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Psychologist and best-selling author Adam Grant talks about the psychology between ‘givers’ and ‘takers’, the nuances around the practice of ‘paying it forward’ and argues generosity can be a key to success. This interview was featured in Open Manifesto #7 which focused on the theme ‘Enlightened self-interest’.

Kevin Finn: Can you briefly describe the difference between a giver, a taker and a matcher?

Adam Grant:  I think of these as three different styles of interaction. The takers are people who love to get as much as possible from others and never want to give anything back, unless they absolutely have to. That usually means they’re trying to hog all of the interesting and visible projects and leave the grunt work for everybody else they collaborate with—and yet walk away with the majority of the credit when the work is done.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have people that I call givers. I don’t necessarily mean a philanthropist or a volunteer, but rather the kind of person who enjoys helping others—and frequently does it without any strings attached. Givers are often sharing their knowledge, making introductions, maybe providing mentoring or just stepping up to help their colleagues.

Then, in the middle of that spectrum, we have matchers, who are people that like to keep an even balance of ‘give and take.’ It’s quid pro quo. If I’m a matcher, and I was to do you a favour, I would expect an equal one back. And if you were to do me a favour, I might feel like I was in debt until I settled the score.

There seems to be an insatiable market for advice on ‘how to be successful,’ and this advice ranges from being shallow through to being insightful. However, in your book Give and Take you quote Keith Ferrazzi who employs a deceptively simple rule. “I’ll sum up the key to success in one word—generosity.” Now, that goes to your definition of a giver, but is that too simplistic? A key to success being generosity?

Well, I think it’s half of the story, for sure. I think the key to success is also the key to failure.

Very true… [Laughing]

As we know, one of the things that I found most fascinating with doing the research for Give and Take, is when you compare givers, takers, and matchers. Across engineering, and medicine, and sales, you find that the givers are typically the worst performers, so they tend to have the lowest productivity in engineering, the worst grades in medical school and the lowest sales revenue.

They are also the best performers. [Laughs] It’s the givers who are at the very top of those metrics: the highest engineering productivity, the best medical grades, and even the highest sales revenue. Takers and matchers are more likely to have average performance.

I think Keith really captures part of that puzzle in highlighting how part of that generosity can accelerate your career. But if you’re not careful, it can also sink your career.

I guess the big question for a lot of people would be: how can you remain a giver, and avoid being—what you describe as—a ‘doormat’? You’ve just highlighted a really good case in point where the same fields of industry or professional practice have a hugely successful and hugely unsuccessful giver. How can one manage that?

Well, I think a lot of it has to do with recognizing that successful givers aren’t necessarily altruistic. They’re not so selfless that they put other people’s interests ahead of their own all the time. Rather, what they try to do is integrate their desire to help others with their own goals and ambitions. To your question about the ‘doormat effect,’ I think that can play out in a couple of different ways.

One of [laughs] the great ways to get exploited is to give relentlessly to takers. What I find is that successful givers are much more likely to say, “Look, if you’re going to be a ‘taker,’ then I’m going to shift my style and become a ‘matcher’—only give to you if you’re willing to reciprocate by paying it back, or paying it forward.”

Instead, they are likely to give most generously to givers, who do tend to ‘pay it forward,’ and matchers, who tend to pay it back. I think the rest of the puzzle is really about setting clear boundaries.

I find that successful givers tend to be specialists rather than generalists. What I mean by that is they focus on giving in a particular way they feel is aligned with their interests and their expertise. That way, if you love making connections, for example, focus your giving on doing lots of introductions and giving. If that’s your focus, it becomes pretty energizing and efficient for you as opposed to distracting and exhausting.

It’s interesting, because that brings up a really clear point: although being a giver has a self‑interest, it’s an enlightened self‑interest, because it doesn’t just benefit the individual. In your book, you offer some advice on this mannerism: help generously, and without thought of return, but also ask often for what you need. It seems that a successful giver also has to be very clear about what they’re looking for. Would that be a correct assumption?

