Give and Take

1. Givers, Takers and Matchers

• Principles
  
  In every interaction we can either be a giver (give more than they get), taker (they like to get more than they give), or matchers (striving to preserve an equal balance of giving and getting). In one study t*he worst performers and the best performers are givers; takers and matchers are more likely to land in the middle. Givers who excel are willing to ask for help when they need it.
  
  When givers succeed: it spreads and cascades. When takers win, there’s usually someone else who loses. Research shows that people tend to envy successful takers and look for ways to knock them down a notch
  
  Whereas takers sometimes win in independent roles where performance is only about individual results, givers thrive in interdependent roles where collaboration matters.***
  
• Practice: The successful givers
  
  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.
  
  Otherish givers help with no strings attached; they’re just careful not to overextend themselves along the way. Since givers tend to put others’ interests ahead of their own, they often help others at the expense of their own well-being, placing themselves at risk for burnout. Here are some tips to avoid givers burnout
  
  1. Burnout has less to do with the amount of giving and more with the amount of feedback about the impact of that giving. When people know their gifts makes a difference, they feel energized to contribute more. Aim to get to know how your gifts has impacted others
  2. Giving more can be exhausting if it’s in the same domain. Instead of giving more in the same way, over and over, try to expand your contributions to a different group of people.
  3. Maintain equilibrium between benefiting themselves and others. The magic number seems to be 2 hours per week of volunteering work. The work can be varied but it needs to total to roughly 2 hours
  4. Make giving meaningful and enjoyable, not out of duty or obligation. Try to connect them to your passion or core values
  5. When on the brink of a burnout, ask for help
     
• Practice: Smart Trust
  
  Trust is one reason that givers are so susceptible to the doormat effect: they tend to see the best in everyone, so they operate on the mistaken assumption that everyone is trustworthy. Successful givers need to know who’s likely to manipulate them so that they can protect themselves.. Some tips:
  
  1. It’s wise to start out as a giver, since research shows that trust is hard to build but easy to destroy. But once a counterpart is clearly acting like a taker, it makes sense for givers to flex their reciprocity styles and shift to a matching strategy
  2. In generous tit for tat, the rule is “never forget a good turn, but occasionally forgive a bad one.” You start out cooperating and continue cooperating until your counterpart competes. When your counterpart competes, instead of always responding competitively, generous tit for tat usually means competing two thirds of the time, acting cooperatively in response to one of every three defections.
  3. But one out of every three times, it may be wise to shift back into giver mode, granting so-called takers the opportunity to redeem themselves.
  4. To give more efficiently, consider writing an ebook
     
• Practice: A giver negotiation method
  
  win-win was possible; my clients’ interests didn’t have to be at odds with my own.
  
  Whereas advocacy and relational accounts enabled me to become more assertive in win-lose negotiations, it was perspective taking that helped me expand the pie and succeed in win-win negotiations.
  
  The most effective negotiators were otherish: they reported high concern for their own interests and high concern for their counterparts’ interests. By looking for opportunities to benefit others and themselves, otherish givers are able to think in more complex ways and identify win-win solutions that both takers and selfless givers miss.
  
  The dangers lie less in giving itself, and more in the rigidity of sticking with a single reciprocity style across all interactions and relationships.
  
• Practice: Smart Trust in group
  
  In group settings, there’s a different way for givers to make sure that they’re not being exploited: get everyone in the group to act more like givers. This reduces the risks of giving: when everyone contributes, the pie is larger, and givers are no longer stuck contributing far more than they get. Here are some tips
  
  1. When people share an identity with another person, giving to that person takes on an otherish quality. If we help people who belong to our group, we’re also helping ourselves, as we’re making the group better off.* People are motivated to give to others when they identify as part of a common community.
     
  2. We gravitate toward people, places, and products with which we share an uncommon commonality. On the one hand, we want to fit in: we strive for connection, cohesiveness, community, belonging, inclusion, and affiliation with others. On the other hand, we want to stand out: we search for uniqueness, differentiation, and individuality. As we navigate the social world, these two motives are often in conflict. The more strongly we affiliate with a group, the greater our risk of losing our sense of uniqueness. The more we work to distinguish ourselves from others, the greater our risk of losing our sense of belongingness.
     
