From June 2013 - I found this article to be very interesting. Be sure and read it to the very end and take the quiz. I did. It was very insightful.
Givers or Takers: Which Rise to the Top?
Author of bestselling book "Give and Take" helps identify if givers really gain.
By Adam Grant, Wharton's youngest tenured professor and top-rated teacher
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 do we contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return? Over the past three decades, in a series of groundbreaking studies, social scientists have discovered that people differ dramatically in their preferences for reciprocity-their desired mix of taking and giving. To shed some light on these preferences, let me introduce you to two kinds of people who fall at opposite ends of the reciprocity spectrum. I call them takers and givers.
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.
It's tempting to reserve the giver label for larger-than-life heroes such as Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi, but being a giver doesn't require extraordinary acts of sacrifice. It just involves a focus on acting in the interests of others, such as by giving help, providing mentoring, sharing credit, or making connections for others. Outside the workplace, this type of behavior is quite common. According to research led by Yale psychologist Margaret Clark, most people act like givers in close relationships. In marriages and friendships, we contribute whenever we can without keeping score.
But in the workplace, give and take becomes more complicated. Professionally, few of us act purely like givers or takers, adopting a third style instead. We become matchers, striving to preserve an equal balance of giving and getting. Matchers operate on the principle of fairness: when they help others, they protect themselves by seeking reciprocity. If you're a matcher, you believe in tit for tat, and your relationships are governed by even exchanges of favors.
If I asked you to guess who's the most likely to end up at the bottom of the success ladder, what would you say-takers, givers, or matchers? Professionally, all three reciprocity styles have their own benefits and drawbacks. But there's one style that proves more costly than the other two.
Research demonstrates that givers sink to the bottom of the success ladder. Across a wide range of important occupations, givers are at a disadvantage: they make others better off but sacrifice their own success in the process. In one study, when more than 160 professional engineers in California rated one another on help given and received, the least successful engineers were those who gave more than they received. These givers had the worst objective scores in their firm for the number of tasks, technical reports, and drawings completed-not to mention errors made, deadlines missed, and money wasted. Going out of their way to help others prevented them from getting their own work done.
The same pattern emerges in medical school. In a study of more than 600 medical students in Belgium, the students with the lowest grades had unusually high scores on giver statements like "I love to help others" and "I anticipate the needs of others." The givers went out of their way to help their peers study, sharing what they already knew at the expense of filling gaps in their own knowledge, and it gave their peers a leg up at test time. Salespeople are no different. In a study I led of salespeople in North Carolina, compared with takers and matchers, givers brought in two and a half times less annual sales revenue. They were so concerned about what was best for their customers that they weren't willing to sell aggressively. Across occupations, it appears that givers are just too caring, too trusting, and too willing to sacrifice their own interests for the benefit of others.
So if givers are most likely to land at the bottom of the success ladder, who's at the top-takers or matchers?
Neither. When I took another look at the data, I discovered a surprising pattern: It's the givers again.
As we've seen, the engineers with the lowest productivity are mostly givers. But when we look at the engineers with the highest productivity, the evidence shows that they're givers too. The California engineers with the best objective scores for quantity and quality of results are those who consistently give more to their colleagues than they get. The worst performers and the best performers are givers; takers and matchers are more likely to land in the middle.
This pattern holds up across the board. The Belgian medical students with the lowest grades have unusually high giver scores, but so do the students with the highest grades. Over the course of medical school, being a giver accounts for 11 percent higher grades. Even in sales, I found that the least productive salespeople had 25 percent higher giver scores than average performers-but so did the most productive salespeople. The top performers were givers, and they averaged 50 percent more annual revenue than the takers and matchers. Givers dominate the bottom and the top of the success ladder. Across occupations, if you examine the link between reciprocity styles and success, the givers are more likely to become champs-not only chumps. It's not a coincidence that BNI founder and chairman Ivan Misner needs just two words to describe his guiding philosophy: "Givers Gain."
Give and Take examines surprising studies and stories that illuminate how giving can be more powerful-and less dangerous-than most people believe. Along the way, I'll introduce you to successful givers from many different walks of life, including consultants, lawyers, doctors, engineers, salespeople, writers, entrepreneurs, accountants, teachers, financial advisers, and sports executives. These givers reverse the popular plan of succeeding first and giving back later, raising the possibility that those who give first are often best positioned for success later. Along the way, you'll find out how one of America's best networkers developed his connections, why the genius behind one of the most successful shows in television history toiled for years in anonymity, how a basketball executive responsible for some of the worst draft busts in history turned things around to build a winning franchise, and how we could have spotted the takers at Enron four years before the company collapsed-without looking at a single number.
To assess your own style of give and take, visit www.giveandtake.com
Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Successby Adam Grant. Copyright © 2013 by Adam Grant
Adam Grant is Wharton's youngest tenured professor and single highest-rated teacher, and a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. He has appeared on the Today Show and been profiled in the New York Times magazine cover story, "Is giving the secret to getting ahead?" His speaking and consulting clients include Google, the NFL, Merck, Pixar, Goldman Sachs, Facebook, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and the U.S. Army and Navy. He is a former award-winning advertising director, junior Olympic springboard diver, and professional magician. For more details, see www.giveandtake.com
Tags: Adam Grant, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, givers gain, June 2013 Edition, networking
May you be a Giver,
Annette
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