WEBVTT

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I want you to look
around the room for a minute

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and try to find the most
paranoid person here --

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(Laughter)

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And then I want you to point
at that person for me.

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(Laughter)

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OK, don't actually do it.

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(Laughter)

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But, as an organizational psychologist,

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I spend a lot of time in workplaces,

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and I find paranoia everywhere.

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Paranoia is caused by people
that I call "takers."

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Takers are self-serving
in their interactions.

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It's all about what can you do for me.

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The opposite is a giver.

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It's somebody who approaches
most interactions by asking,

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"What can I do for you?"

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I wanted to give you a chance
to think about your own style.

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We all have moments of giving and taking.

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Your style is how you treat
most of the people most of the time,

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your default.

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I have a short test you can take

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to figure out if you're more
of a giver or a taker,

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and you can take it right now.

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[The Narcissist Test]

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[Step 1: Take a moment
to think about yourself.]

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(Laughter)

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[Step 2: If you made it to Step 2,
you are not a narcissist.]

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(Laughter)

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This is the only thing I will say today
that has no data behind it,

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but I am convinced the longer it takes
for you to laugh at this cartoon,

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the more worried we should be
that you're a taker.

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(Laughter)

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Of course, not all takers are narcissists.

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Some are just givers who got burned
one too many times.

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Then there's another kind of taker
that we won't be addressing today,

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and that's called a psychopath.

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(Laughter)

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I was curious, though, about how
common these extremes are,

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and so I surveyed over 30,000
people across industries

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around the world's cultures.

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And I found that most people
are right in the middle

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between giving and taking.

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They choose this third style
called "matching."

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If you're a matcher, you try to keep
an even balance of give and take:

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quid pro quo -- I'll do something
for you if you do something for me.

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And that seems like a safe way
to live your life.

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But is it the most effective
and productive way to live your life?

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The answer to that question
is a very definitive ...

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maybe.

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(Laughter)

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I studied dozens of organizations,

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thousands of people.

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I had engineers measuring
their productivity.

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(Laughter)

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I looked at medical students' grades --

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even salespeople's revenue.

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(Laughter)

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And, unexpectedly,

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the worst performers in each
of these jobs were the givers.

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The engineers who got the least work done

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were the ones who did more favors
than they got back.

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They were so busy doing
other people's jobs,

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they literally ran out of time and energy
to get their own work completed.

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In medical school, the lowest grades
belong to the students

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who agree most strongly
with statements like,

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"I love helping others,"

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which suggests the doctor
you ought to trust

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is the one who came to med school
with no desire to help anybody.

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(Laughter)

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And then in sales, too,
the lowest revenue accrued

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in the most generous salespeople.

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I actually reached out
to one of those salespeople

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who had a very high giver score.

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And I asked him, "Why do
you suck at your job --"

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I didn't ask it that way, but --

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(Laughter)

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"What's the cost of generosity in sales?"

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And he said, "Well, I just care
so deeply about my customers

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that I would never sell them
one of our crappy products."

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(Laughter)

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So just out of curiosity,

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how many of you self-identify more
as givers than takers or matchers?

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Raise your hands.

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OK, it would have been more
before we talked about these data.

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But actually, it turns out
there's a twist here,

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because givers are often
sacrificing themselves,

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but they make their organizations better.

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We have a huge body of evidence --

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many, many studies looking
at the frequency of giving behavior

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that exists in a team
or an organization --

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and the more often people are helping
and sharing their knowledge

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and providing mentoring,

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the better organizations do
on every metric we can measure:

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higher profits, customer satisfaction,
employee retention --

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even lower operating expenses.

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So givers spend a lot of time
trying to help other people

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and improve the team,

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and then, unfortunately,
they suffer along the way.

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I want to talk about what it takes

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to build cultures where givers
actually get to succeed.

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So I wondered, then, if givers
are the worst performers,

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who are the best performers?

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Let me start with the good news:
it's not the takers.

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Takers tend to rise quickly
but also fall quickly in most jobs.

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And they fall at the hands of matchers.

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If you're a matcher, you believe
in "An eye for an eye" -- a just world.

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And so when you meet a taker,

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you feel like it's your mission in life

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to just punish the hell
out of that person.

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(Laughter)

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And that way justice gets served.

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Well, most people are matchers.

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And that means if you're a taker,

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it tends to catch up with you eventually;

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what goes around will come around.

