Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

Are you a giver or a taker? Wharton professor Adam Grant, who wrote a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling book called Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, says there are basically three kinds of people: givers, takers and matchers. While it seems like takers always wind up at the top, Grant says it’s quite the contrary. Givers, he says, come out ahead, provided that they take care of themselves.

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Takers believe in a zero sum world where you have to win at all costs. Givers, on the other hand, go the extra mile to do favors for people without expecting anything in return. Matchers believe in a just, quid pro quo world.

There are two kinds of givers: Selfless givers and Otherish givers. Selfless givers give without regard for their own welfare and therefore wind up at the bottom. They deplete all their resources and, as a result, can’t take care of themselves. They don’t have the ability to keep giving. They don’t know how to manage their lives effectively.

Otherish givers, on the other hand, wind up at the top. They know how to negotiate the giving boundaries, so they can continue to give.

Givers need to block out time for themselves. As long as givers have not depleted their own resources taking care of others, they’ll do well for themselves and society.

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Unfortunately, Grant says, the negative impact of a taker is double or triple that of a giver in a culture.

This week I attended a workshop by Patience Lehrman. Patience is a recipient of the Presidential Citizen’s Medal, the second highest civilian award in the United States. She was talking about transforming your life through an attitude of service.

Patience had us do an exercise where we were to come up with two things we wanted help with that somebody in the room could help them with. The two questions I got were as follows: 1) I’d like to know what Jamaican food trucks at Temple (University) are good, and 2) I want to learn how to create and market an interactive e-book with a cognitive tutor.

Well, I asked one of the videographers at their TED Talks Live! program at the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia if he knew the answer to question #1. He did. For those of you in Philly and attend (or live near) Temple he told me there is a good one on Montgomery right next to a Middle Eastern truck.

As for the second one, I didn’t get a chance to ask the person who penned the question what she meant by “with a cognitive tutor” but I thought I’d put the first part of the question out there to see how many givers there are.  How do YOU create and market an interactive e-book? Thanks in advance for answering.

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