MANAGEMENT SPECIAL...................guru speak ADAM GRANT - Willing to Help

Guru speak ADAM GRANT - Willing to Help





Adam Grant, Professor, The Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania Organisations are full of Givers and Takers. No prizes for guessing which type is more successful

The era of the alpha executive is over. Research shows that dominating power-seekers are not the ones who succeed in an organisation -the best managers are those who collaborate with people, without trying to control them. In this interview, Adam Grant, professor of management and psychology at the Wharton School of Business, presents a fresh way to look at people in the workplace. Edited excerpts:

Who are the `givers' and `takers' in the workplace?

Takers view interactions as a way of extracting value from other people and approach people with a mindset of, `How can I get as much as possible from this exchange?' At the other end of the spectrum, givers come to an interaction trying to figure out, `What can I contribute here?
How can I add value?' That usually means looking for ways to be helpful, without strings attached. It might involve sharing knowledge, providing mentoring, making introductions, or showing up early or staying late to help a colleague out.

And what are matchers?

In the majority of our interactions, most of us operate by the principle of matching. If you're a Matcher by default, your instinct is to try to maintain an even balance of give-and-take in your interactions. You try to keep fairness and a sense of quid pro quo in your dealings with others.

Who is most likely to end up at the top of the success ladder?

This surprises many people: it's the givers. But interestingly, they are also most likely to sink to the bottom -and I love that paradox. Some givers don't succeed because they are too self-sacrificing, to the point of becoming doormats. Successful givers also put other people's interests first, they don't do so to their own detriment. They proactively block out windows of time to get their own work done, then dedicate separate periods to be helpful to others. Also, instead of being `generalists' in helping people with any request that comes up, they are more like specialists: they find ways to help that they are uniquely good at, and enjoy. This way, the act of giving is energising to them rather than distracting and exhausting.

In their interactions, successful givers look for ways to expand the `pie', so that everybody around them can be better off. Part of what makes them so successful is that they find greater meaning and purpose in their work because they feel that they truly make a difference. They make it clear that their colleagues really matter to them.Therefore, they end up building deep relationships with people who often become sources of creative ideas and opening doors to new opportunities.

Can this classification be used to evaluate talent?

The war for talent tends to focus on finding people with `raw ability'. Yet wonderful books -like Mindset by Stanford's Carol Dweck and The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle -have shown that talent isn't just born: it is also learned, honed and developed.

The Taker mindset is, `I'm going to hire the best talent possible so that I win and everybody else loses'. Failed givers are the ones who promote talent in a way that they themselves lose out. Successful givers try to promote talent, so that it's a win-win for all. They spend time and effort figuring out how to bring you to the best of your ability, doing in a way that's good for the organisation and for them.

In one major study, Benjamin Bloom tracked world class athletes, musicians and chess players, among others. He found that the vast majority of them were not that special in their early lives: they didn't win all their competitions; they didn't have the fastest times as swimmers or the best track record as tennis players; they weren't playing Carnegie Hall by age seven.Basically, they were average. The question was, how did they become so great?
Bloom found that they often had a first teacher or coach who made the activity fun for them. In my opinion, those coaches and teachers were all givers. They might have said to their young student, `Look, I'm not going to sit you down and make you drill away at the piano for hours; instead, I'm going to make a game out of this, so that you really enjoy music and become intrinsically motivated. Hence you will put in the time, energy and practice required to develop this skill'.

That's an example of how givers think about talent differently. They look for the potential in everyone, and they set challenging goals for the people they work with. As a result, they tend to uncover `diamonds in the rough', and more often than not, they're able to bring these people to higher levels of potential than anyone ever thought would be possible.

Research shows that there are two traditional paths to influence: dominance and prestige. How do these paths apply to givers and takers?

Takers tend to pursue the dominance path: they try to earn respect and influence by being assertive, controlling things and conveying that they are superior to others. This approach can work well, if you don't have to depend on other people, collaborate with them or serve them. But as soon as you shift to an interactive scenario, the giver's approach is much more effective. It says, `Look, I don't have to be better than you or more powerful than you in order to earn your trust or for you to see me as somebody who's competent and worthy of respect'. Givers don't see status as a zero-sum game, and they recognise that they can earn respect by helping people as opposed to controlling them. CD Reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Managment.

http:www.rotmanmagazine.ca

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