by Adam Grant
Research suggests that due to their susceptibility to ego threat, takers are more vulnerable to escalation of commitment than givers. Imagine that you’re running an aircraft company, and you have to decide whether or not to invest $1 million in a plane that’s invisible to radar technology. You find out that the project is not doing well financially, and a competitor has already finished a better model. But you’ve made significant investments: the project is 50 percent complete, and you’ve already spent $5 million and eighteen months working on it. How likely are you to invest the extra $1 million?
In this study by Henry Moon at London Business School, before making their investment decisions, 360 people completed a questionnaire that included giver statements such as “I keep my promises” and taker statements such as “I try to get others to do my duties.” The takers were significantly more likely to invest the extra $1 million than the givers. They felt responsible for an investment that was going bad, so they committed more to protect their pride and save face. As University of South Carolina management professors Bruce Meglino and Audrey Korsgaard explain, “although the organization itself might be better off if the decision were abandoned, such action would cause the decision maker to incur significant personal costs (e.g., loss of career mobility, loss of reputation). Because escalating his or her commitment allows the decision maker to keep the prospect of failure hidden, such behavior is personally rational” from the perspective of a taker.
The givers, on the other hand, were primarily concerned about protecting other people and the organization, so they were more willing to admit their initial mistakes and de-escalate their commitment. Other studies show that people actually make more accurate and creative decisions when they’re choosing on behalf of others than themselves. When people make decisions in a self-focused state, they’re more likely to be biased by ego threat and often agonize over trying to find a choice that’s ideal in all possible dimensions. When people focus on others, as givers do naturally, they’re less likely to worry about egos and miniscule details; they look at the big picture and prioritize what matters most to others.
Armed with this understanding, it’s worth revisiting the story of Stu Inman. As a giver, although he felt invested in the players he drafted first, he felt a stronger sense of responsibility to the team. “Stu was a kind person, considerate of other people’s feelings,” Wayne Thompson told me. “But he never let that influence selections. If he didn’t think a guy could play, he put his arm around him and wished him well.” Inman wasn’t the one responsible for keeping Sam Bowie on board; Inman left the Blazers in 1986, just two years after drafting Bowie. A taker might have continued to defend the bad decision, but Inman admitted his error in choosing Bowie over Jordan. “All our scouts thought Bowie was the answer to our problems, and I did, too,” Inman said, but “it was a mistake.”*
Inman didn’t escalate his commitment to LaRue Martin either. Although the Blazers kept Martin for four seasons, Inman and his colleagues took early action in response to Martin’s poor performance. In his rookie season, when there were clear signs that Martin was floundering, a taker might have given him extra playing time in an effort to justify choosing him ahead of Bob McAdoo and Julius Erving. But this wasn’t what happened. The Blazers granted the starting center position to the hardworking Lloyd Neal, who was just 6'7'', putting Martin at backup. In his rookie season, Martin averaged less than thirteen minutes per game on the court, compared with thirty-two for McAdoo and forty-two for Erving. In his second season, Martin continued to underperform, and instead of escalating commitment by giving him more time on the court, the Blazers gave him less—under eleven minutes per game, whereas McAdoo played forty-three and Erving played over forty. Inman and his colleagues managed to overcome the temptation to keep betting on Martin.
A major reason why givers are less vulnerable than takers to escalation of commitment has to do with responses to feedback, as demonstrated in research by Audrey Korsgaard, Bruce Meglino, and Scott Lester on how givers and takers react to information about their performance. In one study, people filled out a survey indicating whether they were givers or takers and made ten decisions about how to solve problems. Then, all participants received a performance score and a suggestion to delegate their authority more when making decisions. The score was randomly assigned so that half of the participants learned that their performance was above average, whereas the other half were told that they were below average. Then, all participants made ten more decisions. Would they use the suggestion to delegate more?
When they believed they were above average, the takers followed the suggestion, delegating 30 percent more often. But when they believed they were below average, the takers only delegated 15 percent more often. Once they felt criticized, they were less willing to accept the recommendation for improvement. They protected their pride by refusing to believe that they made poor decisions, discounting the negative feedback. The givers, on the other hand, accepted the criticism and followed the suggestion. Even when they received negative feedback indicating that they were below average, the givers delegated 30 percent more often.
In escalation situations, takers often struggle to face the reality that an initial choice has gone bad. Takers tend to “discount social information and performance feedback that does not support their favorable view of themselves,” write Meglino and Korsgaard, whereas givers “may be more apt to accept and act on social information without carefully evaluating the personal consequences.” Givers focus more on the interpersonal and organizational consequences of their decisions, accepting a blow to their pride and reputations in the short term in order to make better choices in the long term.
This receptivity to negative feedback helped Stu Inman recognize when he had made a bad investment. Inman was admired around the league for his openness to criticism. Many coaches “took issue with my more incendiary critiques,” writes reporter Steve Duin, but “they never bothered Inman,” who was “patient and generous,” and “one of the most gracious men ever associated with the NBA.” When LaRue Martin underperformed, the Blazers coach at the time, Jack McCloskey, voiced his concerns to Inman. “He worked hard and was a very nice young man, but he wasn’t skilled. It was that simple. I tried to develop his skills around the basket, and he wasn’t an outside player. He didn’t have the skills to be the number-one pick.” A taker might have rejected the negative feedback, but Inman listened to it.
