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Most of the time, in work and in life, it is the nice guys who finish first.
For many of us, this seems naïve or just plain wrong. We have all seen coworkers, bosses, clients, vendors and providers who seize every opportunity they can to take credit, take advantage, take anything they can at the expense of anyone and everyone. But Wharton psychologist Adam Grant points out that when surveying the data across over 3,500 business units, researchers found that most of the time it is “givers”, those who contribute to others without seeking anything in return, who excel in organizations. Engineers and sales people who give of themselves were more productive and profitable than those who did not. More often, their companies generate greater revenue, are more efficient, and had happier customers.
Yet when gleaning data from the bottom of the curve, it was also those who achieved what Jesus and Siddhartha taught, “to give without expectation”, who were also the least productive and generated the least income.
There is something about giving to others that both drives success, and makes us vulnerable.
Grant offers practical guidance as to where givers slip, and what they can do it about it.
Givers tend to make themselves available. Offering time to others is a good thing, can help build valuable allies and resources and advance certain objectives of the team. But doing so can also leave one overextended, undervalued and unable to get one’s own work done. Rather than simply giving away our time, Grant advises us to place limits on our availability. Still help others. But do so under defined parameters and time constraints, or offer only to those who also give in return.
Givers are often empathetic. A genuine concern for others is one of those strengths that make us the most human and rounds out the texture of our lives. In survival literature, empathy is often the trait that enables people to survive human-on-human trauma. But it can also lead us to sacrifice things that really do matter in our lives, or to our team or organization. Don’t turn off the empathy. But rather than being driven by what the other is feeling, Grant counsels to take a more active interest into what the other is thinking and find their areas of primary concern. Ask them. Lay out the problems and the options and explore the possibilities that present themselves through active perspective taking.
Grant says a third reason that givers fail is timidity. For whatever reason, often those who care for others are unable or uncomfortable standing up for themselves. Grant advises to use our care to become an advocate. Asking for a raise is not about you and your needs. It is about your family, those you care about, and your ability to give them the important things.
Grant’s work is both provocative and practical. But there is an even greater power when we take the findings and ideas and extrapolate outwards over the rest of our lives.
Whether it is giving without expectation or some other quality, whatever strengths we have and call our own, shape the way we see the world. If we value kindness and empathy, we notice when those things occur in life and we expect others to also to be kind and empathic. But like every other bias, certain “blind spots” trail along in the wake of our strengths. They are not “weaknesses” or a “dark side” as it has become fashionable to say. But as we are looking ahead and moving forward, we may miss something important that is just over our shoulder.
The giver does not overcome blind timidity by treating it as a weakness: taking self-assertiveness training; signing up for Toastmasters; or getting a testosterone shot. Rather, they will be effectively assertive when it is the natural outcome of the expression of their strength.
When my daughter Abby was in 4th grade, she started coming home crying. This is a story I have told before, here. She had always been quiet, but happy and well-liked. Then out of nowhere the other girls started excluding her and being generally mean. (I had no idea just how vicious 4th grade girls could be)
At the time, I was completing my graduate work in Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. We were studying about people at their best, the virtue of kindness and how one can craft a life of happiness and meaning.
As I watched my child struggle, I was pulling my hair out searching for a way to take this research into happiness and meaning and goodness and find ways to use it in the tough spots in life, when things are the hardest and most unfair. How do you use the findings of positive psychology to make our lives meaningfully better in the worst of circumstances, be that in middle school, or the Middle East?
I began to think of this notion of strength.
As Abby and I talked, I discovered that the girls at school had been being mean to another girl, Susan. Abby was not really friends with Susan, but stood up for her. She asked the other girls to leave her alone, and invited her to participate in some of their activities. As a result, the other girls started to exclude Abby as well.
The problems Abby was facing on the playground and in the lunch room arose because she was standing up for fairness and kindness, humanity and justice. There was no timidity in this quiet, skinny little girl. Her acts were those of leadership and courage. These were Abby’s strengths. Yet one of the blind spots we risk when we are courageous and kind, is that others will not understand and will redirect their hostility toward us.
Abby was being authentic and showing the best of who she was. As a parent, this is exactly how I hoped my children would respond when the world was hard and unfair. I just never expected her to be punished as a result of doing what was right and difficult. Using our strengths does not always feel good, but they are still strengths.
After we recognized what was going on, Abby and I talked about her actions in this new frame of strength and character. We read biographies of Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt and Harriet Tubman. At one point she stopped me and said, “hey, that is kinda like what I did with Sally.” Abby still faced problems on the playground. And she will, of course, have to encounter many more injustices and challenges in life. However rather than feel bad about herself when criticized and ostracized, she realized that these were only collateral inconveniences of her making strong, admirable choices.
There are consequences to being who we are, when we are our best. Yet the consequences are so much worse, when we compromise or abandon our most honest and most authentic selves.
References
Doyle, J. (October 2014). Strengths Of Our Children. Retrieved October 14, 2015 from http://www.johnseandoyle.com/strengths-and-children/.
Grant, A. (April 2013) In the Company of Givers and Takers. Harvard Business Review.
Grant, A. (2013). Give and take: A revolutionary approach to success. New York, N.Y.: Viking.
Sherwood, B. (2009). The survivors club: The secrets and science that could save your life. New York: Grand Central Pub.
Image Credit
The Two of Us by Hartwig HKD, made available via a Creative Commons license and Retrieved from flikr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/h-k-d/5964129386/in/photolist-a62HT1-5kzgfJ-asyN8z-76iQfK-9ny4HP 00:26, October 14, 2015
