Give and Take

by Adam Grant

  The same patterns emerged for world-class tennis players. When Bloom’s team interviewed eighteen American tennis players who had been ranked in the top ten in the world, they found that although their first coaches “were not exceptional coaches, they tended to be very good with young children . . . What this first coach provided was motivation for the child to become interested in tennis and to spend time practicing.”

  In roles as leaders and mentors, givers resist the temptation to search for talent first. By recognizing that anyone can be a bloomer, givers focus their attention on motivation. The top-ranked tennis players tended to have a first coach who took “a special interest in the tennis player,” Bloom’s team notes, “usually because he perceived the player as being motivated and willing to work hard, rather than because of any special physical abilities.”

  In the accounting classroom, looking for motivation and work ethic, not only intellectual ability, is part of what has made C. J. Skender so successful in recognizing talent. When Skender bet Beth Traynham that she would pass the CPA exam, it wasn’t because she was unusually gifted in accounting. It was because he noticed “how hard she worked all semester.” When Skender recognized that Reggie Love had promise, whereas others wrote him off as just another jock, it was because Love “worked diligently, and was always prepared for class,” Skender says. “He was interested in learning and bettering himself.” When Skender encouraged Marie Arcuri, it was because she was “the most involved and committed individual I have ever met. Her persistence set her apart.”

  The psychologist Angela Duckworth calls this grit: having passion and perseverance toward long-term goals. Her research shows that above and beyond intelligence and aptitude, gritty people—by virtue of their interest, focus, and drive—achieve higher performance. “Persistence is incredibly important,” says psychologist Tom Kolditz, a brigadier general who headed up behavioral sciences and leadership at the U.S. Military Academy for a dozen years. The standard selection rate for Army officers to key command positions is 12 percent; Kolditz’s former faculty have been selected at rates as high as 75 percent, and he chalks much of it up to selecting candidates based on grit. As George Anders writes in The Rare Find, “you can’t take motivation for granted.”

  Of course, natural talent also matters, but once you have a pool of candidates above the threshold of necessary potential, grit is a major factor that predicts how close they get to achieving their potential. This is why givers focus on gritty people: it’s where givers have the greatest return on their investment, the most meaningful and lasting impact. And along with investing their time in motivating gritty people, givers like Skender strive to cultivate grit in the first place. “Setting high expectations is so important,” Skender says. “You have to push people, make them stretch and do more than they think possible. When they take my tests, I want them thinking it was the toughest exam they’ve ever seen in their lives. It makes them better learners.” To encourage effort, he gives them a half dozen past exams for practice. “They need to make a significant investment, and it pays off. Forcing them to work harder than they ever have in their lives benefits them in the long run.”

  One of the keys to cultivating grit is making the task at hand more interesting and motivating. In Bloom’s study, across the board, the talented musicians and athletes were initially taught by givers, teachers who

  liked children and rewarded them with praise, signs of approval, or even candy when they did anything right. They were extremely encouraging. They were enthusiastic about the talent field and what they had to teach these children. In many cases . . . they treated the child as a friend of the family might. Perhaps the major quality of these teachers was that they made the initial learning very pleasant and rewarding.

  This description could have been written about Skender. At first glance, he seems to fit the stereotype of an accounting whiz.* But at various stages in his life, Skender aspired to be a disc jockey, musician, actor, talk show host, and stand-up comedian. Set foot in his classroom, and you’ll see that he hasn’t quite given up on these dreams. True to his compulsive nature and eclectic taste, he punctuates his courses with entertaining routines to keep his students engaged, playing four songs at the start of each class and tossing candy bars to the first students who shout out the correct answers to music trivia. This is how a poster of a rapper ended up on his wall. “If you want to engage your audience, if you really want to grab their attention, you have to know the world they live in, the music they listen to, the movies they watch,” he explains. “To most of these kids, accounting is like a root canal. But when they hear me quote Usher or Cee Lo Green, they say to themselves, ‘Whoa, did that fat old white-haired guy just say what I thought he said?’ And then you’ve got ’em.”

  By cultivating interest in accounting, Skender believes that his students will be more likely to invest the time and energy necessary to master the discipline. “C. J. is the epitome of someone who is empathetic,” Reggie Love says. “He knows more about music than anyone, and he’s always able to weave it into the lecture to help people connect with the material. When you think about having to take a hard course, which typically isn’t very interesting, having to keep up with it is challenging. C. J. made it interesting, and I ended up working harder as a result.” Love earned an A in Skender’s class. David Moltz, a former student of Skender’s who works at Google, elaborates that Skender “helps every single student (and person) he comes across in any way possible. He sacrifices hundreds of hours of his personal life to make an impact on the lives of students and teach as many of them as possible. He goes out of his way to make everyone that he engages with feel special.”

  Throwing Good Money After Bad Talent

  Because they see potential all around them, givers end up investing a lot of their time in encouraging and developing people to achieve this potential. These investments don’t always pay off; some candidates lack the raw talent, and others don’t sustain their passion or maintain the requisite level of grit. Skender once wrote more than one hundred recommendation letters for a student who was applying to graduate programs outside of accounting. She was rejected by all of the programs in her first year, and she decided to apply again, so he dutifully rewrote the recommendation letters. When the schools turned her down once more, Skender revised his recommendation letters for a third year in a row. Finally, after three strikes, Skender encouraged her to pursue a different route.

