by Adam Grant
At Deloitte, Jason Geller intuitively adopted an approach that closely resembles sincerity screening. Geller starts by offering help to every new hire, but in his initial conversations with them, he pays attention to who seems to be a giver versus a taker. “I can’t proactively go and spend time with every single person in the practice globally, so I try to sense who’s genuine and who’s not. Some folks approach the conversation in terms of learning. Others come in and say, ‘I want to get promoted to senior consultant. What should I do?’” Geller assumes these consultants are takers. “They focus on telling me what they’re doing, with a thirty-minute agenda of things they want to update me on, because they want to make me aware. They’re not really asking insightful questions; it’s very superficial. We don’t get deep enough for it to be really helpful for them.”
Over time, as she sacrificed her own interests, Lillian Bauer began to recognize that some people operated like takers: “they’re so self-focused that they will take what they can and move on, so I started being more systematic in how I helped other people.” She started to pay more attention to who was asking and how they treated her, and made a list of reasons to say no. To continue giving but do so more efficiently, she wrote advice guides for engagement managers and associate partners, putting much of her knowledge on paper so she didn’t end up repeating it to takers. “I found that was a more strategic way of being a giver,” Bauer says.*
Once givers start to use their skills in sincerity screening to identify potential takers, they know when to put up their guard. But sometimes, this awareness sets in too late: givers have already become loyal to a taker. If givers are already trapped in exchanges where they feel concerned for a taker’s interests, how do they protect themselves against the doormat effect?
Generous Tit for Tat: The Adaptable Giver
Several years after Brad stole his clients and his money, Peter Audet was working with a business partner named Rich. When they first paired up, Rich came across as highly agreeable: he was enthusiastic and friendly. But a colleague reflects that “although Rich looked like a giver because he acted supportive, he was really a taker. Peter was a giver, and Rich was sucking everything out of him.” Rich was drawing a high salary, more than $300,000 a year, without contributing much to the financial success of the business. He was living on the Gold Coast of Australia, and he would spend his mornings on the beach, stroll into the office at ten A.M., and go to the pub at midday. “Brad gave me a pretty strong sense of what a taker looked like, and I realized that Rich was a big taker,” Peter laments. “I was always doing extra work, and Rich was absolutely draining the business of money. He didn’t really care about the staff or service to clients; he was starting to pollute the culture. He was taking advantage of me, trading off the back of my loyalty to him because we had built the business up from nothing.”
Peter stayed timid until one Monday, when Rich announced that he had bought a multimillion-dollar house on the Gold Coast. He needed $100,000, and he took it right out of the company account. At a board meeting that day, Rich left early to meet friends at the pub. This was the last straw for Peter; he knew Rich could no longer be trusted, so he promised the board that he would hold Rich accountable. But he had yet to formulate a plan—and he felt guilty and uncomfortable: “Rich was like my big brother.” A colleague said, “It would have been hard for anybody, but I think it was harder because Peter is a giver. He knew what was at the other side of it for Rich, and he wanted to save him from it.”
Peter was a victim of empathy, the powerful emotion that we experience when we imagine another person’s distress. Empathy is a pervasive force behind giving behaviors, but it’s also a major source of vulnerability. When Brad wasn’t doing well and accepted a new job, Peter felt his pain, and bought his clients without hesitation. When he considered how Rich would feel about being ousted, Peter felt sorry for him, and didn’t want to cut him out.
Peter was falling into an empathy trap that’s visible in a classic negotiation study. Researchers brought people together in pairs to negotiate the purchase of electronics products such as TVs. Half of the negotiating pairs were strangers; the other half were dating couples. In each pair, one negotiator was the seller, and the other was the buyer. On average, who do you think would achieve more joint profits: the strangers or the dating couples?
I assumed that the dating couples would do better, because they would trust each other more, share more information, and discover opportunities for mutual gains.
But the dating couples did substantially worse than the strangers, achieving lower joint profits.
Before the negotiation, the researchers asked the dating couples how in love they were. The stronger their feelings of love, the worse they did.
The dating couples—especially the ones in love—operated like selfless givers. Their default approach was to empathize with their partners’ needs and give in right away, regardless of their own interests. Concern for their partners had the effect of “short-circuiting efforts to discover integrative solutions in favor of more accessible but less mutually satisfactory outcomes,” the researchers write, leading to a “‘kid gloves’ approach to problem solving.” When researchers studied selfless givers at the bargaining table, the same pattern surfaced. People who agreed with statements like “I always place the needs of others above my own” were anxious about putting strain on the relationship, so they accommodated their counterparts by giving away value.
As with the dating couples in love, empathy had turned Peter into a doormat—until he discovered an alternative to empathy that’s equally aligned with his natural strengths as a giver. Instead of contemplating Rich’s feelings, Peter considered what Rich was thinking. This led to a powerful insight: Rich seemed interested in working on a new challenge, so Peter could appeal to Rich’s self-interest. “You’re clearly not enjoying running the business day-to-day,” Peter told Rich, “so why don’t you let me handle it? I think I’m old enough now that I’m ready for the heavy lifting.” Rich agreed, expressing a desire to work on special projects in the entrepreneurial space to generate new revenue for the business. Peter supported the decision and started running board meetings.
