Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success

As Samuel Johnson purportedly wrote, “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

The more I help out, the more successful I become. But I measure success in what it has done for the people around me. That is the real accolade.

The art of advocacy is to lead you to my conclusion on your terms.

This is what I find most magnetic about successful givers: they get to the top without cutting others down, finding ways of expanding the pie that benefit themselves and the people around them. Whereas success is zero-sum in a group of takers, in groups of givers, it may be true that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Being a giver is not good for a 100-yard dash, but it’s valuable in a marathon.

If we create networks with the sole intention of getting something, we won’t succeed. We can’t pursue the benefits of networks; the benefits ensue from investments in meaningful activities and relationships.

highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability, and opportunity.

You never know where somebody’s going to end up. It’s not just about building your reputation; it really is about being there for other people.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. —Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner

highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability, and opportunity. If we want to succeed, we need a combination of hard work, talent, and luck.

Americans see independence as a symbol of strength, viewing interdependence as a sign of weakness

So if givers are most likely to land at the bottom of the success ladder, who’s at the top—takers or matchers? Neither. When I took another look at the data, I discovered a surprising pattern: It’s the givers again.

Regardless of their reciprocity styles, people love to be asked for advice.

When our audiences are skeptical, the more we try to dominate them, the more they resist.

Many people who hold giver values in life choose matching as their primary reciprocity style at work, seeking an even balance of give and take.

When takers win, there’s usually someone else who loses. Research shows that people tend to envy successful takers and look for ways to knock them down a notch. In contrast, when givers like David Hornik win, people are rooting for them and supporting them, rather than gunning for them. Givers succeed in a way that creates a ripple effect, enhancing the success of people around them.

Indeed, Cialdini finds that people donate more money to charity when the phrase “even a penny will help” is added to a request.

New research shows that advice seeking is a surprisingly effective strategy for exercising influence when we lack authority. In

The fear of being judged as weak or naïve prevents many people from operating like givers at work.

research shows that givers get extra credit when they offer ideas that challenge the status quo.

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be. —attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer, physicist, biologist, and artist

Even with a receptive audience, dominance is a zero-sum game: the more power and authority I have, the less you have.

the higher the psychological safety in a unit, the fewer errors they made. Why? In the units that lacked psychological safety, health care professionals hid their errors, fearing retribution. As a result, they weren’t able to learn from their mistakes. In the units with high psychological safety, on the other hand, reporting errors made it possible to prevent them moving forward.

But there’s a twist: expressing vulnerability is only effective if the audience receives other signals establishing the speaker’s competence.

It’s not what a player is, but what he can become… that will allow him to grow.

psychological safety—the belief that you can take a risk without being penalized or punished.

When the average candidate was clumsy, audiences liked him even less. But when the expert was clumsy, audiences liked him even more.

Talented people are attracted to those who care about them.

Research suggests that there are two fundamental paths to influence: dominance and prestige. When we establish dominance, we gain influence because others see us as strong, powerful, and authoritative. When we earn prestige, we become influential because others respect and admire us.