by Adam Grant
For Conrey, this is a major difference between teaching at Overbrook and volunteering with Minds Matter and TFA. In the Overbrook classroom, giving is an obligation. Her job requires her to break up fights and maintain order, tasks that—although important—don’t align with the passion that drew her into teaching. In her volunteer work, giving is an enjoyable choice: she loves helping high-achieving underprivileged students and mentoring less experienced TFA teachers. This is another way giving can be otherish: Conrey focused on benefiting students and teachers, but doing so in a way that connects to her core values and fuels her enthusiasm. The energy carried over to her classroom, helping her maintain her motivation.
But at Overbrook, Conrey couldn’t avoid the obligation to give to her students in ways that she didn’t find naturally exciting or energizing. What did she do to stay energized despite the sense of duty?
During one particularly stressful week, Conrey was struggling to get through to her students. “I was feeling miserable, and the kids were being awful.” She approached a teacher named Sarah for help. Sarah recommended an activity that was a hit in her classroom: they got to design their own monsters that were on the loose in Philadelphia. They drew a picture of a monster, wrote a story about it, and created a “wanted” ad so people would be on the lookout. It was exactly the inspiration that Conrey needed. “Our ten-minute chat helped me get excited about the lesson. I had fun with the kids, and it made me more invested in the curriculum I was teaching.”
Although Conrey’s decision to ask another teacher for help may not sound unusual, research shows that it’s quite rare among selfless givers. Selfless givers “feel uncomfortable receiving support,” write Helgeson and colleague Heidi Fritz. Selfless givers are determined to be in the helper role, so they’re reluctant to burden or inconvenience others. Helgeson and Fritz find that selfless givers receive far less support than otherish givers, which proves psychologically and physically costly. As burnout expert Christina Maslach and colleagues conclude, “there is now a consistent and strong body of evidence that a lack of social support is linked to burnout.”
In contrast, otherish givers recognize the importance of protecting their own well-being. When they’re on the brink of burnout, otherish givers seek help, which enables them to marshal the advice, assistance, and resources necessary to maintain their motivation and energy. Three decades of research show that receiving support from colleagues is a robust antidote to burnout. “Having a support network of teachers is huge,” Conrey affirms.
But Overbrook didn’t have a formal support network of teachers, so where did Conrey get her support network? She built one at Overbrook through the act of giving help.
For many years, experts believed that the stress response involved a choice: fight or flight. Since burnout means we lack the energy to fight, it’s natural to choose flight, coping by avoiding the source of stress. Burnout experts Jonathon Halbesleben and Matthew Bowler studied professional firefighters over a two-year period. Sure enough, when the firefighters started to burn out, their performance ratings dropped. Burnout made them less concerned about achievement and status. Consequently, they invested less effort in their work, and their effectiveness suffered.
But surprisingly, in this study, burnout didn’t decrease effort across the board. There was one place where firefighters actually increased their effort when they felt burned out: helping others. When the firefighters experienced signs of burnout, they were more likely to go out of their way to help colleagues with heavy workloads, share new knowledge with supervisors, give advice to newer colleagues, and even listen to colleagues’ problems. Why would burnout increase their giving?
UCLA psychologist Shelley Taylor has discovered a stress response that differs from fight or flight. She calls it tend and befriend. “One of the most striking aspects of the human stress response is the tendency to affiliate—that is, to come together in groups to provide and receive joint protection in threatening times.” Taylor’s neuroscience research reveals that when we feel stressed, the brain’s natural response is to release chemicals that drive us to bond. This is what the firefighters did: when they started to feel exhausted, they invested their limited energy in helping their colleagues. Intuitively, they recognized that giving would strengthen their relationships and build support (at least from matchers and givers). Although most givers are aware of this opportunity, it appears that only otherish givers actually take advantage of it.