Peter accomplished this maneuver by getting inside Rich’s head, rather than his heart. Studies led by Columbia psychologist Adam Galinsky show that when we empathize at the bargaining table, focusing on our counterparts’ emotions and feelings puts us at risk of giving away too much.* But when we engage in perspective taking, considering our counterparts’ thoughts and interests, we’re more likely to find ways to make deals that satisfy our counterparts without sacrificing our own interests. Peter never would have discovered his solution if he had continued to empathize with Rich. By shifting his focus from Rich’s feelings to his thoughts, Peter was able to see the world through a taker’s eyes and adjust his strategy accordingly.
Despite his success in drawing Rich into a role where he could do less harm, Peter couldn’t quite let go of the desire to support Rich and help him succeed. At the same time, he knew there was still plenty of room for Rich to keep taking. Peter decided to trust but verify: he granted Rich the autonomy to work on special projects, but held him accountable for his results, asking him to report on his progress every ninety days. “I gave him the opportunity to measure his own contribution and for us to do the same.” After six months, Rich had done very little. Peter conducted a formal analysis and wrote a board report. “When Rich’s contribution ended up being zero, it was undeniably of his own doing. He was presented with a crude form of evidence of his own taking and lack of giving. The truth ultimately moved him on and set him free for me.” Rich elected to leave and take his equity out of the business.
Peter was no longer a doormat; he had taken down a taker. Later, he learned that Rich had been even more of a taker than anyone realized: he had a large line of credit with the firm, and also owed the bank money. Peter had to write a check to settle because
Rich was short. A year after Peter took over as managing director, Rich exited the firm. Fifteen months after Rich’s departure, Peter’s firm had turned around to achieve seven-figure profits, staff morale had skyrocketed, turnover had plummeted, and they were in the running for firm of the year in the dealer group.
Once successful givers see the value of sincerity screening and begin to spot agreeable takers as potential fakers, they protect themselves by adjusting their behavior accordingly. Peter’s experience offers a clue into how givers avoid getting burned: they become matchers in their exchanges with takers. It’s wise to start out as a giver, since research shows that trust is hard to build but easy to destroy. But once a counterpart is clearly acting like a taker, it makes sense for givers to flex their reciprocity styles and shift to a matching strategy—as Peter did by requiring Rich to reciprocate by adding value to the business. “It’s built into my nature now to not give takers much time, and certainly not waste my time with them,” Peter says.
In one experiment, psychologists gave people the chance to work with partners who were either competitive or cooperative. The takers acted competitively regardless of who their partners were. The rest adapted to their partners; they were cooperative when working with cooperative partners, but once a partner was competitive, they matched their behavior, responding in a more competitive manner. Game theorists call this tit for tat, and it’s a pure matcher strategy: start out cooperating, and stay cooperative unless your counterpart competes. When your counterpart competes, match the behavior by competing too. This is a wildly effective form of matching that has won many game theory tournaments. But tit for tat suffers from “a fatal flaw,” writes Harvard mathematical biologist Martin Nowak, of “not being forgiving enough to stomach the occasional mishap.”
Nowak has found that it can be more advantageous to alternate between giving and matching. In generous tit for tat, the rule is “never forget a good turn, but occasionally forgive a bad one.” You start out cooperating and continue cooperating until your counterpart competes. When your counterpart competes, instead of always responding competitively, generous tit for tat usually means competing two thirds of the time, acting cooperatively in response to one of every three defections. “Generous tit for tat can easily wipe out tit for tat and defend itself against being exploited by defectors,” Nowak writes. Generous tit for tat achieves a powerful balance of rewarding giving and discouraging taking, without being overly punitive. It comes with a risk: generous tit for tat encourages most people to act like givers, which opens the door for takers to “rise up again” by competing when everyone else is cooperating. But in a world where relationships and reputations are visible, it’s increasingly difficult for takers to take advantage of givers. According to Nowak, “The generous strategy dominates for a very long time.”
Generous tit for tat is an otherish strategy. Whereas selfless givers make the mistake of trusting others all the time, otherish givers start out with trust as the default assumption, but they’re willing to adjust their reciprocity styles in exchanges with someone who appears to be a taker by action or reputation. Being otherish means that givers keep their own interests in the rearview mirror, taking care to trust but verify. When dealing with takers, shifting into matcher mode is a self-protective strategy. But one out of every three times, it may be wise to shift back into giver mode, granting so-called takers the opportunity to redeem themselves. This is what Peter Audet did with Rich by offering him the chance to earn his keep. Otherish givers carry the optimistic belief that Randy Pausch expressed in The Last Lecture: “Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you.”
