Give and Take Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

Brief Summary

At the end of the day, we must decide: are we going to be givers or takers? Is it possible to be a combination thereof? According to Adam Grant, author of Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, the way we answer this question is critical to our professional success. Givers and takers are opposites, and thus, we must be one or the other--we cannot be both at any given time. In a rapidly evolving world, it is important to consider the role you play. Are you a giver who pulls others up as you climb the ladder to success or are you a taker who steps on the heads of those at the bottom? It is time to make a conscious choice.

About the Author

Adam Grant was born in 1981 in West Bloomfield, Michigan. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a Ph.D in organizational psychology, Grant began his teaching career with a professorship at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill in 2007.

In 2009, Grant left UNC for the Wharton School of the University Pennsylvania. Grant became the university’s youngest tenured professor when he began teaching there at age 28.

Throughout his prestigious career, Grant authored several books in addition to Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. His other titles include Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World and also Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy which he c0-wrote with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

While he was at the University of Michigan, Grant worked as a professional magician.

Topics

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Key Insights

In Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, Adam Grant invites readers to explore what it really means to give and take. While traditional teaching tells us we must take what it is we need, Grant uncovers the many reasons why it is actually the givers who win in the end.

And oftentimes, the givers carry others with them on the road to success.

Givers and Takers

Givers--they give far more than they get

Takers--they take far more than they give

To takers, the world is a battleground. Life is an unforgiving game and you need to take as much as you can. You only help others if the benefit is far greater than the cost. For example, Michael Jordan’s personal philosophy is “To be successful, you have to be selfish.” He is known for speaking out against increasing team revenue shares when he was a team owner, the converse of his opinion as a player.

To givers, on the other hand, helping others is a reward in and of itself. For example, George Meyer, writer for The Simpsons, encouraged other writers to use his ideas for the show. As a result, he is only credited with writing 12 episodes when he actually penned more than 300. For George Meyer, helping his colleagues was more important than receiving recognition.

The Importance of the Social Circle

When we need to ask for a favor, we are most likely to turn to our closest friends and family members first. The alternative feels awkward: we wonder what right we have to ask for something from an individual we have not been in contact with recently.

However, research shows that most givers are actually not phased by not knowing a recipient of their generosity very well--or by not having been in communication with them lately.

Quite the contrary.

For instance, let’s look at Adam Rifkin, cofounder of the company 106 Miles. Twice each month, Rifkin holds events where entrepreneurs come together as a group and he then provides feedback on their ideas, assists them in getting jobs, and helps connect them to his extensive network.

While it is likely that Adam Rifkin started holding these gatherings based on a sense of altruism, the successful entrepreneur has benefitted from his own generosity as well.

He was able to use the ‘social capital’ he received from his networking events to ask for a favor of his own. When starting a company called Excite, he received advice from Graham Spencer--a person he had not seen in five years. Even so, Spencer remembered Rifkin for his assistance from years ago and was compelled to help him out with this new endeavor.

Givers commonly believe that pool knowledge benefits everyone.

Excessive Taking

For those who take and take, a price is often paid in the form of a damaged reputation and lost respect. This is referred to as a taker tax. According to this phenomenon, the more an individual takes, the more likely he or she is to experience negative repercussions as a result of word of mouth.

For instance, Frank Lloyd Wright...