Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

The worst performers and the best performers are givers; takers and matchers are more likely to land in the middle.

create a climate in the room where everybody feels that they can contribute, that it’s okay to fall on your face many, many times,” he says. This is known as psychological safety—the belief that you can take a risk without being penalized or punished.

According to Brian Uzzi, a management professor at Northwestern University, networks come with three major advantages: private information, diverse skills, and power. By developing a strong network, people can gain invaluable access to knowledge, expertise, and influence. Extensive research demonstrates that people with rich networks achieve higher

when managers were randomly assigned to see employees as bloomers, employees bloomed. McNatt concludes that these interventions “can have a fairly large effect on performance.” He encourages managers to “recognize the possible power and influence in (a) having a genuine interest and belief in the potential of their employees . . . and (b) engaging

It takes time for givers to build goodwill and trust, but eventually, they establish reputations and relationships that enhance their success. In fact, you’ll see that in sales and medical school, the giver advantage grows over time.

Thirty years ago, the sociologist Fred Goldner wrote about what it means to experience the opposite of paranoia: pronoia. According to the distinguished psychologist Brian Little, pronoia is “the delusional belief that other people are plotting your well-being, or saying nice things about you behind your back.” If you’re a giver, this belief may be

In networks, new research shows that when people get burned by takers, they punish them by sharing reputational information. “Gossip represents a widespread, efficient, and low-cost form of punishment,” write the social scientists Matthew Feinberg, Joey Cheng, and Robb Willer. When reputational information suggests that someone has taker tendencies

Peter accomplished this maneuver by getting inside Rich's head, rather than his heart. Studies led by Columbia psychologist Adam Galinsky show that when we empathize at the bargaining table, focusing on our counterparts' emotions and feelings puts us at risk of giving away too much." But when we engage in perspective taking, considering our co

Edwin Hollander argued that when people act generously in groups, they earn idiosyncrasy credits—positive impressions that accumulate in the minds of group members. Since many people think like matchers, when they work in groups, it’s very common for them to keep track of each member’s credits and debits. Once a group