If you missed the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit this year, no worries I’ve got you covered. I’ll be posting my notes and thoughts from each presenter over the next couple of days.
Adam Grant is a professor at the Wharton School of Business and best-selling author. He is one of the world’s 40 best business professors under 40. He discussed the principles from his new book Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives our Success.
There are takers, givers, and matchers- 3 styles of interaction
- Takers- every interaction is about getting something from others, they seek all the credit
- Givers- philanthropists, share knowledge freely, but usually give only to those closest to them
- Matchers- give and take, live quid pro quo
- Some “takers” are people that got burned by being a “giver”
- The Givers get the least amount done- lowest grades in medical schools were givers
- Many givers don’t secure their own oxygen masks before helping others
- Takers rise quickly but fall quickly too in organizations, matchers are the best performers in an organization
- Matchers act like the karma police, gossip about the “taker” and help take down the takers
- Takers take down other takers in an organization
- Givers are on both extremes, the worst in an organization and are the best in the organization
- When “givers” spend time solving other people’s problems, they are growing- they are also building social capital within the organization
- The negative impact of a taker is 3x worse than one “giver” on your team
- The key is weeding out the takers- this is more important than hiring more givers
- Matchers can be influenced by Givers
- Agreeable, Disagreeable, Giver, Taker… pay attention to Disagreeable Givers (they ask tough questions, maybe a bad User Interface but a great Operating System)… Watch out for Agreeable Takers
- Agreeable takers… weed them out… look for future behavior.. Interview question, what % of people take more than $10 from an organization a month… People tend to answer about themselves when they are asked about others and how they would act.
- Givers use much more “me’s” than others in the context of failure.
- The best way to spot a taker is to look forward to their future…ask them about their future
- Most people project their own motivations onto other
- Do more 5 minute favors as a giver, you don’t have to spend 19 hours in every act of kindness- about 100 hours a year of giving is about the right amount and balance to ask of people
- Encourage asking for help
- The Reciprocity Ring- an exercise to encouraging people to “ask”, people feel more comfortable when they know everyone else is asking for help
- Create a world of more givers
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