Give and Take by Adam Grant

My first book post ever! It took a little while to finish the book, and I know it isn't what I had planned originally, but I got this book from a club at school because it is by one of our management professors. His name is Adam Grant and he teaches one of the most difficult undergraduate classes to get into: Management 238 titled Organizational Effectiveness. While I would love to cover all the grounds that he did, I'm just going to mostly go over what I found interesting, for time's sake.

The premise of the book is that people in the world are divided into givers, takers, and matchers. Givers and takers are self-explanatory; matchers are also coined after what they do, that is, preserving a balance between giving and taking, therefore "matching" what they have given and what they have received from that person.

The cover of the book! 

In his book, Adam Grant proposes that the world would be better off if more of the world were givers because givers are in many ways more successful than takers or matchers. But the world, at least the one I was raised in, taught me that actions have consequences and givers, too, see the consequence of their actions. The true difference it seems to me is that givers have the ability to see further into the future and invest in uncertainty; they are willing to "over invest" as Grant calls it in people because "we can't always predict who can help us." It is that takers and matchers are a lot more short-sided and unwilling to invest in relationships in which they don't see tangible or direct results. 

This tension between what really is the difference between givers and takers is one that Grant chooses to address towards his later chapters. I found his division of individuals into givers, takers, and matchers to be harmonic because I found I am normally motivated by multiple factors, some of which are selfish or otherish, as Grant likes to call it. The mechanism is that people feel empathy or oneness with another person that leads to helping. There may be a mix of motives, from true altruism to alleviating the discomfort of guilt but the end result is the same. For now, maybe that is the best we can hope for. 

Cover of NYTimes Article

While the conclusion is vague, the book does have several good points about what separates successful givers with unsuccessful ones. 

Givers are willing to be vulnerable. They prefer to give credit to other people rather than themselves and are willing to play up other people's strengths. It's something that I've acknowledge over the past year as important but hard to put into practice. It's the whole idea that the more prominent you become in a community, the more likely there will be someone who will see you as a threat or nuisance. You want people to be rooting for you and working to help you succeed. Vulnerability can make you more human and more likable and therefore lowering the other person's defenses. This includes using disclaimers and asking for advice. The latter in particular has four effects: learning perspective taking, commitment and flattery. We also show them prestige, or respect and admiration for their insights and perspective. 

Givers make decision on behalf of the team. This leads to not only highly successful teams but also highly successful individuals. Doing this requires they hold high expectations for themselves and for others in order to develop talent. Givers create group dynamics that creates psychological safety, or the idea that they can take risks without being penalized, creating an atmosphere conducive to innovation. They also engage in true conversations and remember them so that they can better play on the strengths of their team. Givers will commonly volunteer for unpopular tasks and offer feedback that allows them to be appreciated without making other team members feel vulnerable. 

Givers on the brink of burnout give more. When givers do not have a cause and do not see the impact of their giving, it is easy for them to burn out. A change in context with where and to whom a giver gives can be the solution-- that is, by giving more than he or she is already giving. The example used is of TFA, where teachers often burnout because they spend so much time disciplining their students that they don't feel like they are making an impact. The solution a particular teacher found was to volunteer to mentor high achieving students get into college that gave hope to the impact she could possibly make in the classroom. There are other strategies of giving: chunking rather than sprinkling volunteer hours helps to maximize impact and being wary of takers. It is also important to make clear through group-mentoring sessions (rather than one on one) that the giver expects others to do the same for those they can help. It just means being smart and strategic about the resources we give to create an environment that fosters giving. 

A last point unrelated to the other three is the idea that assertiveness and agreeableness are not mutually exclusive. People tend to overestimate how off-putting assertiveness can be. 

Last comment on psychology books like this-- I found once Grant set the premise that being a giver was to be desired, I imbue fit different traits he described of a giver into myself, rationalizing and recalling instances when I had shown these traits. It's the reason why some psychology or self-help books (which I would say this book is dangerously getting close to) become some of the best selling books in the world.

 At any rate, I'm going to read a book called Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster, which was also gifted to me by my high school librarian. I have full faith she was deliberate in giving it to me. It's one of those books I'm sure will reward me for attention-- the more i pick up on, the more pieces seem to click.

Until then,