Yeah, that’s exactly right. I think one of the biggest surprises when we look at this data is that successful givers are also successful help‑seekers. The givers who fail are the ones who are never willing to ask other people for support when they need it.

I’ve encountered givers, who are just uncomfortable asking for help. Part of that is something we all feel, which is we don’t want to be helpless or incompetent or dependent. But for a giver there’s an extra challenge, which is you like to be on the giving end of every exchange. You don’t want to be a burden to anyone else. I always like to joke with a counter‑giver who won’t ask for something. For example, I’ll say: Kevin, if you’re one of those people, if you never ask then you’re depriving the people in your life of the opportunity to give.

I think that, fundamentally, there is a distinction between taking and receiving. A lot of givers don’t want to ask, because they don’t want to be takers. A taker is somebody who uses someone else for sole personal gain, whereas a receiver is somebody who says: “Look, I often enjoy giving, but in this situation you have something that I really need. I will accept your contribution, and then maintain a willingness to help out if I can in the future.”

A different form of reciprocity you mentioned earlier—and it’s also prominent in your book—is referred to as ‘paying it forward,’ which is embedded in the idea of value-adding within a network. You give examples in your research of how this has been proven to be successful. But do you think it is widely effective and perhaps an important activity, this notion of ‘paying it forward’?

I think it is. One of the most interesting habits that I’ve found among givers who are enormously productive is that they are actually able to convert matchers into givers, in a way that’s intensified for everybody involved.

A simple example: one of my favorite characters in the book—whom I know you’ve had a lot fun learning about—is Adam Rifkin. Adam was named the best networker in the world by Fortune magazine, and just has an extraordinary number of connections that he’s developed through everybody he meets.

What Adam does, after he helps somebody, maybe it’s two or three months later, he’ll reach out to them and ask for a favour. You start to think, “Well wait a minute, this guy’s just a clever matcher. He’s helping first and then he’s asking for payback later.” Then he throws in a twist, which is, he’s rarely asking for himself. Most of the time he’s saying: “Look, Kevin, I helped you out a couple of months ago. Now, I’m trying to help somebody else in a similar way. Would you be willing to help me help them?”

A lot of the matchers he helped really want to pay it back to Adam, and the closest way that they can do that is to help him out with his efforts to help somebody different. What happens then is he’s got this whole network of people who are willing to operate like givers. This means any time anyone in that network needs help, they can go to anybody else. Whereas, if you don’t have that pay it forward mentality, you can only go to the people that you’ve directly traded favors with in the past.

There must be another element to this. Some of your extensive research reveals that particular kinds of givers are likely to become consistently more successful than maybe takers and matchers. Is this, in part, due to the rise of the sharing economy movement, or is there something more fundamental, or even more basic, at work?

That’s a great question. It’s not one I have a good answer to, especially because I like to answer most of these kinds of questions with data. I haven’t seen a good study yet about how the rise of the sharing economy has really affected the success of givers, or any broader patterns.

I think intuitively it’s right. I think that as we have more mechanisms that allow people to share their time, their knowledge, their skills, even their homes, it’s easier for people to recognize this idea that the Harvard professor Robert Putnam called ‘generalized reciprocity.’

This basically states that direct reciprocity is sort of old school: ‘you do something for me, I’ll do something for you.’ Whereas generalized reciprocity is a little more complicated. It focuses more on: ‘I’ll do something for you without expecting anything back from you, but knowing that if I do that, somebody at some point is more likely to do something for me.’ I think that the sharing economy has really promoted a mentality that allows people to ‘pay it forward’ without necessarily expecting that immediate return but believing—if they model that kind of behavior—that kind of behavior will increase, and it will benefit everyone.

In your book you mention FreeCycle, but also Airbnb and the Kahn Academy. And there’s a whole bunch of businesses operating in this new sharing economy mentality. Would it be fair to say you’re suggesting generosity—possibly in some cases altruism, maybe even humility—could be an effective business strategy?

