Who's On Your Team? with Adam Grant

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This week’s newsletter features Adam Grant. Adam is an Organizational Psychologist, TED speaker, and author. His goal is to help people find meaning and motivation at work. He continues to impact others as a professor and motivational speaker with his insights into psychology.? He has written two New York Times Bestsellers, Think Again and Give and Take. Adam’s episode on my What’s Next! Podcast is one of the most-listened to episodes . We spoke about workplace culture and hiring trends.??

Here are a few of my favorite parts from the episode:

What is the background for how to improve the workplace?

When we talk about success, we normally talk about individual forces so we think a lot about hard work, talent, and luck. But there wasn't a good framework to really understand the interpersonal interactions that influence our success. And I was struck by the fact that if you look at evidence from around the world and the many industries there are three styles of interaction that come up again and again. And I came to call them (1) giving, (2) taking, and (3) matching.

[When you set the] expectations and goals you have when you interact with another person, the givers are people who, by default, are always asking ‘What can I do for you?’ Takers are the opposite. It's all about what ‘can you do for me,’ and most people aren't all the way on one extreme or the other.?

The majority of people say, ‘I don't want to be too selfish or too generous.’ This third style is called matching which is about being fair and following the law of reciprocity: so I’ll do something for you if you do something for me.??

What do you look for to create positive team culture?

I like to think about hiring and team building. It's actually more important to screen out takers than it is to bring in givers. And if you do that well, you're left with a mix of givers and matchers, which is I think the optimal composition for a team.?

How can these styles learn from each other?

There are a lot of givers who end up burning out or just getting burned by takers because they help indiscriminately.?

Matchers often end up shooting themselves in the foot because they end up being too transactional and when they help it feels like they don't really care about you. They were just doing something for you so they could get a favor back. And so they don't end up building the social capital. They don't get the relationship and reputation benefits that that givers normally get.

A disagreeable giver is gruff and tough on the surface but underneath you have other people's best interests at heart. I think that those are the most undervalued people in our workplaces because they're the ones who are constantly challenging us to improve our work.

What do you want the takeaways for your audience to be?

First of all, givers finish last just as often as they finish first. That was the core evidence that motivated my whole book, Give and Take.?

Secondly, being a giver is not about being nice and people keep misunderstanding that. Helping others is not the same as pleasing them. Being nice is about being agreeable and polite and saying ‘yes’ all the time; whereas giving is about contributing where you think you can add value.?

In fact, one of the ways that people often give is by being extremely disagreeable, by giving negative feedback, by challenging the status quo by pointing out problems; those are helpful acts but they definitely don't feel nice.?

What would you say to those hiring others right now?

There are so many original thinkers out there who have great creative ideas but they run into walls when other people don't see the potential. When you hire someone, it’s not about cultural fit, it's about the cultural contribution.

Adam always has a great perspective into leadership and team building. His insights and research into the world of hiring are useful to anyone, at any time.??

I hope you enjoyed this installment of my Think Forward Newsletter.

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Mahalo, Tiffani

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