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And so the logical conclusion is:

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it must be the matchers
who are the best performers.

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But they're not.

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In every job, in every organization
I've ever studied,

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the best results belong
to the givers again.

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Take a look at some data I gathered
from hundreds of salespeople,

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tracking their revenue.

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What you can see is that the givers
go to both extremes.

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They make up the majority of people
who bring in the lowest revenue,

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but also the highest revenue.

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The same patterns were true
for engineers' productivity

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and medical students' grades.

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Givers are overrepresented
at the bottom and at the top

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of every success metric that I can track.

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Which raises the question:

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How do we create a world
where more of these givers get to excel?

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I want to talk about how to do that,
not just in businesses,

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but also in nonprofits, schools --

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even governments.

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Are you ready?

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(Cheers)

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I was going to do it anyway,
but I appreciate the enthusiasm.

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(Laughter)

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The first thing that's really critical

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is to recognize that givers
are your most valuable people,

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but if they're not careful, they burn out.

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So you have to protect
the givers in your midst.

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And I learned a great lesson about this
from Fortune's best networker.

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It's the guy, not the cat.

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(Laughter)

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His name is Adam Rifkin.

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He's a very successful serial entrepreneur

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who spends a huge amount
of his time helping other people.

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And his secret weapon
is the five-minute favor.

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Adam said, "You don't have to be
Mother Teresa or Gandhi

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to be a giver.

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You just have to find small ways
to add large value

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to other people's lives."

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That could be as simple
as making an introduction

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between two people who could
benefit from knowing each other.

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It could be sharing your knowledge
or giving a little bit of feedback.

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Or It might be even something
as basic as saying,

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"You know,

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I'm going to try and figure out

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if I can recognize somebody
whose work has gone unnoticed."

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And those five-minute favors
are really critical

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to helping givers set boundaries
and protect themselves.

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The second thing that matters

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if you want to build a culture
where givers succeed,

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is you actually need a culture
where help-seeking is the norm;

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where people ask a lot.

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This may hit a little too close
to home for some of you.

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[So in all your relationships,
you always have to be the giver?]

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(Laughter)

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What you see with successful givers

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is they recognize that it's OK
to be a receiver, too.

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If you run an organization,
we can actually make this easier.

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We can make it easier
for people to ask for help.

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A couple colleagues and I
studied hospitals.

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We found that on certain floors,
nurses did a lot of help-seeking,

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and on other floors,
they did very little of it.

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The factor that stood out on the floors
where help-seeking was common,

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where it was the norm,

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was there was just one nurse
whose sole job it was

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to help other nurses on the unit.

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When that role was available,

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nurses said, "It's not embarrassing,
it's not vulnerable to ask for help --

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it's actually encouraged."

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Help-seeking isn't important
just for protecting the success

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and the well-being of givers.

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It's also critical to getting
more people to act like givers,

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because the data say

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that somewhere between 75 and 90 percent
of all giving in organizations

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starts with a request.

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But a lot of people don't ask.

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They don't want to look incompetent,

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they don't know where to turn,
they don't want to burden others.

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Yet if nobody ever asks for help,

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you have a lot of frustrated givers
in your organization

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who would love to step up and contribute,

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if they only knew
who could benefit and how.

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But I think the most important thing,

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if you want to build a culture
of successful givers,

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is to be thoughtful about who
you let onto your team.

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I figured, you want a culture
of productive generosity,

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you should hire a bunch of givers.

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But I was surprised to discover, actually,
that that was not right --

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that the negative impact
of a taker on a culture

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is usually double to triple
the positive impact of a giver.

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Think about it this way:

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one bad apple can spoil a barrel,

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but one good egg
just does not make a dozen.

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I don't know what that means --

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(Laughter)

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But I hope you do.

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No -- let even one taker into a team,

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and you will see that the givers
will stop helping.

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They'll say, "I'm surrounded
by a bunch of snakes and sharks.

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Why should I contribute?"

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Whereas if you let one giver into a team,

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you don't get an explosion of generosity.

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More often, people are like,

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"Great! That person can do all our work."

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So, effective hiring and screening
and team building

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is not about bringing in the givers;

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it's about weeding out the takers.

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If you can do that well,

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you'll be left with givers and matchers.

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The givers will be generous

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because they don't have to worry
about the consequences.

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And the beauty of the matchers
is that they follow the norm.

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So how do you catch a taker
before it's too late?