It sounds crazy, but yes! [Laughing] I think the qualifier I would throw in there is that I believe there’s a time and a place where those strategies are effective and there are also circumstances where they’re really dangerous. I think it’s very rare to say that humility is always a good idea, that generosity is always a good idea.

I will say, though, that I’m balanced. People who adopt a giving mindset in the majority of their interactions end up finding that it brings lots of rewards with it. Not only conventional kinds of success but also greater meaning and purpose, and richer relationships.

I imagine the other side of this includes more significant hurdles, which a natural giver would face, for example social and cultural norms and expectations, particularly in the business world. For example, after reading your book, a client of mine realized he was actually a giver pretending to be a taker simply due to the common perceptions around how we traditionally engage in business. It’s this sort of difficulty, which societal norms place on givers. Do you think this is an accurate assessment and do you feel it is shifting dramatically at the moment?

I do. But it’s a complicated thing. I believe the norms vary a lot from one organization to another as well as across industries and national cultures. I’m surprised by the number of people who tell me they hold giver values, but fear that if they express those values it’s a sign of weakness. They basically leave these values behind once they walk into the office. They say: “Look, I’m basically going to adopt a ‘taking’ or a ‘matching’ approach in most of my interactions. Then, every once in a while, I’ll meet somebody who I realize has the same values and then they get to see the real me.”

I’ve encountered a lot of people who fit the description that you gave of your client. I think some of that comes from an idea—which is false—that success is zero sums, that for me to win you have to lose. I think some of it also comes from the fact there are a lot of former givers and matchers who have started acting like takers after getting burned one too many times and learning the hard way. They believe: “Yeah, there are ‘takers’ out there and that means I need to be a little more cautious. If I don’t put myself first, nobody else will.”

On the flip side of that, you assert that takers are also at risk—more so today—because your research suggests that, in our networked society, when people get burned by takers, they punish them by sharing reputation information and gossip that represents a widespread, efficient, low cost form of punishment. You also refer to this as a ‘taker tax.’ Is social media simply leveling the playing field?

I believe it’s certainly taking a step in that direction. It’s harder today to be anonymous and invisible as a taker than it was before social media and also before the rise of highly collaborative teamwork and the growth of the service sector in most industrialized economies where most of us are more interdependent than we used to be. It’s certainly a lot easier to track people’s reputations now than it ever was before.

I think the reactions you’re describing are most pronounced among matchers. Matchers really believe in a just world. If you’re a matcher, you think that there should always be an ‘eye for an eye.’ When you see a taker act selfishly and get away with it, you as a matcher feel like it’s your mission in life [laughter] to punish the heck out of that person.

I think the ability to keep track of those people on LinkedIn and Facebook, to figure out who else they know, to occasionally observe their behavior on Twitter [now X], or to find out biographical information through a Google search, it does make it harder for takers to exploit one person without getting discovered by the next person.

[Laughing] It does seem very premeditated and strategic to chase someone down like that and punish them.

[Laughing] It does. I think that’s a great source of joy for a true matcher.

Are you seeing this also apply to organizations, brands, and branding? Corporate Social Responsibility, which I think we could agree is sort of tokenism in many cases, is now being replaced by the more genuine or more significant Reputation Capital. In your opinion, is this impacting the number of good corporate citizens, or is that too simplistic?

I don’t have a good sense of that. I would like to think that in general we’ve seen enough of a backlash toward Corporate Social Responsibility and cause-marketing initiatives that are just lip service, or that are done for purely instrumental reasons, that leaders are starting to figure out if they’re going to do it, they need to do it right and it needs to mean something.

I think the jury is still out from my perspective, in terms of the evidence. There was a really nice study that Norbert Schwarz and his colleagues published a few years ago that looked at the effects of Corporate Social Responsibility on companies with bad reputations. For example, if you’re a cigarette company what kind of impact do you provide when you start investing in a bunch of healthcare causes? [Laughing]

The finding was that, essentially, the more you promote those efforts, the more it backfires because people know you’re just doing it to try to make up for the harm that you’ve done. But actual time and money invested in the activities themselves really paid off. The lesson there from these researchers was you should spend more time actually doing social responsibility and less time advertising it.

