Saturday, January 12, 2019

Book Summary | Give and Take - A Revolutionary Approach to Success




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.


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