Susan Dominus talks to psychologist Adam Grant about his new book, Give and Take, which takes a look at givers, takers and succeeding in the workplace.
Self-study activity:
The pace of delivery in this interview is really fast, and even strong intermediate students are going to find it difficult at times. However, I have decided to post the video because I found the topic interesting and because it may help us focus on an interesting exam strategy: The input we get through the questions in the task is very often an invaluable source of information about the content and a guideline that helps us to monitor what is being said.
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1 Giver, taker and matcher are the three main styles of worker.
2 Takers usually don't contribute much in an organization.
3 Most workers are takers.
4 Givers usually achieve great things.
5 Takers use the 'five-minute favour' strategy.
6 Most takers are successful in the end.
7 Gossiping through social media helps us identify the style of worker we are dealing with.
So everybody´s going to read this book and start going through their work like you know ok, giver, taker, matcher…
I actually think when people go around looking around their workplaces they are going to go giver, matcher, matcher, matcher, matcher, taker, matcher, matcher, matcher, giver, because most people are matchers. The book is called Give and Take and is about why people rise to the top or sink to the bottom in organizations. When I’ve found is there is these three sort of fundamental styles of interaction at work that exist in most industries, in most cultures around the world. And I called them ‘giver’, ‘taker’ and ‘matcher’. I think you’ve probably encountered your share of takers over the years. The takers are the people who are trying to get as much as possible from other people and contribute as little as they can in return. And then at the other end of the spectrum you have these people that I call givers, who actually enjoy contributing more to others than they receive in return.
How weird!
I know it´s very strange, who would do that, but there’s this breed of people who sort of walk around in their professional lives, making introductions, offering mentoring and providing help all without strings attached. Most people fall in the middle of that spectrum and I call them matchers. And a matcher is basically somebody who, who walks around trying to maintain an even balance of give and take.
In your book there are a lot of stories about people, you know, do achieve great things by being givers, and maybe you can talk me through a little bit about how that works because when I read that theory some friends of mine they all thought ‘that’s not the people I see at the top necessarily’.
So if you look at sales people or engineers or even medical students, the ones who are most inclined to help others are more likely to fail dramatically and also to succeed really big. One of the really big questions is what do the givers at the top do? A lot of it actually has to do with one of my favourite characters in the book, the five-minute favour. Looking for a low-cost to you but high benefit to others ways of contributing.
I love the idea of the five-minute favour its totally appealing, however, in my experience the five-minute favour tends to turn like a twenty-minute favour that day, and then there’s usually some follow-up.
This is something I´ve been trying to apply to my own life having learned it from a bunch of people in the book. When somebody asks me for help, instead of saying ‘yes, I will help you’ right away I will say ‘ok, is this something I can add unique value and helping with’. If not, let me see if I can connect you with someone else who can really contribute.
You are doing a favour to the person who needs the introduction but maybe you’re imposing on the person you are asking them to meet. I meet how does it all work?
I try to make those asked frequently are givers and I know often times what I hear back ‘hey, this is a meaningful opportunity for me to help, can you send me more like this?’ Sometimes also I’ll send those requests to people who I know are more like matchers, who I helped in the past. I wouldn’t recommend doing 5-minute favours for everyone, ok, I would ask first of all ‘are you trying to help somebody who is a giver, a taker or a matcher?’, and if the person is really a taker you may want to be a little bit more cautious.
So how is it that so many takers end up so successful?
A lot of takers succeed in the short run, but not in the long run, so, you know, trying to claim as much of value from other people as possible is often a really efficient way to get things done but it also tends to burn bridges. The world’s has gotten more connected, especially if you look at organizations and so, you know, there is this big relationship and reputation component of succeeding at work that perhaps was less salient before.
So as the world becomes more connected and social media are more prevalent, the reputational cost of being a taker are going to be spread more quickly than it maybe did twenty years ago, is that the idea?
That’s one of my predictions. Rob Wiley has some studies on this at Berkeley where he shows that people actually go around trying to punish takers, and one of the ways they do that is by gossiping and spreading negative reputational information to protect other people.
So in this way gossip turns out to be an incredibly healthy productive office activity.
It can be, yes, so Rob is calling actually, talks about pre-social gossip and the idea that you can contribute to others through sort of protecting them or at least encouraging them to keep their guard up when somebody has been so really self-absorbing in the past.
Key:
1T 2T 3F 4T 5F 6F 7T
