Adam Grant is the youngest full professor and a top-rated teacher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. I found his book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, to be very inspiring and somewhat counterintuitive. Here are my takeaways:

1. Givers prefer to give more than they get; Takers like to get more than they give; and Matchers effectively give to get.
2. Givers get lucky.
3. Givers show respect for the people who speak up, rather than belittling them.
4. When star performers move to a different firm without the rest of their team, their performance drops.
5. When Givers put the group’s interests ahead of their own, they signal that their primary goal is to benefit the group.
6. Show up, work hard, be kind, and take the high road.
7. Even well-intentioned people tend to overvalue their own contributions and undervalue those of others.
8. Students (people) perform better when their teacher (leader) believes in them and expresses that they have really high potential.
9. Givers will avoid the escalation of commitment to a losing course of action (sunk cost fallacy) to protect their image of looking good.

How are Givers, Takers, and Matchers affecting your team?