Give and Take – A Revolutionary approach to success
Author – Adam Grant
Organisations are driven by people and success of the
organisation depends upon people.
Peoples skills and behavior is based on Give and Take to aspire and
create meaningful and sustainable changes to their environment. Give and Take
reveals the surprising forces behind success and the steps to enhance ownership
through encouraging behavior.
In Give & Take – the author categories
people by the fundamental styles of social interaction into Givers, Takers and
Matchers. All these three different distinct characters are required to achieve
the organisational mission. However each of these characters have distinct
behavioral and psychological attitudes
that the author narrates with examples and coordination required between
these attributes to achieve the goals.
According to conventional wisdom, highly successful people have three
things in common; Motivation, ability and opportunity. Success depends heavily
on how we approach our interactions with other people. Every time we interact
with another person at work, we have a choice to make; do we try to claim as
much value as we can or contribute value without worrying about what we receive
in return? Takers have a distinct signature they like to get more than what
they give.
Givers prefer to give more than they get. Across occupations, it appears that givers
are just too caring, too trusting and too willing to sacrifice their own
interests for the benefits of others. Givers succeed in a way that creates a
ripple effect, enhancing the success of people around them.
Successful givers have unique approaches to
interactions in four key domains; Networking, Collaborating, evaluating and
influencing. Givers have a track record of generously sharing. The ability to imagine other people perspectives,
rather than getting stuck in our own perspectives, is a signature skill of
successful givers in collaborations. Takers want to be admired by influential
superiors, so they go out of their way to charm and flatter. As a result
powerful people tend to form glowing first impression of takers. The true
measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no
good. Matchers tend to build smaller
networks than either givers who seek actively to help a wider range of people.
Many matchers operate based on the
attitude of “I’ll do something for you, if you’ll do something for me.Matchers
are better equipped to inspire self-fulfilling prophecies.
The type of person you are at work has a huge impact on your
future success. According to Grant, givers are the people that achieve the
greatest success.