After Martin’s second season, in 1974, the Blazers landed the first pick in the draft again. Having de-escalated their commitment to Martin, they needed another center to replace him, so Inman drafted one, a young man from UCLA named Bill Walton. In his rookie season, Walton was the starting center, averaging thirty-three minutes a game, roughly twice as many as Martin in the backup position. This arrangement continued for another year, after which Inman unloaded Martin.
The next season was 1976–1977, and Walton led the Blazers to the NBA championship over the Philadelphia 76ers, who were led by Julius Erving. Walton was the Finals MVP, and the next year, he was the league MVP. After he retired, he made the Basketball Hall of Fame and was named one of the fifty greatest players in NBA history. Inman was the architect of the 1977 championship team, which had been last in the division the previous year, and remains the only team in the Blazers’ four-decade history to win the title. According to Jack Ramsay, who coached the winning team, Inman was “never in the spotlight, and never taking proper credit for the team he assembled.”
Glimpsing Glimmers in Chunks of Coal
As a giver, Inman built this championship team with an approach that mirrored C. J. Skender’s: seeing potential in players where others didn’t. “Inman wanted a complete portfolio on everybody he was interested in,” writes Wayne Thompson. “No doubt that is what made him so successful in finding diamonds in the rough.” Half of the top six scorers on the championship team—and five of the top nine—were drafted late by Inman, in the second or th
ird round. “He was way ahead of the curve in seeing potential,” noted Steve Duin. “Stu, in the subculture of basketball gurus, was near the apex. He was considered a genius,” said Mavericks president Norm Sonju. In a chronicle of the 1984 draft, Filip Bondy writes that Inman was viewed by many as “the best personnel man in the league. He was so good, so respected, that other clubs would track his scouting missions and listen very carefully to rumors about which players might interest him.”
In the 1970s, most basketball teams were focusing heavily on observable physical talents such as speed, strength, coordination, agility, and vertical leap. Inman thought it was also important to pay attention to the inner attributes of players, so he decided to begin evaluating their psychological makeup. Before a draft, along with reviewing a player’s statistics and watching him play, Inman wanted to understand him as a person. He would watch players closely during the pregame warm-up to see how hard they worked, and he would interview their coaches, family members, friends, and teachers about issues of motivation, mind-set, and integrity. According to the Oregonian, “Inman made his reputation by finding undervalued players. . . . His eye for talent was as sharp as his feel for people. He wanted players whose character and intelligence were as high as their vertical jumps.”
In 1970, Inman joined the Blazers, then a brand-new NBA team, as chief talent scout. That summer, he held an open tryout for people to put their basketball skills to the test. It was partially a public relations stunt to generate local excitement about basketball, but Inman was also looking for players who had gone overlooked by other teams. None of the guys from the open tryout made the team, but Inman’s fascination with unlikely candidates would bear fruit several years later. In 1975, with the twenty-fifth pick in the second round of the draft, Inman selected a little-known Jewish forward named Bob Gross. Coaches and fans thought it was a mistake. Gross had played college basketball at Seattle, averaging ten points a game, and then transferred to Long Beach State, where he averaged just six and a half points in his junior year. “The story of Bob Gross’s collegiate and professional basketball life was that nobody noticed him,” wrote Frank Coffey in a book about the Blazers, “until they really started looking hard.”
Inman happened to see a game between Long Beach and Michigan State, and his interest was piqued when Gross hustled to block a shot on what should have been an easy Spartan layup on a fast break. Inman took a closer look and saw more evidence of Gross’s work ethic: he more than doubled his scoring average from his junior to senior year, when he put in more than sixteen points a game. Inman “discovered a jewel, a consistent, hardworking, extraordinarily effective basketball player,” Coffey wrote. Gross was praised by one of his college coaches for “unselfish dedication to the team.” When the Blazers made the Finals in his third NBA season, Gross delivered, pouring in an average of seventeen points per game. In the pivotal games five and six, he guarded Julius Erving and led the Blazers by scoring twenty-five and twenty-four points. According to Bill Walton, “Bob Gross was the ‘grease guy’ for that team. He made it flow . . . Bob would run relentlessly, guard and defend . . . Without Bob . . . Portland could not have won the championship.”
Inman recognized that givers were undervalued by many teams, since they didn’t hog the spotlight or use the flashiest of moves. His philosophy was that “It’s not what a player is, but what he can become . . . that will allow him to grow.” When Inman saw a guy practice with grit and play like a giver, he classified him as a diamond in the rough. In fact, there’s a close connection between grit and giving. In my own research, I’ve found that because of their dedication to others, givers are willing to work harder and longer than takers and matchers. Even when practice is no longer enjoyable, givers continue exerting effort out of a sense of responsibility to their team.