Perhaps a good example might be McDonald’s where they’ve got the Ronald McDonald House for children with illnesses. The big contradiction there is that many people say that McDonald’s is contributing to obesity and child health issues. But at the same time they’re actively doing something real about trying to resolve some aspects of those conditions and illnesses. I guess that’s probably one of the few case studies that I can think of that might somehow be walking the line with some success. Would you agree?

Yes. There’s a really interesting question around this. In fact, there’s actually some research on this by Anne Lewinsky and Joshua Margolis. They talk about necessary evils in organizations, the idea being: “What happens when you do either a task, or are involved in a program that does harm, in the interest of the greater good?”

Do the ends justify the means? I think that’s a great question to ponder for McDonald’s. Is it worth actually contributing to obesity, because you can generate enough revenue and enough awareness eventually perhaps to stop it? I don’t know. Are they willing to put themselves out of business? It’s a fascinating question.

I guess the question they would need to ask themselves is: do they want to put themselves out of their current business, but perhaps find a new business model that will be more satisfying, more rewarding and more beneficial to a lot more people? It goes back to that giver culture mentality you were talking about earlier, that it’s just really a slight shift of goals and objectives that might actually give you a higher return in success, though maybe not in the short term. I know your research came up with—what is the phrase?—one person you quote says: being a giver is not a 100‑yard dash but it’s invaluable in a marathon. In terms of shifting their business model it certainly wouldn’t be a 100‑yard dash for McDonald’s to change immediately, but I’m sure if they were genuine about what they want to do, they could have a business model that would be equally as successful, maybe in a different way.

I do think that’s probably where we will see them move in the long run. We’ve all observed in the short run, the growth of healthier options on the menu. I think that is highly likely to continue.

And that’s probably due to public pressure and cultural expectations, at least in industrialized countries.

Yes, I think that’s part of the story. I’ve also been impressed by at least a few executives at McDonald’s who have said: “Look, part of my contribution to this organization is going to be pushing us toward doing what’s right.”

I guess the extreme example, on the other hand, and you mention it in your book, is Enron. But, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to be opaque today, as we discussed earlier. That said, takers also seek to adopt giver characteristics in order to get what they want in the short term, possibly at the expense of others. We’ve discussed this a little bit, but how can you spot a taker in giver’s clothing?

Well, I think that the first thing to do is contrast the idea of givers and takers with the personality trait of agreeableness. Agreeable people are people who typically come across as very warm and friendly and amiable, with disagreeable people being more challenging and critical and skeptical. Most of us stereotype agreeable people as givers, and disagreeable people as takers. Yet, I’ve found that you can actually plot those in a little 2 x 2 matrix, because you’re agreeableness is basically your outer veneer. How you come across on the surface where if giving and taking are your inner motives, what are your real intentions toward others. That means, we have some people who are actually disagreeable givers who might be rough and tough and gruff but ultimately have others best interest at heart.

I know a few of those…

To your point, we need to watch out for the agreeable takers, those are the takers who create an aura of generosity but then ultimately are trying to only advance their own interests. There are a couple of different ways to spot truly agreeable takers in particular, one is a pattern that I’ve come to call, ‘kissing up, kicking down,’ which is something we see a lot.

The takers are typically trying to act generous when impressing powerful people, but find it’s a lot of work to fake generosity in all of their interactions. They let their guard down a little bit when dealing with peers and subordinates. One implication is you might refer to somebody with the following attitude: don’t trust it as much if it comes from above, than if it comes from below.

There are a few other tell‑tale signs. When talking about their successes, takers tend to claim personal credit for collective achievements. They use more I’s and me’s instead of us’s and we’s. On the flip side, when they fail they’re more likely to blame others.

