"Could you take a quick look at my slides before I send them?" "Can you cover the 11 o'clock call for me?" "You're good with Excel, could you fix this formula?" You're the one everyone asks, and you always say yes. At 6:30, when the office empties out, you finally start on your own work. Then at the end of the year the promotion goes to the colleague who's never lifted a finger for anyone. And you start to wonder whether being a giver at work is just a polite way of getting taken advantage of. Adam Grant studied exactly that question, and his answer about givers, takers and matchers is not what you'd expect.
Do you give, take or match?
Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist who teaches at the Wharton School. In his book Give and Take he sorts people into three groups, based on how they handle the give-and-take with others.
Givers help without keeping score: they share their time, skills, contacts and ideas even when there's nothing in it for them. Takers try to get more than they give, and help only when it pays off. Matchers think in terms of even trades: I help you, you help me.
Grant points out that with friends and family, most of us act like givers. Nobody keeps a tally of favors with their best friend. But at work, most people become matchers. And the reason is the very fear you've probably felt: if I give too much, people will take advantage.
Givers, takers and matchers: bottom or top?
That fear isn't unfounded. Grant looked at more than 160 engineers in California who rated one another on help given and received. The least productive, with the fewest tasks completed and the most deadlines missed, were the biggest givers: by helping everyone, they couldn't get their own work done. The same held for medical students in Belgium and salespeople in North Carolina.
Then Grant looked at the other end of the rankings. And he found givers again. The most productive engineers were the ones who gave their colleagues more than they got back. Among the medical students, the highest grades went to those with the strongest giver profiles. And among the salespeople, the givers at the top brought in 50 percent more annual revenue on average than the takers and matchers.
Takers and matchers mostly end up in the middle. Givers sit at the extremes: the bottom or the top. So the real question isn't whether to help. It's how.
Generous, but not a pushover
According to Grant, the difference comes down to how much you keep yourself in view while you're helping others.
There are selfless givers: they care a lot about others and very little about themselves. They give their time and energy without regard for their own needs, and they pay the price. In one study Grant cites, students with this profile saw their grades drop over the semester, because they were skipping class and study time to deal with their friends' problems.
And then there are the givers who win. Grant calls them "otherish": they care deeply about others, but they also have ambitious goals for themselves. He quotes Bill Gates, who said people are most successful when they're driven by a "hybrid engine" of self-interest and caring for others. These givers still give more than they get, but they choose when, how and to whom. And that's exactly why they burn out far less.
How to give without burning out
The book offers a few very practical strategies.
The first is the five-minute favor. Adam Rifkin, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, built one of the most powerful networks in the industry by following a simple rule: be willing to do something that takes five minutes or less for anybody. An introduction, a piece of advice, a quick answer. Little time for you, a lot of value for them.
The second is to chunk your giving instead of sprinkling it. In a study by psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, people who did five acts of kindness all on the same day each week became happier. People who spread them out, one a day, didn't. At work, that means something specific: a set block for helping colleagues beats twenty scattered interruptions. Many of those requests are urgent for others but not important for you anyway: it's the third quadrant Covey describes when he separates urgent from important.
The third is about people who take advantage. Grant doesn't ask you to become a rigid matcher, but to adopt "generous tit for tat": never forget a good turn, but occasionally forgive a bad one. With someone who only takes, start responding in kind, while still leaving the door open.
Your giving, on your terms
Starting tomorrow, try this.
- Do a five-minute favor for someone who can't pay you back: an introduction, a piece of advice, feedback on a project.
- Set up your helping block. One fixed hour, say Tuesday afternoon, when you're available to colleagues. For the rest of the week, protect your own work.
- Spot the people who always take. If someone asks and never gives back, next time respond with a polite no, or ask for something in return.
- Keep your own goals in sight. Before you say yes, ask yourself: can I afford this without giving up what matters to me?
The next time someone asks you to look over their slides, you can still say yes. But this time it'll be on your terms.
Is there an important relationship you'd like to improve?
You can't change the other person, but you can start with something that depends on you. Tell me about it.