Hello friends,
hope you are well, aaah our time has come to an end for this week. How quick was that? We were just getting started.
This topic came up over the weekend, and I even mention an element of it in yesterday’s article The spirit of success. To increase my awareness on this topic my mentor then said, “You do not get anywhere, especially in your business, by just taking.” Boom! That my friends hit a chord because we all know and have experience with takers.
You know what really got me thinking about this subject? It was when I came out of meditation and started working on my business briefly over the weekend that I said, “Wait a minute, we breathe in oxygen and release carbon dioxide.” I had a great epiphany, like OMG.
Oxygen (O – number 8 on the periodic table) is required to bond with hydrogen (H – number 1 on the periodic table) in order to form water. Every living being requires water on planet earth to sustain its life. Every living being is required oxygen to create energy efficiently and in return, we breathe out carbon dioxide (CO2). Carbon dioxide requires two parts of oxygen and one part of carbon. It is a colourless gas that traps heat close to the Earth. It helps to keep the energy that comes from the sun from escaping into space.
The most important point to make here is that we need plants to take in carbon dioxide (CO2) so that we can get oxygen in return (O). So, all living things on earth are not here by chance. The fundamental thought of just understanding the breath and how everything around us actually works with a bit of mindfulness now just made sense, i.e., we cannot exist without something else and something else cannot exist without us – T. Dench Patel, 22 April 2021, 17:05
It’s the law of the universe, it’s the order of the universe, and so if I was to ask you what happens if you take too much and give nothing back, the balance flips everything off. Giving and taking is an essential part of our lives subconsciously, and breathing is not something we do consciously. I mean, have you ever heard of Adam Grant? He wrote the book Give and Take: Why helping others drives our success. I read about Grant Adam in the New York times; an article published about how he works, and the philosophy he uses behind one’s success. Wait, one sec, let me see if I can find it….
Here we are…
In the New York Times article, it was this piece that caught my attention,
“Give and Take,” starts with a premise that turns the thinking behind those theories on its head. The greatest untapped source of motivation, he argues, is a sense of service to others; focusing on the contribution of our work to other people’s lives has the potential to make us more productive than thinking about helping ourselves.
“Give and Take” incorporates scores of studies and personal case histories that suggest the benefits of an attitude of extreme giving at work. Many of the examples — the selfless C.E.O.’s, the consultants who mentor ceaselessly — are inspiring and humbling, even if they are a bit intimidating in their natural expansiveness.”
His book incorporates decades of experience and goes into takers, matchers and givers.
“By consistently overriding their selfish impulses in order to help others, they had strengthened their psychological muscles, to the point where using willpower for painful tasks was no longer exhausting,” writes Grant of the study, conducted by researchers at Northwestern University.
“At a minimum, Grant’s example presents a bright-line rule: Unless the person on the other end is a proven taker, just do it — collaborate, offer up, grant the favour.” For me, this sentence in quotation marks is what I believe is very important to consider if you are giving.
I guess I would need to pick up the book to make up my own conclusion since I believe in harmony in every area in life and exercising a bit of that concept daily, while Grant’s (just my understanding from this article from the New York times below seems to be more structured).
Is giving the secret to getting ahead?
However, there is an interview that challenged my idea on the fact that being a giver could make you a doormat or the book could cause self-sabotage to current believes, however, Adam does clarify this question in one interview.
“Dave: Why do some givers become doormats while others enjoy extraordinary success?
Adam: Many givers fail by sacrificing themselves for others: they say yes to all of the people all of the time with all of the requests. Successful givers are more thoughtful and selective: they have clear priorities about who to help (givers and matchers, exercising caution with takers), how to help (giving in ways that align with their interests and expertise, making it energizing, efficient, and reputationally beneficial), and when to help (carving out time for supporting others that don’t interfere with their own priorities). In short, successful givers balance their own ambitions with the desire to make a difference in others’ lives.”
“On days where we give at work, we actually bring more energy home. Of course, it’s important to set boundaries on giving.” – Adam M Grant
Now you must be asking why is Adam M Grant the selected person I write about in this article, for one, it has everything to do with the title and how and why our bodies are unconsciously alive and two he is the world’s (at the time of this article) the world’s top 40 business professors under 40 and Wharton’s top-rated professor.
Now in another interview, he states something pretty incredible,
“A matcher is somebody who really believes in a just world. Of course, a taker violates that belief in a just world. Matchers cannot stand to see takers get ahead by taking advantage of other people. The data on this suggests that matchers will often go around trying to punish them, often by gossiping and spreading negative reputational information.
Just as matchers hate seeing takers get away with exploitation, they also hate to see people act really generously and not get rewarded for it. Matchers will often go out of their way to promote and help and support givers, to make sure they actually do get rewarded for their generosity. That’s one of the most powerful dynamics behind the rise of givers.”
This perspective of his is actually really helpful on the same interview,
“The selfless givers might be more altruistic, in principle, because they are constantly elevating other people’s interests ahead of their own. But my data, and research by lots of others, show that they’re actually less generous because they run out of energy, they run out of time and they lose their resources because they basically don’t take enough care of themselves. The “otherish” givers are able to sustain their giving by looking for ways that giving can hurt them less or benefit them more.
Knowledge@Wharton: The vulnerabilities that you identified earlier of burnout and being a doormat are actually things that affect selfless givers more than others.
Grant: That’s right. Selfless givers are at much greater risk of burnout and exploitation than are the “otherish” givers.”
Here’s the full interview if you found what was interesting thus far Givers vs takers – The surprising truth about who gets ahead.
In another article which I will leave the link to below, I thought this quote was great,
“The best way to get success is to deserve success.” – Charlie Munger
Another article which is in the link below states,
“Givers need to distinguish generosity from three other attributes—timidity, availability, and empathy.”
“One of the critical distinctions between self-sacrificing givers and successful ones is the willingness to seek help from others.”
I have read all of these articles; each article has something different coming up all the time. I hope you’ve taken notes thus far. Keep your notepad there, there’s more below.
Additional resources
Harvard Business Review – In the company of givers and takers
Effective leadership – Give and take
Yours sincerely,
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by purchasing my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
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Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to re-evaluate them.