  If Skender were more of a taker or a matcher, would he have given up sooner, saving his own time and the student’s? Do givers overinvest in people who possess loads of passion but fall short on aptitude, and how do they manage their priorities to focus on people who show promise while investing less in those who don’t? To find out, there’s nowhere better to look than professional basketball, where the annual NBA draft tests talent experts on an international stage.

  The late Stu Inman is remembered as the man behind two of the worst draft mistakes in the history of the National Basketball Association. In 1972, the Portland Trail Blazers had the first pick in the draft. Inman was serving as the director of player personnel, and he picked center LaRue Martin, who turned out to be a disappointment, averaging just over five points and four rebounds per game in four seasons with the Blazers. In drafting Martin, Inman passed up two of the greatest players in NBA history. The second pick that year was Bob McAdoo, who scored more points in his first season than Martin did in his entire career. McAdoo was named Rookie of the Year, and two years later, he was the NBA’s Most Valuable Player. In his fourteen-year NBA career, McAdoo won the league scoring title twice, played on two championship teams, and made five All-Star teams. In that draft, Inman also missed out on Julius Erving—better known as Dr. J.—who was selected twelfth. Erving ended up leading his teams to three championships, winning four MVP awards, making sixteen All-Star teams, and becoming one of the top five leading scorers in the history of professional basketball. Both McAdoo and E
rving are members of the Basketball Hall of Fame.

  A dozen years later, after being promoted to general manager of the Blazers, Stu Inman had the chance to redeem himself. In the 1984 NBA draft, Inman had the second pick. He chose another center, Sam Bowie, who was over seven feet tall, but athletic and coordinated: he could shoot, pass, and steal, not to mention block shots and grab rebounds. But Bowie never lived up to his potential. When he retired from basketball, ESPN named him the worst draft pick in the history of North American professional sports. In 2003, Sports Illustrated, whose cover Bowie had graced years earlier, called him the second-biggest draft flop in the history of the NBA. The biggest? LaRue Martin.

  In selecting Bowie second, Inman passed up on a shooting guard from North Carolina named Michael Jordan. With the third pick, the Chicago Bulls selected Jordan, and the rest is history. After being named Rookie of the Year, Jordan racked up six championships, ten scoring titles, and eleven MVP awards while making fourteen All-Star teams and averaging more points than any player ever. He was recognized as the greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century by ESPN.

  Inman recognized Jordan’s potential, but the Blazers already had two strong guards. They needed a center, so he drafted Sam Bowie. With that choice, he didn’t just miss out on Michael Jordan; he also passed up future Hall of Famers Charles Barkley (drafted fifth) and John Stockton (drafted sixteenth). It was bad enough that Inman chose Martin over McAdoo and Erving, and Bowie over Jordan, Barkley, and Stockton. But drafting professional basketball players is at best an imperfect science, and even great managers and coaches make mistakes.

  What was worse was that the Blazers held on to both players far longer than they should have. They kept LaRue Martin for four seasons, and by the time they decided to trade him, he had virtually no value. The Blazers couldn’t even get an actual player in exchange for Martin—they gave him away in exchange for “future considerations” from the Seattle SuperSonics, who ended up letting him go before the season even started. That was the end of Martin’s basketball career, and it was an embarrassing outcome for Inman. “It was a sore subject,” said Jack Ramsay, who was the Blazers’ coach in Martin’s last year and now serves as an ESPN analyst. “Because LaRue couldn’t play. He was trying to make the team when I got there, but we had no place for him. He had no offensive game. And he wasn’t a rebounder or shot blocker even though he was six-eleven. So he had no skills.” The Blazers followed a similar path with Sam Bowie. In 1989, after five lackluster seasons, the Blazers finally traded Bowie to the New Jersey Nets. Why did the Blazers hold on to Sam Bowie and LaRue Martin for so long?

  Stu Inman was widely known as a giver. After playing college basketball and coaching high school basketball for a few years, Inman made the leap to college coach, eventually becoming the head coach at his alma mater, San Jose State. In this role, Inman seemed to prioritize players’ interests ahead of his own success. One of Inman’s star recruits was Tommie Smith, an exceptional athlete who came to San Jose State to run track and play football and basketball. On the freshman basketball team, Smith was the top scorer and rebounder, so in his sophomore year, he began practicing with the varsity basketball team under Inman. One day, Smith came by Inman’s office and announced that he was going to quit basketball to focus on track. “I thought he was going to blow up at me,” Smith writes, “but he didn’t. Coach Inman said, ‘Okay, Tom, I understand,’ he shook my hand and told me to be sure to come by to see him whenever I wanted to, and that I was always welcome back if I changed my mind. That was the greatest thing in the world for me.”

