The way you operate at work plays a crucial role in your career success.
Much of that depends on how you interact (e.g., cooperate, collaborate and manage conflicts) with your colleagues, clients, bosses and people in your professional network. Social psychologists call this your reciprocation style.
In his bestselling book, “Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success,” organizational psychologist and Wharton professor Adam Grant lays out three key reciprocation styles found in the workplace:
Takers see the world as a hypercompetitive rat race. Since they assume that no one else will look out for them, they place their own interests first and last. They may choose to help others strategically, but only when the benefit seems to exceed the cost.
Matchers operate tit for tat. When people do them a favor, they repay in a capacity that is no more, no less. And when they help someone, they expect the same in return.
Givers focus on others more than on themselves. They pay close attention to what people need from them, whether it’s time or ideas or mentorship. A rarity in the workplace, according to Grant, their style is more typical of the way we treat family and friends.
Givers pay it forward
In any given field, you’ll find givers near the top of their career ladder. As they pay it forward, according to a number of studies, givers make for more efficient engineers or higher-grossing salespeople than takers or matchers.
Grant proposes that these high performers are strategic in the choices they make and the limits they set. This, of course, is what also makes them more appealing and desirable to employers.
Most of all, they’ve learned how to get help when they need it, and they’re skilled at receiving as well as giving. “Successful givers are every bit as ambitious as takers and matchers,” Grant writes in his book. “They simply have a different way of pursuing their goals.”
He even goes further to state that being a giver may actually be a sign of intelligence.
