GIVE AND TAKE
The inaugural series of BOOKSHELF focuses on Adam Grant’s Give and Take. An incredibly insightful business book that takes a deep dive into psychological behaviors and motivations. Grant provides an overview of different types of people in the professional setting and demonstrates how they can be categorized as Givers, Takers, and Matchers. While these categories are helpful to understand, Grant notes that many people exist on a spectrum, with Matchers in the middle and Givers and Takers anchoring the opposite poles.
Case studies are discussed, and many real-world entrepreneurs and executives are profiled along with their past behavior and INNSIGHT as to where they fall on the spectrum. As a business development professional, it is equally important to understand where your prospective client, connector, and you personally fit into a category or fall on the Giver-Taker-Matcher spectrum. Self-reflect on your behaviors and interactions with others to gain an honest and objective analysis about how you act and, ultimately, how you are perceived by peers and prospects. Remember that there is no right or wrong answer – nor is one category more prone to success than the next. Understanding yourself will help you modify your behaviors to better interact with others that fall and operate at different points of the spectrum.
You need to be able to develop the skills required to quickly identify where others fall on the Giver-Taker-Matcher spectrum – so that you can interact with them as efficiently as possible. Understanding how others are motivated and behave is a key attribute for a business development professional.
Grant’s profile of Givers begins with perhaps the most altruistic of examples. Givers are people that are consistently willing and helping others with virtually no regard for reciprocity or attempting to achieve a quid pro quo. Givers come in many different forms in the professional setting and are not limited exclusively to people like Gandhi or Mother Theresa or people that work in the not-for-profit sector. Givers are co-workers or employees willing and happy to spend time with less-experienced team members, friends, or acquaintances; teaching, collaborating, or mentoring. Givers are people who stay late to complete a team project or drive a co-worker to an appointment or an event without the ulterior motive of climbing the corporate ladder or seeking payment in return for their deeds.
In our experience, Givers make excellent Business Development Professionals in general, and their success is even more pronounced in the Hospitality Capital Project industry due to the size of our niche industry along with the fact that we have a typically long sales cycle.
While it likely takes years to build a deep and vast rolodex of clients, connectors, and prospects, a Giver’s network begins to grow exponentially, relatively quickly, especially in comparison to the Takers or Matchers.
As each interaction occurs, Givers attempt to continually add value, without ever asking for something in return. The added-value and absence of a feeling of being “Sold to” or “Closed” builds a relationship where the prospect knows and believes that the Giver has their best intentions at heart. Trust is built along with familiarity; more often than not, true friendships are developed. Regardless of what marketing and branding gurus may promote, people do business with people, not with companies.
It is true that a long-standing client or customer can become frustrated with a lackluster employee or team and decide to take their business elsewhere, but it is also true that many purchasing decisions are made because they believe the Business Development Professional will make sure that the client’s interests are protected.
Matchers are middle-ground between Givers and Takers and are continually preoccupied with ensuring that each interaction they partake in occurs with balance and that the exchange of favors, resources, and information occur in an immediate, or very near future, win-win fashion. Matchers provide value and support so long as they believe that benefits will be returned at an equal (matching) degree. The return in value does not necessarily need to occur immediately – Matchers can be generous with their giving and patient with their receiving if they are convinced the benefits, value, or favor will be returned eventually. Matchers also make excellent Business Development Professionals as they are prone to seek out and develop new, positive relationships while also compelled to nurture existing relationships that are synergistic. A term my father would use frequently is “enlightened self-interest.” I make you happy, you want to make me happy – we are all happy.
While there are numerous differences between Givers and Matchers of particular note, Matchers are less likely to spend time giving to a prospect that eventually may potentially return little to no value at all, which is not the case with Givers.
However, while Matchers will invest their time and effort in prospects with immediate or near future potential, they may frequently miss out on opportunities to develop strong, valuable, and long-standing relationships simply due to the fear that there’s “nothing in it” for them. Conversely, Givers tend to nurture most, if not all, relationships.
Both Givers and Matchers are essential personality types in your Business Development and Executive teams. If this were a competitive sports setting, you could consider your Giver to be the Scouting Director, always spending time investing in young up-and-coming players in your development pipeline as well as players on the roster and those rostered on other teams. Your Matcher is your General Manager, focused on the here and now, making your team better by trading current players and assets based on their immediate or near immediate perceived value.
Lastly, we have the Takers. By no means does Grant posit that Givers are good, Takers are bad, and Matchers meet in the middle. Takers can be (and often are) great, kind, and generous people. It is important to understand that the Taker enters every interaction concerned with how much value they will be able to extract from the relationship. The Taker believes that virtually every interaction works as a zero-sum game. One must lose in order for the other to win. The value or benefit of the win does not need to be immediate; Takers will gladly give and provide value upfront as long as they believe that at some point in time, they will receive back the more value than what they have given. This is the most important trait for a Business Development Professional to understand, whether they are a Taker, a connector is a Taker, and or if their prospective client is a Taker.
Takers need to believe that they have come out on top; they need to leave each interaction with a net gain or a near-future net gain. Business Development Professionals who are Takers can still be highly successful and actually, they are those that tend to be the most successful in the shortest amount of time. As they are always looking at immediate wins in the short to medium term, when successful, they will be the first to put points on the board. They do, however, struggle with relationship longevity. For example, if a prospect becomes a client and is only dealing with the Taker, each interaction they have where they feel that they are at a net loss in terms of benefit or value provides for a window of opportunity for a Giver from a competing firm to swoop in and win the next engagement.
Remember that dealing with Takers is not necessarily a losing proposition. Takers operate based in their desire to win and in many cases, a Taker’s target may be of much more importance to them than it is to you or the prospect. Understanding motives, values and behaviors may just provide you with an opportunity to generate a win for all parties (you just need to make sure that the Taker believes that they are winning more).
Ultimately a Business Development team and the entire organization for that matter needs all types of personalities and all types of clients, connectors, and prospects. Givers, Takers, and Matchers all play vital roles in you or your firm’s growth and development. The quicker and more accurately you are able to identify the different types within your organization and your network, the more successful you will become.
About the Author - rem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Quis ipsum suspendiss. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do.
