Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success

Adam Grant introduces the concept of “preferences for reciprocity,” a term he cites from a paper authored by Edward W. Miles, John D. Hatfield, and Richard C. Huseman. Preferences for reciprocity describe individuals’ preferences for giving and taking within relationships.

He describes three different categories of people and their respective reciprocity styles: takers, givers, and matchers. Takers are individuals who primarily focus on what they can get from others and who are often self-serving in their interactions. Givers, on the other hand, prioritize giving and helping others without expecting anything in return. Lastly, matchers strive for fairness and equal exchanges in their interactions.

Grant claims that people tend to act like givers in close relationships, while they tend to act like matchers at work. He acknowledges that one’s reciprocity style can change in different contexts but that most people have a primary style.

He then explores the success of each reciprocity style in the workplace. Givers inhabit both the top and bottom of the ladder when it comes to success in their fields. In studies of engineers, salespeople, and medical students, givers were both the most and the least productive individuals, with takers and matchers landing in the middle.

To illustrate his point, Grant tells an anecdote: He recounts how the entrepreneur Danny Shader and the venture capitalist David Hornik struck up a conversation while on the sidelines of their daughters’ soccer game. Shader offered to pitch his new business idea to Hornik, who agreed. Hornik decided he wanted to invest in Shader’s company and offered him a term sheet. However, instead of attempting to seal the deal with an exploding offer (one that would expire quickly), Hornik gave Shader the option to take his time and even encouraged him to evaluate other offers. Shader did so and decided to go with another investor. He thought that Hornik was too nice and questioned why Hornik didn’t push harder to close the deal. Shader claimed he wanted someone who would push him and challenge him in the boardroom. However, Shader eventually regretted saying no to Hornik and invited him to invest in his company. Once they were in board meetings together, Shader was impressed with Hornik—he saw a different side of him and realized that Hornik was not merely a pushover. To underscore the idea that givers can be successful in professional contexts, Grant quotes an estimate by Hornik: Hornik figures that while most venture capitalists have a 50% signing rate, his is close to 90%.

Grant then tells the story of a “hick” by the name of Sampson who wanted to become a politician. Sampson was a giver, and while it seemed initially that his generosity cost him political races, it actually won over his opponents over time and garnered their support in future races. Grant reveals Sampson to be the pen name of Abraham Lincoln and notes that Lincoln notoriously appointed his rivals to cabinet positions during his presidency—and he eventually managed to win them all over, despite his rivals’ initial bitterness.

According to Grant, even if it seems like some givers may be losing in the short run, if one “stretched the time horizons out far enough” one would see that giving eventually pays off (15). In the cases of both Hornik and Lincoln, Grant argues, their giving initially seemed to hinder them, but it brought them great success in the long run. To support this point, he notes that in the aforementioned study of medical students, givers earned comparatively lower grades upon first entering medical school, when students spend much of their time focused on individual classwork. Once their responsibilities shifted to involve collaboration via rotations, internships, and patient care, the same students rose to the tops of their classes.

Grant points out a vast study that showed that giving is actually the preferred reciprocity style of the majority of people in the world. Despite this, though, many people are afraid to admit that they’re givers when they’re in professional contexts for fear of people perceiving them as weak. People also tend to shift toward a taker style when they are in workplaces with competitive or zero-sum dynamics or when they fear being taken advantage of by others. Grant acknowledges that giving can be risky but says that the rest of the book will explore why giving can also be rewarding, how givers can avoid burnout, and how givers can achieve success.