can offer them, givers are other-focused, paying more attention to what other people need from them. These preferences aren’t about money: givers and takers aren’t distinguished by how much they donate to charity or the compensation that they command from their employers. Rather, givers and takers differ in their attitudes and actions toward other people. If you’re a taker, you help others strategically, when the benefits to you outweigh the personal costs. If you’re a giver, you might use a different cost-benefit analysis: you help whenever the benefits to others exceed the personal costs. Alternatively, you might not think about the personal costs at all, helping others without expecting anything in return. If you’re a giver at work, you simply strive to be generous in sharing your time, energy, knowledge, skills, ideas, and connections with other people who can benefit from them.

The worst performers and the best performers are givers; takers and matchers are more likely to land in the middle.

As the venture capitalist Randy Komisar remarks, “It’s easier to win if everybody wants you to win. If you don’t make enemies out there, it’s easier to succeed.”

In the Oval Office, Lincoln was determined to put the good of the nation above his own ego. When he won the presidency in 1860, he invited the three candidates whom he defeated for the Republican nomination to become his secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, and attorney general. In Team of Rivals, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin documents how unusual Lincoln’s cabinet was. “Every member of the administration was better known, better educated, and more experienced in public life than Lincoln. Their presence in the cabinet might have threatened to eclipse the obscure prairie lawyer.” In Lincoln’s position, a taker might have preferred to protect his ego and power by inviting “yes men” to join him. A matcher might have offered appointments to allies who had supported him. Yet Lincoln invited his bitter competitors instead. “We needed the strongest men of the party in the Cabinet,” Lincoln told an incredulous reporter. “I had no right to deprive the country of their services.” Some of these rivals despised Lincoln, and others viewed him as incompetent, but he managed to win them all over. According to Kearns Goodwin, Lincoln’s “success in dealing with the strong egos of the men in his cabinet suggests that in the hands of a truly great politician the qualities we generally associate with decency and morality—kindness, sensitivity, compassion, honesty, and empathy—can also be impressive political resources.”

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”

Wayne Baker, a University of Michigan sociologist and networking expert, explains, “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.”

we’ve looked at two different ways to recognize takers. 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. Self-glorifying images, self-absorbed conversations, and sizable pay gaps can send accurate, reliable signals that someone is a taker. Thanks to some dramatic changes in the world since 2001, these signals are easier to spot today than ever before. Networks have become more transparent, providing us with new windows through which we can view other people’s reputations and lekking.

Rifkin reflects. “You never know where somebody’s going to end up. It’s not just about building your reputation; it really is about being there for other people.”

In the search for Fortune’s best networker, when Rifkin popped up as the winner, the reporter on the story, Jessica Shambora, laughed out loud. “Not surprisingly, I had already met him! Someone had referred me to him for a story I was researching on virtual goods and social networks.” Shambora, who now works at Facebook, says that Rifkin is “the consummate networker, and he didn’t get that way by being some sort of climber, or calculated. People go to Adam because they know his heart is in the right place.” When he first moved up to Silicon Valley, Rifkin felt that giving was a natural way to come out of his shell. “As a very shy, sheltered computer guy, the concept of the network was my north star,” he says. “When you have nothing, what’s the first thing you try to do? You try to make a connection and have a relationship that gives you an opportunity to do something for someone else.” On Rifkin’s LinkedIn page, his motto is “I want to improve the world, and I want to smell good while doing it.” As of September 2012, on LinkedIn, 49 people have written recommendations for Rifkin, and no attribute is mentioned more frequently than his giving. A matcher would write recommendations back for the same 49 people, and perhaps sprinkle in a few unsolicited recommendations for key contacts, in the hopes that they’ll reciprocate. But Rifkin gives more than five times as much as he gets: on LinkedIn, he has written detailed recommendations for 265 different people. “Adam is off the c...

As these disadvantages of strict reciprocity accrue over time, they can limit both the quantity and quality of the networks that takers and matchers develop. Both disadvantages ultimately arise out of a shortsightedness about networks, in that takers and matchers make hard-and-fast assumptions about just who will be able to provide the most benefit in exchange. At its core, the giver approach extends a broader reach, and in doing so enlarges the range of potential payoffs, even though those payoffs are not the motivating engine. “When you meet people,” says former Apple evangelist and Silicon Valley legend Guy Kawasaki, regardless of who they are, “you should be asking yourself, ‘How can I help the other person?’” This may strike some as a way to overinvest in others, but as Adam Rifkin once learned to great effect, we can’t always predict who can help us.