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We're actually pretty bad
at figuring out who's a taker,

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especially on first impressions.

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There's a personality trait
that throws us off.

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It's called agreeableness,

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one the major dimensions
of personality across cultures.

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Agreeable people are warm and friendly,
they're nice, they're polite.

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You find a lot of them in Canada --

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(Laughter)

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Where there was actually
a national contest

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to come up with a new Canadian slogan
and fill in the blank,

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"As Canadian as ..."

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I thought the winning entry
was going to be,

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"As Canadian as maple syrup,"
or, "... ice hockey."

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But no, Canadians voted
for their new national slogan to be --

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I kid you not --

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"As Canadian as possible
under the circumstances."

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(Laughter)

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Now for those of you
who are highly agreeable,

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or maybe slightly Canadian,

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you get this right away.

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How could I ever say I'm any one thing

00:09:48.334 --> 00:09:51.160 align:center
when I'm constantly adapting
to try to please other people?

00:09:51.664 --> 00:09:53.487 align:center
Disagreeable people do less of it.

00:09:53.511 --> 00:09:56.448 align:center
They're more critical,
skeptical, challenging,

00:09:56.472 --> 00:09:59.526 align:center
and far more likely than their peers
to go to law school.

00:09:59.550 --> 00:10:00.693 align:center
(Laughter)

00:10:00.717 --> 00:10:03.372 align:center
That's not a joke,
that's actually an empirical fact.

00:10:03.396 --> 00:10:04.455 align:center
(Laughter)

00:10:04.479 --> 00:10:07.028 align:center
So I always assumed
that agreeable people were givers

00:10:07.052 --> 00:10:08.999 align:center
and disagreeable people were takers.

00:10:09.023 --> 00:10:10.453 align:center
But then I gathered the data,

00:10:10.477 --> 00:10:13.590 align:center
and I was stunned to find
no correlation between those traits,

00:10:13.614 --> 00:10:16.273 align:center
because it turns out
that agreeableness-disagreeableness

00:10:16.297 --> 00:10:17.460 align:center
is your outer veneer:

00:10:17.484 --> 00:10:19.425 align:center
How pleasant is it to interact with you?

00:10:19.449 --> 00:10:22.141 align:center
Whereas giving and taking
are more of your inner motives:

00:10:22.165 --> 00:10:25.057 align:center
What are your values?
What are your intentions toward others?

00:10:25.081 --> 00:10:27.273 align:center
If you really want to judge
people accurately,

00:10:27.297 --> 00:10:30.814 align:center
you have to get to the moment every
consultant in the room is waiting for,

00:10:30.838 --> 00:10:32.003 align:center
and draw a two-by-two.

00:10:32.027 --> 00:10:34.125 align:center
(Laughter)

00:10:36.912 --> 00:10:38.919 align:center
The agreeable givers are easy to spot:

00:10:38.943 --> 00:10:41.577 align:center
they say yes to everything.

00:10:43.004 --> 00:10:45.877 align:center
The disagreeable takers
are also recognized quickly,

00:10:45.901 --> 00:10:49.808 align:center
although you might call them
by a slightly different name.

00:10:49.832 --> 00:10:51.696 align:center
(Laughter)

00:10:53.092 --> 00:10:55.164 align:center
We forget about the other
two combinations.

00:10:55.188 --> 00:10:58.523 align:center
There are disagreeable givers
in our organizations.

00:10:58.547 --> 00:11:01.188 align:center
There are people who are gruff
and tough on the surface

00:11:01.212 --> 00:11:03.750 align:center
but underneath have
others' best interests at heart.

00:11:04.353 --> 00:11:05.716 align:center
Or as an engineer put it,

00:11:05.740 --> 00:11:07.346 align:center
"Oh, disagreeable givers --

00:11:07.370 --> 00:11:11.246 align:center
like somebody with a bad user interface
but a great operating system."

00:11:11.270 --> 00:11:12.556 align:center
(Laughter)

00:11:12.580 --> 00:11:13.951 align:center
If that helps you.

00:11:13.975 --> 00:11:15.125 align:center
(Laughter)

00:11:15.688 --> 00:11:19.191 align:center
Disagreeable givers are the most
undervalued people in our organizations,

00:11:19.215 --> 00:11:21.807 align:center
because they're the ones
who give the critical feedback

00:11:21.831 --> 00:11:24.437 align:center
that no one wants to hear
but everyone needs to hear.

