The 365 Best Business Books Of All-Time: Give and Take

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to spend personal time with a lot of very successful people.

That’s why when I re-read Adam Grant’s Give and Take for our series on the 365 best business books of all-time (watch, listen to or read the full summary here), one thing in particular jumped out at me — the world’s most successful people do not view business or life as a zero-sum game.

Grant points out that Givers have unique approaches to interactions in four key domains: networking, collaborating, evaluating, and influencing.

Today I want to focus specifically on influencing, because this is the one thing I’ve found to be true of every successful person I’ve met.

My Key Takeaway/Principle

Influence through prestige, not dominance.

To convince others to buy our products, use our services, accept our ideas, and invest in us, we need to communicate in ways that persuade and motivate. We need to influence.

According to Grant, there are two fundamental Ways Of Influence: dominance and prestige. With dominance, we gain influence because others see us as strong, powerful, and authoritative. With prestige, we become influential because others respect and admire us.

Takers excel in gaining dominance. They strive to be superior to others. To establish dominance, Takers speak forcefully, raise their voices, promote their accomplishments, and sell with conviction and pride. They win, others lose. Conversely, prestige isn’t zero-sum; there’s no limit to the amount of respect and admiration that we can dole out. This means that prestige usually has more lasting value. Givers are what Grant calls powerless communicators.

Powerless communicators speak less assertively, talk in ways that signal vulnerability, revealing their weaknesses and making use of disclaimers, hedges, and hesitations. Givers are much more comfortable expressing vulnerability: they’re interested in helping others, not gaining power over them, and as Grant suggests, they are not afraid of exposing chinks in their armour. By making themselves vulnerable, Givers can actually build prestige.

Asking questions is a form of powerless communication that Givers adopt naturally. By asking questions and getting to know their customers, Givers build trust and gain knowledge about their customers’ needs.

Over time, this makes them better and better at selling. By asking people questions about their plans and intentions, we increase the likelihood that they actually act on these plans and intentions.

Questions to ask yourself

• How can I practice powerless communication this week?
• How can I ask more questions instead of giving answers when I’m communicating?

What else is covered in this book?

In the rest of the book you’ll learn why Givers are always the most successful and least successful people in any group, and why there’s a specific way to be a giver when you network, collaborate, and evaluate so you end up on the top of the food chain instead of the bottom.

This year (2018) I’m reading and summarizing the top 365 business books of all-time. You can get the full list of books, and links to my reviews of each book, by clicking here.

Happy learning!