One of Rifkin’s maxims is “I believe in the strength of weak ties.” It’s in homage to a classic study by the Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter. Strong ties are our close friends and colleagues, the people we really trust. Weak ties are our acquaintances, the people we know casually. Testing the common assumption that we get the most help from our strong ties, Granovetter surveyed people in professional, technical, and managerial professions who had recently changed jobs. Nearly 17 percent heard about the job from a strong tie. Their friends and trusted colleagues gave them plenty of leads. But surprisingly, people were significantly more likely to benefit from weak ties. Almost 28 percent heard about the job from a weak tie. Strong ties provide bonds, but weak ties serve as bridges: they provide more efficient access to new information. Our strong ties tend to travel in the same social circles and know about the same opportunities as we do. Weak ties are more likely to open up access to a different network, facilitating the discovery of original leads.

Here’s the wrinkle: it’s tough to ask weak ties for help. 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. But givers like Adam Rifkin have discovered a loophole. It’s possible to get the best of both worlds: the trust of strong ties coupled with the novel information of weak ties. The key is reconnecting, and it’s a major reason why givers succeed in the long run.

Rifkin calls luck is in fact a predictable, patterned response that most people have to givers. Thirty years ago, the sociologist Fred Goldner wrote about what it means to experience the opposite of paranoia: pronoia. According to the distinguished psychologist Brian Little, pronoia is “the delusional belief that other people are plotting your well-being, or saying nice things about you behind your back.”

Dormant ties offer the access to novel information that weak ties afford, but without the discomfort. As Levin and colleagues explain, “reconnecting a dormant relationship is not like starting a relationship from scratch. When people reconnect, they still have feelings of trust.” An executive divulged that “I feel comfortable … I didn’t need to guess what his intentions were … there was mutual trust that we built years ago that made our conversation today smoother.” Reactivating a dormant tie actually required a shorter conversation, since there was already some common ground. The executives didn’t need to invest in building a relationship from the start with their dormant ties, as they would with weak ties.

According to networking experts, reconnecting is a totally different experience for givers, especially in a wired world. Givers have a track record of generously sharing their knowledge, teaching us their skills, and helping us find jobs without worrying about what’s in it for them, so we’re glad to help them when they get back in touch with us.

The type of goodwill that givers like Rifkin build is the subject of fascinating research. Traditionally, social network researchers map information exchange: the flows of knowledge from person to person. But when Wayne Baker collaborated with University of Virginia professor Rob Cross and IBM’s Andrew Parker, he realized that it was also possible to track the flows of energy through networks. In a range of organizations, employees rated their interactions with one another on a scale from strongly de-energizing to strongly energizing. The researchers created an energy network map, which looked like a model of a galaxy. The takers were black holes. They sucked the energy from those around them. The givers were suns: they injected light around the organization. Givers created opportunities for their colleagues to contribute, rather than imposing their ideas and hogging credit for achievements. When they disagreed with suggestions, givers showed respect for the people who spoke up, rather than belittling them. If you mapped energy in Adam Rifkin’s network, you’d find that he looks like the sun in many different solar systems.

This is a new spin on reciprocity. In traditional old-school reciprocity, people operated like matchers, trading value back and forth with one another. We helped the people who helped us, and we gave to the people from whom we wanted something in return. But today, givers like Adam Rifkin are able to spark a more powerful form of reciprocity. Instead of trading value, Rifkin aims to add value. 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.”

When takers build networks, they try to claim as much value as possible for themselves from a fixed pie. When givers like Rifkin build networks, they expand the pie so that everyone can get a larger slice. Nick Sullivan, an entrepreneur who has benefited from Rifkin’s help, says that “Adam has the same effect on all of us: getting us to help people.” Rouf elaborates: “Adam always wants to make sure that whoever he’s giving to is also giving to somebody else. If people benefit from his advice, he makes sure they help other people he gives advice to—it’s creating a network, and making sure that everybody in his network is helping each other, paying it forward.” Cutting-edge research shows how Rifkin motivates other people to give. Giving, especially when it’s distinctive and consistent, establishes a pattern that shifts other people’s reciprocity styles within a group. It turns out that giving can be contagious. In one study, contagion experts James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis found that giving spreads rapidly and widely across social networks.

Meyer summarizes his code of honor as “(1) Show up. (2) Work hard. (3) Be kind. (4) Take the high road.” As he contributed in ways that revealed his skills without spawning jealousy, colleagues began to admire and trust his comedic genius. “People started to see him as somebody who wasn’t just motivated personally,” Tim Long explains. “You don’t think of him as a competitor. He’s someone you can think of on a higher plane, and can trust creatively.” Carolyn Omine adds, “Compared to other writers’ rooms I’ve been in, I would say The Simpsons tends to look longer for jokes. I think it’s because we have writers, like George, who will say, ‘No, that’s not quite right,’ even if it’s late, even if we’re all tired. I think that’s an important quality. We need those people, like George, who aren’t afraid to say, ‘No, this isn’t good enough. We can do better.’”