One of my other favorite ways to spot a taker is not asking them what they would do in a situation but what they think others might do. Let’s say this is a job interview setting. Rather than asking what would you do in this situation, Kevin, I would ask what you think ‘other’ people would do, because most of us tend to project our motives onto others. There’s integrity test research for example, suggesting that if you look at stealing, you can ask people: “What percentage of employees do you think steal at least $10 worth of merchandise from their employers every year?” The higher your guess, the greater the odds that you’re a taker. This is an exercise which is great fun. You think about that question and you’re like: “Well, if I’m a ‘taker,’ I took $400 last year from my company, so probably a lot of people do that.” Whereas, the givers are like: “Who would steal a tent?”

[Laughing] Another insight in your book, which is of particular interest, relates to your suggestion that the size of a portrait photograph in an annual report can actually tell givers from takers. Can you expand on that discovery?

This is a brilliant study by Chatterjee and Hambrick. They listed over 100 tech companies. They got Wall Street analysts to rate the CEOs of those companies. It was basically a taker scale: how selfish, how egotistical, how narcissistic is each CEO?

Then they looked for clues that correlated with the analyst’s ratings, and indeed, the CEOs who were rated as takers by the analysts had more prominent photographs of themselves in their company’s annual reports. Their pictures were larger and they were more likely to be alone, sending a pretty clear signal that: “I’m the most important person in this company. It’s all about me.”

We can see those patterns in everyday life too. There’s a recent study by Keith Campbell and a colleague, showing that on Facebook, you can actually spot the narcissistic takers by looking at how attractive they appear—how vain—in their profile photo. I like to point out here that the takers are not necessarily ‘hotter’ than the rest of us, in general, but you will find a bigger gap between their average photo and how good they look in the profile picture. They’ve got to put their best foot forward.

You’ll have a whole rush of people now going to check their Facebook photo.

[Laughter]

Once again, it does come down to these perceptions, social norms and expectations. Not only in the business world but just in society, there seems to be a much more competitive attitude out there. When anyone is putting any kind of image forward they want to make it look as best as possible. Of course, there are some who claim the people who obsessively use Facebook are narcissistic (or voyeuristic), so there is a societal cultural shift happening anyway. Does that muddy the waters, or is it simply that people who are a bit vain might also be quite generous?

I’ve long been interested in tracking another huge but related area, which is: do you, in your profile, show a picture of yourself with the most important person you’ve ever met, thereby trying to get status by association?

I think it’s fair to say that not all narcissists are takers. There’s such a thing as a narcissistic giver. I’ve encountered it from time to time when people will claim that they’re better at helping others than anybody else: “I am the most generous person you’ll ever meet.”

That’s a contradiction in terms.

In a way, that’s right! Some of these people are really passionate about helping others and that’s what their ego is invested in. They have an inflated sense of their own generosity and importance in helping others.

For the most part, I find a very strong correlation between narcissism and taking. One of the tell‑tale signs of many narcissists is that they have fragile and inflated egos because they believe that they have to be better than others in order to succeed.

That doesn’t necessarily muddy the waters, but it does get tricky when you’re trying to spot takers and givers. Something that comes to mind is, when looking at the complexities of what we’re talking about, it could become hard work for people to either spot takers and givers, but also to decide whether they themselves are a taker or a giver. You would want all this to be a very natural, free‑flowing, organic way of being. How then can someone transform themselves after realizing they’ve been living a taker behavioural life for a long time, for reasons that are perhaps external—for example, how they were brought up, or places they’ve worked; whatever. But they come to this realization and they want to move towards being a giver. I know we’re generalizing, but is that something they have to work at, or would you say it needs to be a more natural shift?

It could actually go both ways. I think one of the easiest ways to shift your style is to recognize that we all tend to become more giving when we’re really passionate about something. If you were to think about your favorite topic to read about, or a hobby that you really love, it’s really hard not to share that with other people. In fact, sometimes, you cross the boundary from giving to just annoying people, because you’re so into something.

I think focusing on things that you really love, is one of the easiest ways to become a little more giving. My other favourite step is something I learned, again from Adam Rifkin, who I mentioned earlier. Adam says if you want to be a giver, you don’t want to be Mother Theresa or Gandhi. That’s not sustainable for most of us. Rather, you should try to do a few more ‘five‑minute favors’ every week.