Conrey Callahan built her support network by tending and befriending under stress. When she was at the pinnacle of exhaustion, she started mentoring TFA teachers and several of the younger teachers in her own school. One of the teachers Conrey mentored was Sarah. In the course of mentoring, one of the exercises that Conrey taught Sarah was the monster activity. Conrey had forgotten about it, and when she reached out for help, Sarah reminded her about it. The advice itself was helpful, but it also strengthened Conrey’s sense of impact: she had given Sarah an activity that was a big hit with her own students.
Otherish givers build up a support network that they can access for help when they need it. This, along with chunking giving so that it’s energizing, is what makes otherish givers less vulnerable to burnout than selfless givers. But how do otherish givers stack up against takers and matchers?
The Myth of Giver Burnout
Years ago, Dutch psychologists studied hundreds of health professionals. They tracked the amount of time and energy that the health professionals gave to patients, and asked them to report how burned out they felt. A year later, the psychologists measured giving and burnout again. Sure enough, the more the health professionals gave, the more burned out they became in the following year. Those who gave selflessly had the highest burnout rates: they contributed far more than they got, and it exhausted them. Those who acted like matchers and takers were far less burned out.
But strangely, in another study, the Dutch psychologists found evidence that some health care professionals seemed immune to burnout. Even when they gave a great deal of time and energy, they didn’t exhaust themselves. These resilient health care professionals were otherish givers: they reported that they enjoyed helping other people and often went out of their way to do so, but weren’t afraid to seek help when they needed it. The otherish givers had significantly lower burnout rates than the matchers and takers, who lacked the stamina to keep contributing. This study pointed to an unexpected possibility: although matchers and takers appear to be less vulnerable to burnout than selfless givers, the greatest resilience may belong to otherish givers.
Part of the reason for this is illuminated in fascinating work by Northwestern University psychologists Elizabeth Seeley and Wendi Gardner, who asked people to work on a difficult task that sapped their willpower. For example, imagine that you’re very hungry, and you’re staring at a plate of delicious chocolate chip cookies, but you have to resist the temptation to eat them. After using up their willpower in a task like this, participants squeezed a handgrip as long as they could. The typical participant was able to hold on for twenty-five seconds. But there was a group of people who were able to hold on 40 percent longer, lasting for thirty-five seconds.
The participants with unusually high stamina scored high on a questionnaire measuring “other-directedness.” These other-directed people operated like givers. By consistently overriding their selfish impulses in order to help others, they had strengthened their psychological muscles, to the point where using willpower for painful tasks was no longer exhausting. In support of this idea, other studies have shown that givers accrue an advantage in controlling their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Over time, giving may build willpower like weight lifting builds muscles. Of course, we all know that when muscles are overused, they fatigue and sometimes even tear—this is what happens to selfless givers.
In Utah, a seventy-five-year-old man understands the resilience of otherish givers. His name is Jon Huntsman Sr., and his tiny
photo from his company’s annual report appeared in chapter 2, in juxtaposition with the full-size photo of Kenneth Lay (you might also recognize him as the father of former Utah governor and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr.). Back in 1990, the elder Huntsman was negotiating an acquisition with Charles Miller Smith, who was the president and CEO of a chemical company. During the negotiations, Smith’s wife died. Huntsman empathized with Smith, so he decided not to push any further: “I decided the fine points of the last 20 percent of the deal would stand as they were proposed. I probably could have clawed another $200 million out of the deal, but it would have come at the expense of Charles’ emotional state. The agreement as it stood was good enough.”
Was a CEO’s emotional state really worth $200 million to Huntsman? Believe it or not, this wasn’t the first time Huntsman gave away a fortune during a negotiation. Just four years earlier, in 1986, he made a verbal agreement with a CEO named Emerson Kampen. Huntsman would sell 40 percent of a division of his company to Kampen’s for $54 million. Due to legal delays, the contract wasn’t written until six months later. By that time, Huntsman’s profits had skyrocketed: that 40 percent of the division was now worth $250 million. Kampen called with a matcher’s offer to split the difference, proposing to pay $152 million instead of the original $54 million. Huntsman was poised to bring in nearly triple the original agreement. But he said no. The $54 million was good enough. Kampen was incredulous: “That’s not fair to you.”