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be. —attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer, physicist, biologist, and artist

Givers don’t wait for signs of potential. Because they tend to be trusting and optimistic about other people’s intentions, in their roles as leaders, managers, and mentors, givers are inclined to see the potential in everyone. By default, givers start by viewing people as bloomers. This is exactly what has enabled C. J. Skender to develop so many star students. He isn’t unusual in recognizing talented people; he simply starts by seeing everyone as talented and tries to bring out the best in them. In Skender’s mind, every student who walks into his classroom is a diamond in the rough—able and willing to be mined, cut, and polished. He sees potential where others don’t, which has set in motion a series of self-fulfilling prophecies.

Polishing the Diamond in the Rough In 1985, a student of Skender’s named Marie Arcuri sat for the CPA exam. She wasn’t a good standardized test taker, and she didn’t pass the first time. A few days later, she received a letter in the mail from Skender. He wrote to every single student who had taken the exam, congratulating those who passed and encouraging those who didn’t. For the past quarter century, Marie has saved the letter: Your husband, family, and friends love you because of the beautiful person you have made yourself—not because of a performance on an examination. Remember that… Focus on November. Concentrate on practice … I want what’s best for you. You WILL get through this thing, Marie. I write on my tests, “The primary purpose has already been served by your preparation for this exam”… Success doesn’t measure a human being, effort does.

Skender’s approach contrasts with the basic model most companies follow when it comes to leadership development: identify high-potential people, and then provide them with the mentoring, support, and resources needed to grow to achieve their potential. To identify these high-potential future leaders, each year companies spend billions of dollars assessing and evaluating talent. Despite the popularity of this model, givers recognize that it is fatally flawed in one respect. The identification of talent may be the wrong place to start. For many years, psychologists believed that in any domain, success depended on talent first and motivation second. To groom world-class athletes and musicians, experts looked for people with the right raw abilities, and then sought to motivate them. If you want to find people who can dunk like Michael Jordan or play piano like Beethoven, it’s only natural to start by screening candidates for leaping ability and an ear for music. But in recent years, psychologists have come to believe that this approach may be backward. In the 1960s, a pioneering psychologist named Raymond Cattell developed an investment theory of intelligence. He proposed that interest is what drives people to invest their time and energy in developing particular skills and bases of knowledge. Today, we have compelling evidence that interest precedes the development of talent. It turns out that motivation is the reason that people develop talent in the first place.

Economists explain this behavior using a concept known as the “sunk cost fallacy”: when estimating the value of a future investment, we have trouble ignoring what we’ve already invested in the past. Sunk costs are part of the story, but new research shows that other factors matter more. To figure out why and when escalation of commitment happens, researchers at Michigan State University analyzed 166 different studies. Sunk costs do have a small effect—decision makers are biased in favor of their previous investments—but three other factors are more powerful. 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. In response to ego threat, people invest more, hoping to turn the project into a success so they can prove to others—and themselves—that they were right all along.

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.

New research shows that advice seeking is a surprisingly effective strategy for exercising influence when we lack authority.

Advice seeking is a form of powerless communication that combines expressing vulnerability, asking questions, and talking tentatively.

The intelligent altruists, though less altruistic than the unintelligent altruists, will be fitter than both unintelligent altruists and selfish individuals. —Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize winner in economics

Most people assume that self-interest and other-interest are opposite ends of one continuum. Yet in my studies of what drives people at work, I’ve consistently found that self-interest and other-interest are completely independent motivations: you can have both of them at the same time. As Bill Gates argued at the World Economic Forum, “there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest, and caring for others,” and people are most successful when they are driven by a “hybrid engine” of the two. If takers are selfish and failed givers are selfless, successful givers are otherish: they care about benefiting others, but they also have ambitious goals for advancing their own interests.

Selfless giving, in the absence of self-preservation instincts, easily becomes overwhelming. Being otherish means being willing to give more than you receive, but still keeping your own interests in sight, using them as a guide for choosing when, where, how, and to whom you give. Being otherish is very different from matching. Matchers expect something back from each person they help. Otherish givers help with no strings attached; they’re just careful not to overextend themselves along the way. Instead of seeing self-interest and other-interest as competing, the Caring Canadians found ways to integrate them, so that they could do well by doing good. As you’ll see, when concern for others is coupled with a healthy dose of concern for the self, givers are less prone to burning out and getting burned—and they’re better positioned to flourish.