Week 30, 2018
People Archetypes, Part 2: Takers, Go-Getters, and Disagreeable Givers
Each week I share three ideas about how to make work better. This week is a continuation of last week’s theme on how to build effective teams.
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two groups, and those who write newsletters about them. Guilty as charged! But as we saw last week, archetypes can be useful when building teams. And so here’s a few more to add to the pile:
1. Givers & Takers
Everyone’s favorite Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant says that 20% of the workforce routinely puts the needs of others before their own. He calls these people Givers. And on the other side of the spectrum, there’s another 20% of people who routinely put their own needs before others. They’re called Takers. And the remaining 80%? They are Matchers: people who routinely reciprocate.
For more on this, see Grant’s book “Givers and Takers.”
2. Grow-Givers & Go-Getters
Jim Kwik, Brain Coach to the Stars, takes Grant’s ideas one step further. At the heart of the issue, he says, is mindset. Go-Getters (who Grant calls Takers) tend to see knowledge as finite and something to own and control. Grow-Givers (Grant’s Givers) on the other hand, thins that rising tides lift all boats — which is why they go out of their way to share and help others.
For more on this, check out Jim Kwik interviewed on Inside Quest.
3. Agreeable & Disagreeable Givers
Back to Grant who’s real insight is that Givers are at once the most productive and the least productive members of the workforce. What sets the productive Givers apart is their ability to set boundaries. While Agreeable Givers say “Yes!” to everything, Disagreeable Givers are more cautious — agreeing only to what they can accommodate given their workload.
For more on this, see Quartz @ Work on Disagreeable Givers.
I ended last week’s newsletter by saying that diversity is key to team productivity. But as Grant and Kwik suggest above, there’s a limit to how far we should take this idea. Just as we should actively seek out Disagreeable Givers and Matchers, we should also actively avoid Agreeable Givers and Takers — albeit for different reasons.