     The solution is to be the same and different at the same time. Brewer calls it the principle of optimal distinctiveness: we look for ways to fit in and stand out. A popular way to achieve optimal distinctiveness is to join a unique group. Being part of a group with shared interests, identities, goals, values, skills, characteristics, or experiences gives us a sense of connection and belonging. At the same time, being part of a group that is clearly distinct from other groups gives us a sense of uniqueness.
     
     In other words, people only identify with a generalized giving group after they receive enough benefits to feel like the group is helping them.
     
  3. Legitimizing small contributions draws in takers, making it difficult and embarrassing for them to say no, without dramatically reducing the amount donated by givers.
     
  4. People often take because they don’t realize that they’re deviating from the norm. In these situations, showing them the norm is often enough to motivate them to give—especially if they have matcher instincts.
     
  5. Plenty of people hold giver values, but suppress or disguise them under the mistaken assumption that their peers don’t share these values. When people assume that others aren’t givers, they act and speak in ways that discourage others from giving, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. The solution is to create a reprocity ring
     
     Each person presents a request to the group—something important to them in either their personal or professional life that they cannot obtain or attain on their own, and group members then make contributions by matching up a solution, using their knowledge, resources, and/or connections with others. Givers and takers then connect to ensure how each will follow up with fulfillment of the request. At the end of the session, the facilitator debriefs the group, with part of the focus on the emotions produced by this exchange.
     
     The acts of giving and receiving have been shown to generate positive emotions, a sense of gratitude, feelings of belonging to a group, and a sense of community—all of which are elements of well-being.
     
  6. Influence is far more powerful in the opposite direction: change people’s behaviors first, and their attitudes often follow. To turn takers into givers, it’s often necessary to convince them to start giving. Over time, if the conditions are right, they’ll come to see themselves as givers.
     
• Practice to recognize takers
  
  1. First, when we have access to reputational information, we can see how people have treated others in their networks. (Are they kissing up and kicking down?)
  2. 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.
  3. Takers and matchers also give in the context of networks, but they tend to give strategically, with an expected personal return that exceeds or equals their contributions. 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. Their actions tend to exploit a common practice in nearly all societies around the world, in which people typically subscribe to a norm of reciprocity: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
     
• Application suggestion
  
  1. Test Your Giver Quotient. We often live in a feedback vacuum, deprived of knowledge about how our actions affect others. So that you can track your impact and assess your self-awareness, I’ve designed a series of free online tools. Visit www.giveandtake.com to take a free survey that tests your giver quotient.
  2. Run a Reciprocity Ring. What could be achieved in your organization—and what giving norms would develop—if groups of people got together weekly for twenty minutes to make requests and help one another fulfill them?
  3. Help Other People Craft Their Jobs—or Craft Yours to Incorporate More Giving. People often end up working on tasks that aren’t perfectly aligned with their interests and skills. A powerful way to give is to help others work on tasks that are more interesting, meaningful, or developmental. Job crafting involves innovating around a job description, creatively adding and customizing tasks and responsibilities to match personal interests and values.
  4. Start a Love Machine. In many organizations, givers go unrecognized. To combat this problem, organizations are introducing peer recognition programs to reward people for giving in ways that leaders and managers rarely see.
  5. Embrace the Five-Minute Favor. If you visit a 106 Miles Meetup (www.meetup.com/ 106miles), you might see Panda Adam Rifkin in top form. He’s a master of the five-minute favor, and you can follow Panda’s lead by asking people what they need and looking for ways to help at a minimal personal cost. Rifkin’s two favorite offers are to give honest feedback and make an introduction. Rifkin also recommends reconnecting with dormant ties—not to get something, but to give. Once a month, reach out to one person with whom you haven’t spoken in years.
  6. Practice Powerless Communication, but Become an Advocate. Developing greater comfort and skill with powerless communication requires a change in habits—from talking to listening, self-promoting to advice-seeking, and advocating to inquiring.
  7. Join a Community of Givers. To find other givers, join a Freecycle community to give away goods and see what other people need
  8. Launch a Personal Generosity Experiment. If you’d rather give on your own, try the GOOD thirty-day challenge (www.good.is/ post/ the-good-30-day-challenge-become-a-good-citizen). Each day for a month, GOOD suggests a different way to give.
  9. Help Fund a Project. Many people are seeking financial support for their projects.
  10. Seek Help More Often. If you want other people to be givers, one of the easiest steps is to ask. When you ask for help, you’re not always imposing a burden. Some people are givers, and by asking for help, you’re creating an opportunity for them to express their values and feel valued.
      