Adam will say: “Look, there are a lot of ways that you can add high value to other people’s lives at a low personal cost. For example, making an introduction, writing a little recommendation or a note of gratitude to somebody else.” He’s got a whole list of favours that I think the easiest deliverance step is to say: “I’m going to pick a few people that I would like to add more value to, and try to figure out how—in just a few minutes—I could make their life a little bit better.”

I think there’s another important point here: a giver needs to manage their time because, as you said earlier, you don’t want to be one of those unsuccessful givers where you’re doing everything for everyone and all of a sudden you don’t have any time to do what you need to do. You need to edit or curate who you are able to best add value to. Is that what Adam is suggesting?

Yes, I think that’s exactly right. In a way Adam is thinking about return on investment: “Where could I give effectively that’s going to allow me to have the most impact?” That doesn’t necessarily always involve the greatest investment of time.

If I remember correctly from reading your book, I think Adam actively asks people to pay it forward as well. He doesn’t consider it as an assumption. He actually asks people.

He does.

Could this also be part of coaching givers to become more strategic about how they spend their time? For example, if a successful giver keeps reminding people: “Make sure you pay this forward,” just as one little tip, because this has a ripple effect and helps that person understand how giving can actually add value.

I think it’s useful in that way. It’s also probably a pretty good screening mechanism for figuring out what the other people in your network are—giver, matcher or taker. This is something that I’ve been doing more often lately. For example, when somebody asks me whether I know somebody who can help with a particular request, or if I have the contact to a certain organization where they’re looking for a job, what I will often do is send them the contact information but let them reach out independently, and allow them to just use my name. Then I get a pretty independent view into whether that person is genuinely willing to help.

Whereas, when I make the introduction, usually people will follow through and I don’t then know if it’s because they genuinely enjoy giving or because they’re just trying to match something that I’ve given to them in the past. I like letting people give in a more naturalistic, spontaneous experience. And this helps me figure out whether somebody’s going to pay it forward or not.

You probably also spot those who are just being opportunistic because, again, it moves closer to matcher or even taker where they’re leveraging a connection with someone—but purely for their own ends.

That’s right.

It might prompt people to consider how they operate in a network, being very conscious of what they do and that could lead to a little bit of paranoia. It’s funny: In your book you touch on paranoia. Particularly the highly competitive world where there is paranoia, for example in the business world. But this can also influence behavior and action. The distinguished psychologist Brian Little poses a compelling opposite—pronoia: ‘the delusional belief that other people are applauding your well‑being or saying nice things about you behind your back.’ Humorous and interesting as that is, you suggest it may be a reality for givers, rather than a delusion. Does this go back to Reputation Capital, which we discussed earlier?

Yes, I think it does. I’ve enjoyed the idea that perhaps we could envision a world where we had more givers and instead of worrying that people were out to get you [laughter] you could worry that they were out to help you. I think, at some level, if that’s the fear you’re creating, it does have a lot of reputational benefits with people trying to figure out: ‘why is this person conspiring to help me?’ [laughter]

The other thing that I find interesting about the pronoia concept is that the only reason it can exist is because people are either skeptical by disposition or they’ve had some experience to suggest that when others help they probably have some ulterior motives. The idea that when somebody tries to help, one might immediately begin to think: “What’s really going on here?”…

What’s the agenda?..

Yes. I think this suggests that somebody’s probably been surrounded by too many takers. One thing we can probably all do more effectively is figure out who the givers and matchers are around us and create a little community of people that we can trust.

I guess another way is to be much more relaxed about it. If you do get burned, just say: “Okay, I’m not going to chase them down and issue a ‘taker tax.’ I’m just going to quietly shift away and never interact with them again.” It’s more about surrounding ourselves with people we have a natural affinity with, as opposed to overanalyzing it…

I think it’s very tempting to become almost overly scientific about this. I could start keeping track of all the cues [laughter] that lead me to think that somebody has one style or another. A lot of it is going to be based on intuition and gut feeling and everyday experience. I think it’s reasonable to treat the sense of trust you have with somebody else as a proxy for what their style might be.

