Why you should be a giver: GIVE & TAKE by Adam Grant | Core Message

I recently read the book give-and-take by author Adam grant when you're working on a team and a teammate asks you for a favor what do you think to yourself do you think what's in it for me or if I help them will they repay the favor or I'd be happy to help and I don't expect anything in return in each personal or professional interaction we can choose to be either a taker a matcher or a giver we might be a giver at home with our kids but we might be a matcher at work however when we meet someone new we all have a particular preference for how we interact with that person we might be overly cautious and choose to be a batcher we may always look out for our best interest and choose to be a taker or we might default to being a giver giving with an open heart with no strings attached author Adam grant is a business professor at Wharton and he wanted to know which default reciprocating style would most likely lead to long-term career success to find the answer he looked over scientific research that analyzed performances of givers matchers and takers he found a study of 160 engineers in California another study involving 600 medical students in Belgium he even conducted his own study of salespeople in North Carolina to see who had the highest performance givers matchers or takers in these three studies and in many more studies he found that a particular group of people always finished on top these people were commonly referred to as being givers giving with no strings attached and without keeping score medical students who gave the most had 11% higher grades salespeople who were referred to as givers generated 50% more sales revenue for the company and the engineers who gave the most had the best performance reviews so if givers are at the top of the success ladder then who's at the bottom givers Adam found that separate groups of givers performed very poorly and were highly unsuccessful in the study of engineers a group of givers had the worst performance reviews they had the most unfinished tasks errors made and deadlines missed those who gave with no strings attached either led the pack or legging far behind so what makes a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful giver and how can you have the confidence to give freely without having to worry about your own success it turns out that successful givers ask three core questions before freely offering their time they ask why when and for whom in one study people documented their giving every day for two weeks they noted what they gave and why they gave it on some days people gave because they thought it was important and they cared about the person that we're giving to on other days they gave out of duty or obligation at the end of each day they reported how energized they felt on the days that people helped others out of a sense of enjoyment and purpose they experienced significant gains in energy and when they gave out of obligation or duty they had a reduction in energy so why you give matters just giving for the sake of giving and doing it out of obligation will zap your energy and lead to givers burn out always have a strong why before you give freely the second question that successful givers ask is when in the book Adam details a story of 17 engineers who were tasked with creating a laser printer under impossible time constraints the engineers on the project reported that they could hardly get anything done between 9:00 and 5:00 because they were always giving away their time to focus on other people's problems so as an experiment the engineers instituted a no giving time three days a week from morning until noon outside of that time engineers would freely give away their time to help others but during that time they would focus on their most important tasks as a result two-thirds of the team increased their productivity and they were able to get the laser printer out on time making it just the second time in the divisions history that they released a product on time when we freely give to others without blocking out time to focus on our most important tasks we kill our productivity we spend too much time advancing other people's agendas and not enough time advancing our own it's important to strike an equilibrium between giving freely and giving to ourselves otherwise we miss deadlines and we stay at the bottom of a success ladder a great giving strategy is to batch you're giving a psychologist at the University of California found that people who performed five random acts of kindness at random times throughout the week were significantly less happy than those that completed all five random acts of kindness at one time doing a bunch of nice things for people in a row makes the giving seem more significant to your this increases your energy your productivity and your ability to help a team succeed therefore blockout time to give to yourself and batch you're giving for certain times of the day knowing when to give will ensure that you meet your deadlines and avoid falling to the bottom of the success ladder Peter a debt an Australian financial adviser had a business partner named rich rich was highly agreeable and he appeared to be a giver but over time rich revealed his true colors rich drew a hefty $300,000 salary from the company and he showed up for work at 10:00 a.m. and went to the pub each afternoon that left Peter to do all the work in their firm rich was taking advantage of Peter and many other people at the company he was destroying the company's morale and if Peter didn't do anything about it he might lose his company so Peter got crafty and he decided to appeal to richest interests and offer him an opportunity to work on a special project in the entrepreneurial space with the condition that he would report his progress every 90 days after a few months Peter was able to show the board that rich wasn't making any progress thus making it easy for the board to let him go like Peter we must notice takers give them a chance to prove themselves as mattress or givers but be willing to part ways that they don't prove themselves a successful giver gives to benefit the greater good but because takers only care about themselves they don't pay the favor forward and I don't benefit the greater good the only benefit themselves here are three signs of a potential taker first they use the pronouns I and me more than us or we when talking about a group success second they have extremely vain profile photos on social media if their profile picture makes them look significantly better than they look in person then they might be a taker and third they treat people above and below them distinctly differently they kiss up and they kick down they act caring and warm around powerful people that can help them but they act cold and short with less powerful people they can't benefit from those are the three signs of a taker but notice that I didn't mention being friendly or unfriendly this is because many takers are good fakers and they put on a nice impression until they get what they want and many givers can be grumpy but still have a tendency to give without any strings attached so give freely give people a chance but if they prove to be a taker have the courage to say no and shut them out of your life in the end giving without keeping score is the most successful reciprocating style you can adopt however being a giver can backfire if it leads to burnout or if it lets others take advantage of you so always ask why when and for whom before freely offering your time that was the core message that I gather from Adams book Adam has several great stories in the book to further the point that givers finish on top I highly recommend reading it if you would like a one-page PDF summary of insights that I gathered from this book just click the link below and I'd be happy to email it to you if you already subscribe to the free productivity game.com newsletter this PDF is sitting in your Inbox thanks for watching and I hope you have a productive week

Channel: Productivity Game

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Keywords: Give & Take, Give & Take by Adam Grant, Give and Take PDF, Give & Take PDF, Adam Grant Book, Nathan Lozeron, Productivity Game, Animated Core Message, Animated Book Summary, Whiteboard video, Animated Book Review, Give & Take Book Summary, Give & Take Book Review, Give and Take Summary, Give & Take by Adam Grant Animated Core Message, Reciprocate, Give and Take

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Length: 7min 33sec (453 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2016