  It wasn’t so great for Inman. Smith’s speed could have added a great deal to the San Jose State basketball team; a few years later, in 1968, Smith won the Olympic gold medal in the 200-meter dash, setting a world record. But Inman had wanted what was best for Smith. Along with letting top talent walk away, Inman made room for gritty players even if they lacked talent. When a skinny white player named Terry Murphy tried out for the varsity team, Inman respected his work ethic and invited him on board. Murphy recalls being one of the worst players Inman had ever coached: “I scored four points the whole year.”

  Despite this lackluster performance, Inman told Murphy, “I’m never gonna cut you, you’re enthusiastic and you play hard and you’re a good guy.” Inman was “continually giving advice to any basketball junkie who sought it,” writes Wayne Thompson, a reporter who covered the Blazers throughout Inman’s tenure. He couldn’t help it: “Teaching at any level on any subject is the most rewarding thing you can do,” Inman told Thompson. “I just love to see the expression on the face of a student who gets it for the first time. Just watching the learning process come to full bloom gives me such a rush.”

  Once Inman developed a positive impression of players, was he too committed to teaching and developing them, so much that he invested in motivated players even if they lacked the requisite talent? In the classroom, C. J. Skender can afford to dedicate his time to students who demonstrate interest and drive, as he can teach and mentor a large number of students each semester. Conversely, in professional basketball and most work organizations, we face more limits: making a bet on one person’s potential means passing on others.

  Inman had made a commitment to developing LaRue Martin and Sam Bowie. If Inman had been more of a taker, doesn’t it seem obvious that he would have cut his losses much more quickly and moved on to other players? The moment he realized that Martin and Bowie weren’t contributing to his team’s success, a taker wouldn’t feel any sense of responsibility to them. And if Inman had been more of a matcher, wouldn’t he have been more willing to let them go? Surely a matcher would grow frustrated that his investments in Martin and Bowie were not being reciprocated or rewarded.

  It might seem that givers have a harder time letting go. But in reality, the exact opposite is true. It turns out that givers are the least vulnerable to the mistake of overinvesting in people—and that being a giver is what prevented Stu Inman from making far worse mistakes.

  Facing the Mirror: Looking Good or Doing Good?

  Barry Staw is a world-renowned organizational behavior professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and he has spent his career trying to understand why people make bad decisions in organizations. In an ingenious study, Staw and Ha Hoang collected data on all 240-plus players who were picked in the first two rounds of the NBA draft between 1980 and 1986, in hopes of seeing what effect draft position had on a player’s career. They measured each player’s performance with a series of different metrics: scoring (points per minute, field goal percentage, and free throw percentage), toughness (rebounds and blocks per minute), and quickness (assists and steals per minute). Staw and Hoang controlled for each player’s performance on all of these metrics, as well as for the player’s injuries and illnesses, whether the player was a guard, forward, or center, and the quality of the player’s team based on win/loss records. Then they examined how much time on the court the players received and how long their teams kept them before trading them, to see if teams made the mistake of overinvesting in players just because they drafted them early.

  The results produced a devastating conclusion: teams couldn’t let go of their big bets. They stuck with the players whom they drafted early, giving them more playing time and refusing to trade them even if they played poorly. After taking performance out of the equation, players who were drafted earlier still spent more minutes on the court and were less likely to be traded. For every slot higher in the draft, players were given an average of twenty-two more minutes in their second season, and their teams were still investing more in them by their fifth season, when each draft slot higher accounted for eleven more minutes on the court. And for every slot higher in the draft, players were 3 percent less likely to be traded.

  This study is a classic case of what Staw calls escalation of commitment to a losing course of action. Over the past four decades, extensive research led by Staw show
s that once people make an initial investment of time, energy, or resources, when it goes sour, they’re at risk for increasing their investment. Gamblers in the hole believe that if they just play one more hand of poker, they’ll be able to recover their losses or even win big. Struggling entrepreneurs think that if they just give their start-ups a little more sweat, they can turn it around. When an investment doesn’t pay off, even if the expected value is negative, we invest more.

  Economists explain this behavior using a concept known as the “sunk cost fallacy”: when estimating the value of a future investment, we have trouble ignoring what we’ve already invested in the past. Sunk costs are part of the story, but new research shows that other factors matter more. To figure out why and when escalation of commitment happens, researchers at Michigan State University analyzed 166 different studies. Sunk costs do have a small effect—decision makers are biased in favor of their previous investments—but three other factors are more powerful. One is anticipated regret: will I be sorry that I didn’t give this another chance? The second is project completion: if I keep investing, I can finish the project. But the single most powerful factor is ego threat: if I don’t keep investing, I’ll look and feel like a fool. In response to ego threat, people invest more, hoping to turn the project into a success so they can prove to others—and themselves—that they were right all along.

  In one study led by Staw, when California bank customers defaulted on loans, the managers who originally funded the loans struggled to let go and write off the losses. “Bankers who have been closely associated with decisions to fund problem loans are the ones to show the greatest difficulty in acknowledging the subsequent risks of these loans and the likelihood of default,” Staw and colleagues write. The study showed that when managers who originally funded the problem loans left the bank, the new managers were significantly more likely to write the loans off. The new managers had no personal responsibility for the problem loans, so their egos weren’t under threat; they didn’t feel compelled to justify the original decisions as wise.