Personally, on a rare occasion, my natural instinct might be to try and pursue a taker for whatever reason. But generally, my thinking would be I’d rather spend that time doing something more meaningful or helping somebody else rather than interacting with this person who I feel just burnt me. I prefer to just step away. I think that might be, at least in my experience, a way of trying to not make this too scientific, not make this too onerous.

On a deeper level, there are a lot of cues you talk about but which could make people feel this is a lot of hard work. However, over time, you suggest just having a few things on your radar can keep you focused. Otherwise, it should be a very natural way of living. Would that be a good assessment?

Yes, I think that’s a great summary, actually.

With that in mind, do you foresee a genuine, mainstream, even sustained corporate giver culture any time soon?

I’ve certainly been excited by some organisations taking steps in this direction. How widely will it spread? For me, this is an open question. But I think there are many organisations working on doing a better job of screening out takers, of redefining performance to not just include individual accomplishments but also the impact of your success on other people, to really create norms that make it acceptable to ask, so that givers know who could benefit from their help and how. I’d love to see more of those practices spread.

With that in mind, Kevin, let me turn this around on you and ask: if you were going to build an organisation that really operated with a culture of giving, what are a few of the steps you’d recommend from your experience?

I think one of the key things I feel is very current—but also very close to me—is a culture of collaboration. That’s not just because everyone has a voice. It means if you’re involved, we expect to hear from you. I genuinely feel—and I’ve said this for many years—whether you’re a student or a high performing executive, you have some life experience, some outlook on the world, and you have an opinion. That’s all valid. It doesn’t really matter about seniority. It really relies on your experience. That’s the first thing I would establish.

The other thing—which I also actively pursue—is to try and do things that are meaningful. I don’t just mean not-for-profit or charity, though that could be part of it, but that your service or product isn’t just another widget or another ‘thing’ to do. We must constantly remind ourselves that we turn up to work every day, 10 hours a day. We sit with people. We need to like the people we’re sitting with and we’ve got to feel like we’re contributing something meaningful—at least in our understanding of what’s meaningful.

I believe these are the two cornerstones, which I’d start with. And I actively strive to do this in my own business. I’m not sure if that clearly answers your question, but that’s how I would at least start, and then pursue.

Great! A related question that I was curious about, since you’ve implemented some of these ideas and shared them with other people in your network: what have people been most surprised by?

First of all, it is clear there’s terminology around all this. The client I mentioned earlier; I don’t think he was even aware there was a way of looking at splitting up personas between giver, taker and matcher. All of a sudden, a light bulb was turned on in his mind and it allowed him to reshape and refocus his natural characteristics and be comfortable in his own skin. That’s one of the first clear things I’ve witnessed.

In terms of my own experience, I think it’s probably made me a little more aware of whom the takers might be. My own fear—and a fear I’ve heard from other people—is the unsuccessful giver, the person who naturally wants to help people but really feels like: “Why the hell aren’t I getting anywhere? I’m helping everyone. I’ve got to just stop this. I’ve got to stop giving so much.” As opposed to: “I’ve got to stop giving in the way [laughs] that I’ve been giving.” I think that’s another light bulb moment for people.

Then, at the higher end, what I’m hearing, and this is only at the early stages… [Pause] I’m working with a client with offices around the world. The person I gave your book to is a senior manager, and I think they are looking at—as you said earlier—encouraging the quiet achievers, those people who get a lot done but they do so by helping others. I think this senior manager is becoming more aware and asking herself: “How can we celebrate this behaviour—for them and for the company? How can we generate incentives?”

The greatest insight, which I’ve gotten from your book, is that it provides a framework for issues people may not have been naturally able to identify within themselves. They may in some cases have been uncomfortable with being burned too many times but still want to give.

That’s such an exciting way to think about these ideas.