00:11:24.461 --> 00:11:26.949 align:center
We need to do a much better job
valuing these people

00:11:26.973 --> 00:11:28.761 align:center
as opposed to writing them off early,

00:11:28.785 --> 00:11:30.529 align:center
and saying, "Eh, kind of prickly,

00:11:30.553 --> 00:11:32.050 align:center
must be a selfish taker."

00:11:33.113 --> 00:11:35.872 align:center
The other combination we forget about
is the deadly one --

00:11:35.896 --> 00:11:38.578 align:center
the agreeable taker,
also known as the faker.

00:11:39.708 --> 00:11:41.773 align:center
This is the person
who's nice to your face,

00:11:41.797 --> 00:11:43.777 align:center
and then will stab you right in the back.

00:11:43.801 --> 00:11:45.133 align:center
(Laughter)

00:11:45.801 --> 00:11:49.035 align:center
And my favorite way to catch
these people in the interview process

00:11:49.059 --> 00:11:50.331 align:center
is to ask the question,

00:11:50.355 --> 00:11:52.317 align:center
"Can you give me the names of four people

00:11:52.341 --> 00:11:54.710 align:center
whose careers you have
fundamentally improved?"

00:11:55.688 --> 00:11:57.581 align:center
The takers will give you four names,

00:11:57.605 --> 00:12:00.302 align:center
and they will all be more
influential than them,

00:12:00.326 --> 00:12:03.528 align:center
because takers are great at kissing up
and then kicking down.

00:12:04.221 --> 00:12:07.621 align:center
Givers are more likely to name people
who are below them in a hierarchy,

00:12:07.645 --> 00:12:09.191 align:center
who don't have as much power,

00:12:09.215 --> 00:12:10.587 align:center
who can do them no good.

00:12:10.987 --> 00:12:14.161 align:center
And let's face it, you all know
you can learn a lot about character

00:12:14.185 --> 00:12:16.740 align:center
by watching how someone
treats their restaurant server

00:12:16.764 --> 00:12:17.927 align:center
or their Uber driver.

00:12:18.583 --> 00:12:19.849 align:center
So if we do all this well,

00:12:19.873 --> 00:12:21.957 align:center
if we can weed takers
out of organizations,

00:12:21.981 --> 00:12:23.893 align:center
if we can make it safe to ask for help,

00:12:23.917 --> 00:12:25.931 align:center
if we can protect givers from burnout

00:12:25.955 --> 00:12:29.182 align:center
and make it OK for them to be ambitious
in pursuing their own goals

00:12:29.206 --> 00:12:31.362 align:center
as well as trying to help other people,

00:12:31.386 --> 00:12:34.293 align:center
we can actually change the way
that people define success.

00:12:34.317 --> 00:12:37.669 align:center
Instead of saying it's all about
winning a competition,

00:12:37.693 --> 00:12:41.233 align:center
people will realize success
is really more about contribution.

00:12:42.025 --> 00:12:44.386 align:center
I believe that the most
meaningful way to succeed

00:12:44.410 --> 00:12:46.280 align:center
is to help other people succeed.

00:12:46.304 --> 00:12:47.975 align:center
And if we can spread that belief,

00:12:47.999 --> 00:12:50.650 align:center
we can actually turn paranoia upside down.

00:12:50.674 --> 00:12:51.837 align:center
There's a name for that.

00:12:51.861 --> 00:12:53.297 align:center
It's called "pronoia."

00:12:54.289 --> 00:12:55.986 align:center
Pronoia is the delusional belief

00:12:56.010 --> 00:12:58.610 align:center
that other people
are plotting your well-being.

00:12:58.634 --> 00:13:00.157 align:center
(Laughter)

00:13:02.172 --> 00:13:04.725 align:center
That they're going around behind your back

00:13:04.749 --> 00:13:07.665 align:center
and saying exceptionally
glowing things about you.

00:13:08.911 --> 00:13:12.720 align:center
The great thing about a culture of givers
is that's not a delusion --

00:13:12.744 --> 00:13:13.978 align:center
it's reality.

00:13:14.961 --> 00:13:17.537 align:center
I want to live in a world
where givers succeed,

00:13:17.561 --> 00:13:19.883 align:center
and I hope you will help me
create that world.

00:13:19.907 --> 00:13:21.128 align:center
Thank you.

00:13:21.152 --> 00:13:26.438 align:center
(Applause)