Give and Take _ Adam Grant!

 

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We have been hearing the following quote all the time, “nobody gives it to you you’ve got to take it”: it has been the favorite Hollywood cliché of all the time and the movies industries have been selling it as the American Dreams. World is mean, we’ve got to be strong and macho, we must avoid having empathy, we need to always act in a tit for tat manner, forgiveness is a weakness, and so on. We have been led to believe that the achievers in every domain of the world are the takers, and or matchers. We must destroy the competition in order to be successful, we must use force to wipe out the competition, and there is no such thing as ‘Win – Win’ negotiation strategy; I strongly believe that these are the vital lies that are prevailing in our world. These are the exact things that might hinder our full fledged success as well.

Dr. Adam Grant wrote this book in such a meticulous way that I was actually stunned by the researches he had done in order to write this one of the amazing books every written in the ‘Self – Help’ genre. The book is more of the result of the various results backed by shattering statistics than his mere thought child, and this is what makes it more relevant and trustworthy.

In order to be wildly successful, we need not have to crush others: we can be success by helping the people we encounter with to be successful. Success is like a chain reaction; the stronger and the longer the bond between the group of people, the faster and long lasting the success would be. It is a natural law to give before expecting anything in return; however, we seemed to have forgotten the underlying law while thinking about our interests. If the case was that in order to be successful we need to be highly competitive and totally disregard other’s interest while focusing on our own, there would never have been the philanthropist institutions, universities, hospitals and all the organization that work for the betterment of the human being and the mother Earth. And the world we are living would be the boxing match all the type.

However, Grant made the following matrix for the ultimate success:

….Giver succeeds in a way that creates a ripple effect, enhancing the success of people around them…

…..if politics can be fertile ground for givers, it’s possible that givers can succeed in any job…..

….the taker CEOs earned far more money than other senior executives in their companies. The takers saw themselves as superior, so they felt entitled to substantial pay discrepancies in their own favor. In the computer industry, a typical taker CEO took home more than triple the annual salary and bonus of anyone else in the company. By contrast, the average across the industry was for CEOs to earn just over one and a half times the next highest paid. The taker CEOs also commanded stock options and other noncash compensation of seven times higher than the next highest paid, compared with the industry average of two and a half times higher…..

..…“Even when people are well intentioned,” writes LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, “they tend to overvalue their own contributions and undervalue those of others.” This responsibility bias is a major source of failed collaborations. Professional relationships disintegrate when entrepreneurs, inventors, investors, and executives feel that their partners are not giving them the credit they deserve, or doing their fair share…..

…evidence shows that leaders’ beliefs can catalyze self-fulfilling prophecies in many settings beyond the military….

….economist explains this behavior using a concept known as the “sunk cost fallacy”: when estimating the value of a future investment, we have trouble ignoring what we’ve already invested in the past….

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

…as Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.”…….

….The successful givers weren’t just more other-oriented than their peers; they were also more self interested. Successful givers, it turns out, are just as ambitious as takers and matchers……

…..along with reducing burnout among givers, a firsthand connection to impact can tilt people of all reciprocity styles in the giver direction. When people know how their work makes a difference, they feel energized to contribute more…..

…..recent neuroscience evidence shows that giving actually activates the reward and meaning centers in our brains, which send us pleasure and purpose signals when we act for the benefit of others……

…instead of assuming that they’re doomed to become doormats, successful givers recognize that their everyday choices shape the results they achieve in competitive, confrontational situations. The dangers lie less in giving itself, and more in the rigidity of sticking with a single reciprocity style across all interactions and relationships……

Of course like any book, it is up to the reader to decide how much they want to adopt the learning in their life, and how much they want to discard; however, I believe that it is not until we apply the learning we know whether it is useful or a mere scarp. Hence, I urge you, the readers, to go through the book and reap the rewards.

Rating: 4.8/5