2. Networking

• Principles
  
  Extensive research demonstrates that people with rich networks achieve higher performance ratings, get promoted faster, and earn more money.
  
• Paradigm
  
  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.
  
  Takers may rise by kissing up, but they often fall by kicking down. As takers gain power, they pay less attention to how they’re perceived by those below and next to them; they feel entitled to pursue self-serving goals and claim as much value as they can. Over time, treating peers and subordinates poorly jeopardizes their relationships and reputations. After all, most people are matchers: their core values emphasize fairness, equality, and reciprocity. When takers violate these principles, matchers in their networks believe in an eye for an eye, so they want to see justice served.
  
  We’re not getting revenge on takers for trying to take advantage of us. It’s about justice. If you’re a matcher, you’ll also punish takers for acting unfairly toward other people.
  
• Practice: network do’s and don’ts
  
  Don’ts
  
  Reciprocity is a powerful norm, but it comes with two downsides, both of which contribute to the cautiousness with which many of us approach networking.
  
  1. When favors come with strings attached or implied, the interaction can leave a bad taste, feeling more like a transaction than part of a meaningful relationship. Do you really care about helping me, or are you just trying to create quid pro quo so that you can ask for a favor?
  2. If you insist on a quid pro quo every time you help others, you will have a much narrower network.” When matchers give with the expectation of receiving, they direct their giving toward people who they think can help them. After all, if you don’t benefit from having your favors reciprocated, what’s the value of being a matcher?
• Do’s
  
  1. 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.
     
  2. The key to better networking then is reconnecting. A great networker asked thoughtful questions and listened with remarkable patience, then asked what he or she needed help with. Then he gave a solution. Take 5 minutes to help them. Once you separated, make time to connect
     
  3. You will soon have contacts to dormant ties. Dormant ties offer the access to novel information that weak ties afford, but without the discomfort. 2. A useful mindset to have is: the belief that other people are plotting your well-being, or saying nice things about you behind your back
     

3. Interdependence

• Principle
  
  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 appreciation of interdependence heavily influenced the way that Meyer collaborated. He recognized that if he could contribute effectively to the group, everyone would be better off, so he went out of his way to support his colleagues.
  
• Paradigm: Givers take on the tasks that are in the group’s best interest, not necessarily their own personal interests. This makes their groups better off
  
• Practice
  
  Some tips:
  
  1. Build goodwill through small kindness
  2. Volunteer for unpopular task
  3. Offer feedback with empathy. Ask : how will the recipient of my gifts feel in this situation?
  4. Offer ideas that challenge the status quo
  5. Be tough on yourself when things go badly, but quick to congratulate others when things go well.
  6. Make others feel safe to present their ideas
     

4. Responsibility bias

• Principle: We tend to exaggerate our own contributions relative to others’ inputs
  
• Paradigm: We have more access to information about our own contributions than the contributions of others. We see all of our own efforts, but we only witness a subset of our partners’ efforts. When we think about who deserves the credit, we have more knowledge of our own contributions.
  
• Practice: Make a list of what your partner contributes before you estimate your own contribution.
  

5. On self fulfilling prophecy

• Principle: When we believe that other people has potential, we will acted in ways that eventually made this potential a reality
  
• Paradigm
  
  1. Takers harbor doubts about others’ intentions, so they monitor vigilantly for information that others might harm them, treating others with suspicion and distrust. These low expectations trigger a vicious cycle, constraining the development and motivation of others. Even when takers are impressed by another person’s capabilities or motivation, they’re more likely to see this person as a threat, which means they’re less willing to support and develop him or her. As a result, takers frequently fail to engage in the types of supportive behaviors that are conducive to the confidence and development of their peers and subordinates.
     
