Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?

I stole my headline from a 2013 New York Times Magazine article about Wharton professor and bestselling author, Adam Grant. That piece includes this passage:

For Grant, helping is not the enemy of productivity, a time-sapping diversion from the actual work at hand; it is the mother lode, the motivator that spurs increased productivity and creativity. In some sense, he has built a career in professional motivation by trying to unpack the puzzle of his own success. He has always helped; he has always been productive. How, he has wondered for most of his professional life, does the interplay of those two factors work for everyone else?

Grant's book, "Give and Take", collects years of research on reciprocity and divides the world into three groups. Takers are interested only in what they can get out of an exchange. Matchers live by a sort of tit-for-tat ethos; they will do something nice for you if you do something nice for them (and, yes, they keep score). Givers are genuinely interested in others and give without the expectation of something is return.

Actually, that last sentence is not 100% true.

Successful givers perceive that giving without a tit-for-tat real time scorecard will benefit them in the long run. If I am kind to you repeatedly, you may never help me. But if I help as many people as possible, in the long run I, too, will be better off. As the New York Times wrote:

The most successful givers, Grant explains, are those who rate high in concern for others but also in self-interest. And they are strategic in their giving — they give to other givers and matchers, so that their work has the maximum desired effect; they are cautious about giving to takers; they give in ways that reinforce their social ties; and they consolidate their giving into chunks, so that the impact is intense enough to be gratifying.?

Givers Deliver is a website I created to share dozens of tips intended to help you be a successful giver. Here are some sample tips:

• Every time you encounter another person, think:?help this person. It's not altruistic. Nothing else can so quickly supercharge your career and improve the quality of your life. And, yes, being genuinely helpful is the most substantive “self-promotion” possible.
• The secret to success in social media is to give valuable ideas away for free. This concept terrifies some people, because they think that if they give away all their best ideas, they will have nothing of value to sell. The truth is that you will have much more of value to sell, because you will have more credibility, more contacts, and more people who are interested in what you have to say.
• If you want to promote yourself but you hate the idea of promoting yourself, this tip is your best bet. The single best way to get people to talk in glowing terms about you is to dramatically exceed your promises to them.
• The most effective way to get your point across is to focus on just one point at a time.

As you might guess, my website is free. There's no registration. I won't ask for your email. There's no quid pro quo. But if you like it, I won't be upset if you share it with others.

Bruce Kasanoff is an?executive coach who also serves some clients as a social media ghostwriter.?