Huntsman believed in honoring his commitment to Kampen. Even though the lawyers hadn’t drafted the original purchase agreement, he had shaken hands six months earlier on a verbal agreement. He signed for the $54 million, walking away from an extra $98 million. What type of businessman would make such irrational decisions?
In 1970, Huntsman started a chemical company that reigns today as the world’s largest. He has been named Entrepreneur of the Year and earned more than a dozen honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He’s a billionaire, one of the Forbes one thousand richest people in the world.
As his deal-making choices show, Huntsman is also a giver, and not just in business. Since 1985, he has been involved in serious philanthropy. He is one of just nineteen people in the world who have given at least $1 billion away. Huntsman has won major humanitarian awards for giving more than $350 million to found the world-class Huntsman Cancer Center, and made hefty donations to help earthquake victims in Armenia, support education, and fight domestic violence and homelessness. Of course, many rich people give away serious sums of money, but Huntsman demonstrates an uncommon intensity that sets him apart. In 2001, the chemical industry tanked, and he lost a sizable portion of his fortune. Most people would cut back on giving until they recovered. But Huntsman made an unconventional decision. He took out a personal loan, borrowing several million dollars to make good on his philanthropic commitments for the next three years.
Huntsman sounds like a classic example of someone who got rich and then decided to give back. But there’s a different way of looking at Huntsman’s success, one that might be impossible to believe if it weren’t backed up by Huntsman’s experience and by science. Maybe getting rich didn’t turn him into a giver. What if we’ve mixed up cause and effect?
Huntsman believes that being a giver actually made him rich. In his giving pledge, Huntsman writes: “It has been clear to me since my earliest childhood memories that my reason for being was to help others. The desire to give back was the impetus for pursuing an education in business, for applying that education to founding what became a successful container company, and for using that experience to grow our differentiated chemicals corporation.” As early as 1962, Huntsman told his wife that he “wanted to start his own business so he could make a difference” for people with cancer. Huntsman lost both of his parents to cancer, and had survived three bouts of cancer himself. Curing cancer is so deeply ingrained in Huntsman’s fiber that he has even prioritized it above his political ideology. Although he worked in the Nixon White House and has been a longtime supporter of the Republican party, Huntsman has been known to favor Democratic candidates if they demonstrate a stronger commitment to curing cancer.
There’s little doubt that Huntsman is a skilled businessman. But the very act of giving money away might have contributed to his fortune. In Winners Never Cheat, he writes, “Monetarily, the most satisfying moments in my life have not been the excitement of closing a great deal or the reaping of profits from it. They have been when I was able to help others in need . . . There’s no denying that I am a deal junkie, but I also have developed an addiction for giving. The more one gives, the better one feels; and the better one feels about it, the easier it becomes to give.”
This is an extension of the idea that otherish givers build willpower muscles, making it easy to give more, but is it possible that Huntsman actually made money by giving it away? Remarkably, there’s evidence to support this claim. The economist Arthur Brooks tested the relationship between income and charitable giving. Using data from almost thirty thousand Americans in the year 2000, he controlled for every factor imaginable that would affect income and giving. He adjusted for education, age, race, religious involvement, political beliefs, and marital status. He also accounted for the number of times people volunteered. As expected, higher income led to higher giving. For every $1 in extra income, charitable giving went up by $0.14.*
But something much more interesting happened. For every $1 in extra charitable giving, income was $3.75 higher. Giving actually seemed to make people richer. For example, imagine that you and I are both earning $60,000 a year. I give $1,600 to charity; you give $2,500 to charity. Although you gave away $900 more than I did, according to the evidence, you’ll be on track to earn $3,375 more than I will in the coming year. Surprising as it seems, people who give more go on to earn more.