  2. Matchers are better equipped to inspire self-fulfilling prophecies. Because they value reciprocity, when a peer or subordinate demonstrates high potential, matchers respond in kind, going out of their way to support, encourage, and develop their promising colleagues and direct reports. But the matcher’s mistake lies in waiting for signs of high potential. Since matchers tend to play it safe, they often wait to offer support until they’ve seen evidence of promise. Consequently, they miss out on opportunities to develop people who don’t show a spark of talent or high potential at first.
     
  3. 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.
     
• Practice
  
  Some tips:
  
  1. Givers resist the temptation to search for talent first. By recognizing that anyone can be a bloomer, givers focus their attention on motivation. Look for signs of grit (having passion and perseverance toward long-term goals.)
  2. Make the task at hand more interesting and motivating
  3. Be willing to let go of the ‘talent’ when they threatened the whole. Be concerned about protecting other people and the organization, so be willing to admit their your initial hiring mistakes and de-escalate their commitment. (Be wary of sunk cost fallacy: unwilling to let go of talent because the emotional and economical investment you’ve made)
  4. Prefer giver over matchers and takers
  5. Be more receptive to expertise from others, even if it challenges your own beliefs.

6. Powerless communication

• Principle
  
  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.
  
• Paradigm
  
  1. To establish dominance, takers specialize in powerful communication: they speak forcefully, raise their voices to assert their authority, express certainty to project confidence, promote their accomplishments, and sell with conviction and pride.
  2. 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. When takers come across someone more dominant, they’re at risk of losing their influence 2. 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.
  3. Conversely, prestige isn’t zero-sum; there’s no limit to the amount of respect and admiration that we can dole out. This means that prestige usually has more lasting value, and it’s worth examining how people earn it.
     
• Practice
  
  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. Some tips:
  
  1. Express vulnerability: they’re interested in helping others, not gaining power over them, so they’re not afraid of exposing chinks in their armor. By making themselves vulnerable, givers can actually build prestige. Expressing vulnerability is only effective if the audience receives other signals establishing the speaker’s competence.
  2. Ask don’t talk: Asking questions is a form of powerless communication that givers adopt naturally. Questions work especially well when the audience is already skeptical of your influence, such as when you lack credibility or status, or when you’re in a highly competitive negotiation situation.
     
     By asking questions and getting to know the other person, givers build trust and gain knowledge about the other person’s needs. Over time, this makes them better and better at selling.
     
     The art of advocacy is to lead you to my conclusion on your terms. I want you to form your own conclusions: you’ll hold on to them more strongly. Thoughtful questions pave the way for others to persuade themselves. But it only works if you already feel good about the intention that the question targets. 3. Seek advice, not conveying dominance: Speaking dominantly convinces group members that takers are powerful, but it stifles information sharing, preventing members from communicating good ideas. “Teams love it when their leader presents a work product as a collaborative effort. That’s what inspires them to contribute,”
     
     Advice seeking is a form of powerless communication that combines expressing vulnerability, asking questions, and talking tentatively. When givers ask for advice, it’s because they’re genuinely interested in learning from others. Matchers hold back on advice seeking for a different reason: they might owe something in return.
     
     This brings us to the second benefit of advice seeking: encouraging others to take our perspectives. When we ask for advice, in order to give us a recommendation, advisers have to look at the problem or dilemma from our point of view.
     
     The third benefit of advice seeking is commitment. When we give our time, energy, knowledge, or resources to help others, we strive to maintain a belief that they’re worthy and deserving of our help. Seeking advice is a subtle way to invite someone to make a commitment to us. When we ask people for advice, we grant them prestige, showing that we respect and admire their insights and expertise. Since most people are matchers, they tend to respond favorably and feel motivated to support us in return. But here’s the catch: advice seeking only works if it’s genuine.