giver, taker, matcher
Have you ever seen a successful person at work? how does he interact with others? this time we will discuss the thoughts of Prof. Adam Grant about “Giver, Matcher, and Taker”
“According to conventional wisdom, highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability, and opportunity. If we want to succeed, we need a combination of hard work, talent, and luck. [But there is] a fourth ingredient, one that’s critical but often neglected: success depends heavily on how we approach our interactions with other people. Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?”
Sad but true. Sometimes we have friends who often claim our work or never acknowledge our contribution. At the same time, we have friends really like to help us. Friendships in the workplace are clearly covered by Adam Grant. Adam divides coworkers into 3 groups namely Giver, Taker, and Matcher.
Taker has a typical behavior: they like to get more than they give. They take mutual benefits for their own benefit, placing their own interests before the needs of others. Takers believes that the world is a competitive, dog-eat-dog place. They feel that to succeed, they must be better than others. To prove their competence, they promote themselves and make sure they get lots of praise for their efforts. Varietal growers are not cruel or cruel; they just take care of and protect themselves. “If I do not find myself first,” thinkers think, “no one will do it.”
In the workplace, givers are a relatively rare breed. They tilt reciprocity in the other direction, preferring to give more than they get. Whereas takers tend to be self-focused, evaluating what other people can offer them, givers are other-focused, paying more attention to what other people need from them. These preferences aren’t about money: givers and takers aren’t distinguished by how much they donate to charity or the compensation that they command from their employers. Rather, givers and takers differ in their attitudes and actions toward other people. If you’re a taker, you help others strategically, when the benefits to you outweigh the personal costs. If you’re a giver, you might use a different cost-benefit analysis: you help whenever the benefits to others exceed the personal costs. Alternatively, you might not think about the personal costs at all, helping others without expecting anything in return. If you’re a giver at work, you simply strive to be generous in sharing your time, energy, knowledge, skills, ideas, and connections with other people who can benefit from them.
We become matcher, striving to preserve an equal balance of giving and getting. Matchers operate on the principle of fairness: when they help others, they protect themselves by seeking reciprocity. If you’re a matcher, you believe in tit for tat, and your relationships are governed by even exchanges of favors.
After we understand the 3 types of coworkers, which one we meet most? giver, taker or matcher? we must be very careful with Taker because he can destroy or at least hinder our careers.