Kevin, you’ve obviously demonstrated your style in all the time and effort you put into actually modelling this behaviour and trying to encourage others to adopt it as well.

I think it has given me a framework. Giving is something I am naturally inclined towards, simply because I enjoy helping people. Not because I want to get a return on it. I just didn’t think I was being as effective as I could be. The ideas in your book really helped put some frameworks around this. But in a way that can be maintained; in a way that’s natural; that’s not forced; that’s genuine and not just: “I should do this because it’ll be a good thing to do.”

Although all this must be natural I also realised from your book these frameworks are rather scientific—research‑driven. In saying that, one can’t operate as a person with all of this criteria needing to be ‘ticked off’ every day. It has to be a real, genuine, authentic characteristic and behaviour. Once you know that, then you work on it, you can—as Adam Rifkin says— focus and be more strategic about how you can best add value and how you can best help people.

The ‘five-minute’ favour activity, which Adam Rifkin suggests, has also influenced how I might see a quick way to help people or introduce somebody. Even on LinkedIn, where it is easy to recommend or endorse someone. It’s really simple. It’s the little things.

Excellent!

Image credit

Adam Grant portrait photography supplied by Adam Grant

Aiyemobisi ‘Bisi’ Williams—co-founder of Massive Change Network with Bruce Mau—shares her expert advice on how to foster change through collaboration and leading by design.

Design is Leadership: Lead by Design

Design often falls into the ho-hum status of how things look and feel. It’s true, the world notices the sleekness of a smartphone. The coolness of a Tesla. The hipness of a font. But what happens instead when design is lifted a bit higher and seen as a way to save the world?

It sounds grandiose, if not far-fetched, because we tend to think of the planet’s salvation as every problem solved in one fell swoop. But the process of design is really applicable to any challenge, and its tools are available to everyone. So if we all design one thing at a time, one solution after another, we can begin to understand that we truly can design a better future—before it even happens.

To me, that’s inspiring. And at Massive Change Network, the global design consultancy I co-founded with Bruce Mau, this is our first principle. We believe that to succeed, design must inspire. It needs to gather people up in its beauty and bring them along in the embracing vision of a better world.

It’s an optimism that’s actually fact-based. Our work is grounded in extensive research and close collaboration, incorporating ideas and perspectives from all levels of our studio and our clients’ organizations. It brings a diversity of roles and skills to the table, and at that amazing intersection of disciplines, we look for inspiration. And always find it.

The notion of design is expanding. It’s no longer about how things appear, but how something works. Design (if we dare to confine its wonder to a single word) gives us a process to align who we are with what we do, on every level. And that tends to reveal our Superpower.

Yes, Superpower. Each one of us has one. We possess an inherent strength, a talent, an insight, a piece of the greater solution to make even the most evil thing more beautiful. We just need to know how to use it. We can make the invisible visible, and when we visualize the challenge, the unseen obstacle to a better future, we can begin to articulate it.

To design a good life? That’s magical.

Design sends a message. And today, everything communicates. How we do things expresses who we are. It is ever more important to articulate it, so that you can align that understanding at every level of an organization. When you do that, you assume a mantel of design leadership. And if we don’t do that, if we simply fail to design, we design for failure.

The internet launched an age of transparency. We can no longer hide behind a scripted front because anyone can access information that demonstrates who we are. And that’s a big change: the explosion of information. In minutes, we can see what’s already been done and what others have tried. And because of technology, we can combine our Superpowers and collaborate as never before, even as a team spread across the globe.

There is power in numbers. Two heads being better than one is an enlivened maxim in the 21st century. And with innovation as the new normal, change is accelerating. Not only for creatives, but everyone. Anyone can be a designer. We can all take up the tools of design. It’s a skill set, it’s an imperative, and it’s wonderfully democratic, too—design is a mindset that is available to all.

Look, it’s just how I feel. Design is change. And together, we can change the world with design.

Image Credit:

Aiyemobisi ‘Bisi’ Williams portrait sourced from the Massive Change Network website