Give and Take

According to organizational psychologist Adam Grant, each person develops a preferred style of exchange when dealing with coworkers, clients, and bosses: the giver, who naturally offers time, connections, or help without asking for anything right away; the taker, who measures every favor by what he can get out of it; and the matcher, who tries to keep the emotional books balanced, helping just as much as he is helped.

Think of your building's or neighborhood's group chat: there's always someone who warns about the burst pipe, lends out the drill, and even asks if everybody is doing okay, expecting nothing in return. That's the giver. In the same group, there's someone who only shows up to ask for a cheap plumber recommendation and never answers when somebody needs help: that's the classic taker.

Most people aren't pure in any one style: at work we act one way, at home another. But Grant shows that, in the professional setting, almost everyone has a dominant style, and that style explains a good part of what happens to a person's career in the long run.

Grant's research with salespeople, engineers, and medical students showed something uncomfortable: the worst performers, the ones furthest behind, and the most burned out were generally givers. These were people who agreed to finish their coworkers' work, answered every request for help, and never had time left for their own project.

This happens because the selfless giver doesn't tell apart those who deserve help from those who are just taking advantage of other people's goodwill. He says yes to the overloaded coworker and to the taker who just wants to push work onto someone else's desk, treating both cases the same way.

At the end of the month, this kind of giver delivers everything he promised others and falls behind on his own work. Over time, the reputation for being nice turns into a synonym for available for anything, and that person's calendar ends up belonging to everyone except them.

The intriguing part is that, in the same research, the top performers were also givers, just a different kind. While the burned-out giver gave until nothing was left for himself, the successful giver helped without forgetting his own goals, creating what Grant calls boundaried generosity.

The difference between the giver who sinks and the one who rises isn't the amount of help offered but the criteria: the one who rises asks whether the request is urgent, whether it fits the time available, and whether only he can really solve it, before saying yes right away.

This overturns the idea that being competitive and being generous are opposites. Both extremes, pure taker and limitless giver, tend to have shakier careers; those who sustain steady success are usually generous with strategy, not generous without thinking.