The value of generous tit for tat as an otherish approach was demonstrated by Abraham Lincoln in the Sampson story from the opening chapter. After Lincoln fell on his sword so that Lyman Trumbull could defeat James Shields in the Illinois Senate race, Trumbull came under fire for trying to sabotage Lincoln’s career. Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd, said Trumbull had committed “selfish treachery” and she cut ties with Trumbull’s wife, who had been one of her closest friends—Mary was a bridesmaid at the Trumbull wedding. Lincoln, however, was more inclined to forgive. He expressed faith to Trumbull: “Any effort to put enmity between you and me is as idle as the wind.” At the same time, wanting to protect himself against defection, Lincoln warned Trumbull not to cross him: “While I have no more suspicion against you than I have of my best friend living, I am kept in a constant struggle against suggestions of this sort.” Trumbull reciprocated, helping Lincoln in his next Senate bid.
In 1859, Chicago mayor John Wentworth accused Norman Judd of plotting against Lincoln to support Trumbull and advance his own political career. Whereas his wife never forgave Judd, Lincoln reminded Judd that “you did vote for Trumbull against me” but interpreted Judd’s decision generously: “I think, and have said a thousand times, that was no injustice to me.” Lincoln helped Judd mediate the conflict with Wentworth, but then asked for reciprocity: “it would hurt some for me to not get the Illinois delegation,” Lincoln wrote. “Can you not help me a little in this matter, in your end of the vineyard?” Judd matched: he landed a major editorial supporting Lincoln in the Chicago Tribune the following week, secured the Republican Convention in Chicago where Lincoln had supporters, and made sure that Lincoln’s detractors were seated in the back, limiting their influence. Although Lincoln’s default was in line with a giver style, he recognized the value of occasional matching, and benefited from generous tit for tat. Lincoln’s acute attention to others’ perspectives gave him “the power to forecast with uncanny accuracy what his opponents were likely to do,” explained his secretary’s daughter, and use this forecast to “checkmate them.”
Since Jason Geller first started mentoring new hires at Deloitte, he has adopted a version of generous tit for tat. At the end of the first meeting with a new hire, Geller makes an offer: “If this conversation was helpful, I’m happy to do it on a monthly basis.” If the person agrees, Geller sets up a recurring monthly meeting in his calendar, with no end date. In addition to creating opportunities for Geller to give, the monthly meetings offer the side benefit of helping him understand who might be a taker. “Part of the value of the ongoing dialogue is you can tell pretty quickly who’s faking it, because the good conversations and relationships build upon each other,” Geller explains. “It’s easy to fake it every six months, but not on a regular basis. That’s part of why I encourage people to schedule that time. It’s part of how you sort out who’s genuine while making the biggest impact.” Once Geller identifies a colleague as a taker, he keeps giving, but becomes more cautious in his approach. “I don’t help them less, but the help starts to look different. I’ll listen and engage, but we’re not having a dialogue; there’s not as much mentoring and coaching. It’s not that I will consciously be less available to support them, but human nature leads you to invest your time where there is the biggest return—for both of us.”
Initially, Lillian Bauer didn’t vary her investment as a function of the requester’s reciprocity style. Before she began sincerity screening, she was generous with every audience. That changed after she helped a family friend who sought her advice about landing a position at a top-tier consulting firm. Bauer responded in a characteristically generous fashion: she spent more than fifty hours coaching the candidate on nights and weekends and made connections for her at her own firm and several competing firms. The candidate ended up receiving offers from Bauer’s firm and a competitor, and joined Bauer’s firm. But then, despite the fact that Bauer and her colleagues had expended a great deal of time and energy recruiting her, the candidate requested a transfer to another office in a different country—in direct violation of the firm’s recruiting guidelines. Bauer had been duped by an agreeable taker: “The discussions were very much around what was best for her and her only. The way she was talking about the decision made it clear this was all about her; she was obviously going to help herself.” Having been tak
en advantage of, Bauer learned to be more cautious in dealing with takers. “After that point, it just completely changed the way I felt about her, and I wasn’t willing to be as generous.”
Through a combination of sincerity screening and generous tit for tat, Bauer was able to avoid becoming a doormat in advising and mentoring takers. But she hadn’t overcome the obstacle of learning to challenge clients and say no to some of their requests, instead of being a pushover. “I was still saying yes to the client too much, instead of pushing back.” What does it take for givers to become more assertive?
Assertiveness and the Advocacy Paradox
The men and women were equally qualified, but the men were earning substantially more money. Linda Babcock, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University, stared at the data in dismay. Although it was the twenty-first century, the male MBA graduates from her school had 7.6 percent higher salaries than their female counterparts. Carnegie Mellon is one of the world’s finest technical institutions, boasting eighteen Nobel Prize winners, including seven in economics alone. When business students enroll for their MBAs at Carnegie Mellon, they are signing up for a serious quantitative challenge. The school offers degrees in computational finance, quantitative economics, and software engineering, and over 40 percent of all Carnegie Mellon MBAs accept jobs in finance. In such a quantitatively intense environment, the salary numbers suggested that women still face a glass ceiling. Babcock calculated that over a thirty-five-year career, this gap meant that each woman was losing an average of more than $1 million.