This pattern can be seen in many other industries. Consider Russell Simmons, the cofounder of the hip-hop label Def Jam Records, which launched the careers of LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys. Simmons is often called the godfather of hip-hop, and he was giving away music for free as early as 1978, long before most labels started doing that. When I asked him about his success, he attributed it to finding and promoting givers. “Good givers are great getters; they make everybody better,” Simmons explains. One of his favorite givers is Kevin Liles, who started working for free as an intern and rose all the way up to become president of Def Jam. As an intern, Liles was the first to arrive at work and the last to leave. As a promotion director, Liles was responsible for one region, but he went out of his way to promote other regions too. “Everybody started to look at Kevin as a leader, because they all looked to him for direction. He gave until people couldn’t live without him.” In selecting and promoting talent, Simmons writes, “The most important quality you can show me is a commitment to giving.”
Stu Inman knew that gritty givers would be willing to put the good of the team above their own personal interests, working hard to fulfill the roles for which they were needed. In the fabled 1984 draft, after selecting Sam Bowie, Inman took a forward named Jerome Kersey in the second round with the forty-sixth pick overall. Kersey came from Longwood College, a little-known Division II school in Virginia, yet blossomed into an excellent NBA player. A Longwood sports administrator said that Kersey “had the best work ethic of anyone that’s ever been here,” which is what led Inman to recognize his promise when few NBA insiders did. The next year, in 1985, Inman found another hidden gem of a point guard with the twenty-fourth pick in the draft: Terry Porter, a gritty giver who earned acclaim for his hustle and selflessness. He made two All-Star teams with the Blazers and played seventeen strong NBA seasons, and in 1993, he won the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award, awarded annually to one player, coach, or trainer who demonstrates “outstanding service and dedication to the community.” Along with providing tickets for disadvantaged children to attend games and promoting graduation parties free of drugs and alcohol, Porter has given extensively to boys’ and girls’ clubs, working in partnership with his former teammate Jerome Kersey.
Perhaps Inman’s best investment occurred in the 1983 draft, when the Blazers had the fourteenth pick. Inman selected shooting guard Clyde Drexler, who was passed up by other teams because he wasn’t regarded as a very strong shooter. Although he was the fifth shooting guard chosen, Drexler is now widely regarded as the steal of the 1983 draft. He outscored all other players in the draft, averaging more than 20 points a game in his career, and was the only player in that draft to make the all-NBA team, at least one All-Star game (he made ten of them), the Olympics, and the Basketball Hall of Fame. By the time he retired, Drexler joined legends Oscar Robertson and John Havlicek as the third player in NBA history to rack up more than 20,000 points, 6,000 rebounds, and 3,000 assists. Like Walton, Drexler was designated one of the fifty greatest players of all time. How did Inman know Drexler would be such a star when so many other teams let him slide by?
As a giver, Inman was open to outside advice. While at San Jose State, Inman met Bruce Ogilvie, a pioneer in sports psychology who “came onto the sports scene when psychologists were referred to as ‘shrinks’ and any player going to visit one was seen as a problem.” Most general managers and coaches avoided psychologists like Ogilvie, approaching the so-called science skeptically. Some viewed psychological assessment as irrelevant; others worried that it would threaten their own expertise and standing.
Whereas takers often strive to be the smartest people in the room, givers are more receptive to expertise from others, even if it challenges their own beliefs. Inman embraced Ogilvie and his methods with open arms, requiring players to undergo several hours of evaluation before the draft. Inman worked with Ogilvie to assess players on their selflessness, desire to succeed, willingness to persevere, receptivity to being coached, and dedication to the sport. Through these assessments, Inman could develop a deep understanding of a player’s tendencies toward grit and giving. “Other NBA teams were taking psychological l
ooks at draftable players, but none to the degree that we used it and trusted it,” Inman said. “You had to like the talent before you would consider it in your evaluation. But it provided a clear barometer as to whether the guy would fulfill his potential.”
When Ogilvie assessed Drexler, Inman was impressed with his psychological profile. Inman interviewed the coaches who had seen Drexler play at Houston, and there was a consistent theme: Drexler played like a giver. “Clyde was the glue on that team. I was taken by the almost unanimous reaction from other coaches in that league,” Inman explained. “They said he did what he had to do to win a game. His ego never interfered with his will to win.” According to Bucky Buckwalter, who was then a scout, “There was some reluctance from teams . . . He was not a great shooter.” But Inman and his team decided that Drexler could “learn to shoot from the perimeter, or somehow make up for it with his other talents.” Inman was right: Drexler “turned out to be a more skilled player . . . than I would have expected,” Buckwalter said.
Even Inman’s bad bets on the basketball court have gone on to success elsewhere; the man knew a giver when he saw one. LaRue Martin has worked at UPS for twenty-five years, most recently as the community services director in Illinois. In 2008, he received a letter out of the blue from former Blazers owner Larry Weinberg: “you certainly are a wonderful role model in the work you are doing for UPS.” Martin has played basketball with President Obama, and in 2011, he was elected to the board of directors of the Retired Players Association. “I would love to be able to give back,” Martin said.