Forbes: Do Nice People Succeed In Business? It Depends
... So much for everyday life—how about the business world? That’s where Adam Grant’s Give and Take comes in. Many people implicitly think that niceness is a virtue for the rest of life, but when it comes to playing business hardball, only the selfish survive. The message of Grant’s book is that this isn’t true, and he gives us both scientific evidence and entertaining profiles for understanding why. Grant divides people into three behavioral categories: givers, matchers, and takers. As their names imply, givers are sweeties who unstintingly share their time and talent, seemingly for the sheer pleasure of it. Matchers calibrate their giving to their taking, and takers take whatever they can get. Who does best playing business hardball? It turns out that the givers do best and worst. When they succumb to the depredations of takers, they become doormats and chumps. But when they manage to work with other givers, they produce spectacular wealth and share the collective benefits. In other words, the costs and benefits of prosociality in the business world are no different than for the rest of life. ...
... In a video interview with one of us (David S. Wilson), Grant said that Wharton students are constantly coming into his office expressing a desire to give, which they assume must be suppressed in their business lives until they make a fortune. Only then can they express their desire to give by becoming philanthropists. If that’s the way that business school students think, then the message of Grant’s book is indeed revolutionary. We need to exchange lenses to see that giving can succeed as a business strategy from day one, as long as givers can keep their distance from takers. Businesses flourish when they create social environments that allow niceness to generate value, thereby winning the Darwinian contest.
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