Jon Huntsman Sr. may be on to something. Research shows that giving can boost happiness and meaning, motivating people to work harder and earn more money, even if the gift isn’t on the colossal scale of Huntsman’s. In a study by psychologists Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin, and Michael Norton, people rated their happiness in the morning. Then, they received a windfall: an envelope with $20. They had to spend it by five P.M., and then they rated their happiness again. Would they be happier spending the money on themselves or on others?
Most people think they’d be happier spending the money on themselves, but the opposite is true. If you spend the money on yourself, your happiness doesn’t change. But if you spend the money on others, you actually report becoming significantly happier. This is otherish giving: you get to choose who you help, and it benefits you by improving your mood. Economists call it the warm glow of giving, and psychologists call it the helper’s high. Recent neuroscience evidence shows that giving actually activates the reward and meaning centers in our brains, which send us pleasure and purpose signals when we act for the benefit of others.
These benefits are not limited to giving money; they also show up for giving time. One study of more than 2,800 Americans over age twenty-four showed that volunteering predicted increases in happiness, life satisfaction, and self-esteem—and decreases in depression—a year later. And for adults over sixty-five, those who volunteered saw a drop in depression over an eight-year period. Other studies show that elderly adults who volunteer or give support to others actually live longer. This is true even after controlling for their health and the amount of support they get from others. In one experiment, adults either gave massages to babies or received massages themselves. Postmassage, those who gave had lower levels of stress hormones—such as cortisol and epinephrine—than those who received. It seems that giving adds meaning to our lives, distracts us from our own problems, and helps us feel valued by others. As researchers Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Vohs, Jennifer Aaker, and Emily Garbinsky conclude in a national survey of Americans, “meaningfulness was associated with being a giver more than a taker.”
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There’s a wealth of evidence that the ensuing happiness can motivate people to work harder, longer, smarter, and more effectively. Happiness can lead people to experience intense effort and long hours as less unpleasant and more enjoyable, set more challenging goals, and think more quickly, flexibly, and broadly about problems. One study even showed that when physicians were put in a happier mood, they made faster and more accurate diagnoses. Overall, on average, happier people earn more money, get higher performance ratings, make better decisions, negotiate sweeter deals, and contribute more to their organizations. Happiness alone accounts for about 10 percent of the variation between employees in job performance. By boosting happiness, giving might have motivated Jon Huntsman Sr. to work harder and smarter, helping him build up his fortune.
Huntsman is not the only influential businessperson who has come to view giving as a source of energy. In 2003, Virgin mogul Richard Branson set up a council called The Elders to fight conflict and promote peace, bringing together Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, and other leaders to alleviate suffering in Sudan, Cyprus, and Kenya. In 2004, Branson launched Virgin Unite, a nonprofit foundation that mobilizes people and resources to fight deadly diseases like AIDS and malaria, promote peace and justice, prevent climate change, and support entrepreneurs with microloans and new jobs in the developing world. In 2006, he pledged to donate all $3 billion of the profits from the Virgin airline and train businesses over the next decade to fight global warming. In 2007, he offered a $25 million prize for innovations to fight climate change. Was this string of events caused by a midlife crisis?
Actually, Branson was giving long before he became rich and famous. At age seventeen, a year after starting Student magazine and five full years before launching Virgin Records, Branson started his first charity. It was the Student Advisory Centre, a nonprofit organization that helped at-risk youth with a range of services. He made a list of problems that young people faced, from unwanted pregnancies to venereal disease, and convinced doctors to offer free or discounted services. He spent many nights on the phone at three A.M. consoling people who were contemplating suicide. Looking back, he notes that early in his career, he “had been interested in making money only to ensure Student’s continuing success and to fund the Student Advisory Centre.” Today, giving continues to energize him. The “thing that gets me up in the morning is the idea of making a difference,” Branson writes, “to help safeguard our future on this planet. Does that make me successful? It certainly makes me happy.”