More on Being Generous Without Being a Doormat

As part of our Big Idea series on generosity burnout, we did an HBR webinar about how to manage the costs of being a good citizen at work. The audience asked quite a few excellent questions — far more than we could answer in the time we had. Here, we’ll address some of the most common themes that emerged. What are the team dynamics of generosity? Working in teams has a way of muddying the waters when it comes to giving, taking, and “matching” (trading favors). As one workshop participant recently said to Reb, “If I help someone on my team with something, that’s not giving — that’s my job.” There’s some truth to that, but the reality is, teams vary in their norms for citizenship behavior — and the people who consistently go the extra mile make disproportionate contributions to team effectiveness. A group of all givers may sound like a dream team, but it’s not necessarily the ideal. Several people have asked us what to do about managers or colleagues who are overly generous and end up weighing their teams down with extra commitments. You might need to have a difficult conversation in such situations, just as you would if you were dealing with serial takers. It may also help to have some quid pro quo matchers on your team, because they will naturally strive to keep things evenly balanced. Technology has been changing the team experience in many organizations — in ways that are good and bad for generosity burnout. Virtual teams save employees transit time and make it easier to share expertise across locations, but they can also reduce the visibility of people’s helping and citizenship behaviors when leaders and colleagues aren’t able to directly observe the kinds of contributions that don’t show up in a project plan but do shape team performance. Collaboration platforms like Slack and Basecamp, meanwhile, can increase the transparency of team communication and make it easier to find and distribute knowledge resources like FAQs, training documents, and reports. But they also feed the always-available mindset and culture, which increase connectedness but push people toward energy-depleting, reactive helping instead of proactive giving that can be higher impact and more efficient. Technology has already changed a lot since Leslie Perlow’s Sleeping with Your Smartphone was published in 2012, but that book still offers a great deal of wisdom about how to use technology without letting it use you up. If I’m stuck working with a taker, what can I do? If your boss is a taker, quit. No, seriously: Quit. Of course, many people don’t have the luxury of leaving. But time and again, people tell us they wish they had parted ways with selfish bosses sooner. If that’s not an option, you have two alternatives. One is to figure out what goals your boss is trying to achieve. The nice thing about takers is that their behavior is fairly predictable if you understand their interests: Do they want power, wealth, status, or accomplishment? Once you have a grasp on that, you can show them how their selfishness may be undermining their objectives. If you can’t figure out what motivates your boss, try asking him or her for advice on how to handle another taker. What takers say about other people’s motivations often provide clues about their own. The other option is to start looking for opportunities to build relationships with other senior people in the organization. Ask them what they’re working on and if there’s any help that you can readily provide. In the best case they’ll offer you a new role; in the worst case they may still be able to protect you a bit. If you have peers or direct reports who are takers, see this post that Adam wrote on how to change a selfish person’s stripes. How can organizations better recognize and reward successful givers? Performance management systems can be entrenched and hard to change, so be prepared to show some data about why retooling them is worth it. An HBR article on collaborative overload we wrote with Rob Cross cites a number of studies about the costs of overlooking team members’ contributions, and Adam’s article on how customers can rally your troops shows the benefits of connecting employees to the impact of their work on end users — which is a form of recognition for contributions. Or consider this stat from a recent study of NBA players: An excellent team player adds 60% more value than a ball hog does. Once you’ve got buy-in for change, collect data and examples to shed light on the contributions to others that often go unnoticed. Peer recognition systems are one way to do that, and some of our recent data suggests they can boost employee engagement and performance, too. If you’re a manager, use feedback sessions or even regular meetings to talk with your employees about not just their own work but also the help they’re offering and receiving from their colleagues. How can givers in service or sales jobs balance the desire to help customers with organizational goals and resources? If you’re a selfless giver in a sales or client service role, you can run into some unique challenges. On one hand, you might want to give as much as possible to your customers so that they feel satisfied and buy more or refer new business to you. On the other hand, giving too much time or offering terms that are good for your client but bad for your firm can be a drain on both you and your organization. And remember that even though money is involved, the tactics for beating generosity burnout still apply: Be prepared to say no to client requests that will stretch you too thin and undermine your ability to offer long-term help to them and others. Amplify the return on your giving investments by looking for ways to repurpose resources developed in one context in others. Chunk your time so that clients know when they can reach you — and when they can’t. What are some tips and tools for reducing the time it takes to help others? Finding ways to cut down the time it takes to be helpful is a win-win: It allows you to help more people and gives you room for your own work, development, or rest. Specific time management strategies will vary by job and by the kinds of help you offer or get asked for, but a few of our favorites include: Using an automatic scheduler for ad hoc meeting requests. (We’ve tried TimeTrade and Acuity Scheduling, but there are several others.) Putting the answers to common questions in your email signature, an autoreply message, or an FAQ doc you either post online or copy and paste from when needed (kind of like what we’ve done with this article). Bringing groups of people together on popular topics so you can address common requests all at once or connecting people with similar needs who can then help one another. Doing more five-minute favors. When someone asks for an hour (or more) of your time that you don’t have to spare, see if you can do something smaller but still helpful (such as making an introduction or sharing a resource). How does my personality relate to giving, taking, and matching? Virtually no one is a pure giver, taker, or matcher. We all have moments when we help with no strings attached (by mentoring a junior colleague, for instance), when we trade favors evenly (by, say, exchanging information with a competitor), and when we aim to maximize our own returns (as in a salary negotiation). But we all have dominant styles — our default preferences for how we treat most of the people most of the time. And these styles have less to do with personality than most people realize. Here’s what our research suggests about the relationship between certain personality traits and styles of giving, taking, and matching: Extraversion-introversion: We find a near-zero correlation between these qualities and styles of give and take. There’s a very slight tendency for introverts to give more (when you listen more it’s easier to help people) and for extraverts to take more (when you’re dominant you can crowd others out of the conversation). But mostly these traits affect how people give or take, not whether they do. Agreeableness-disagreeableness: As Adam explained in this TED talk, here’s another near-zero correlation. It turns out that nice people aren’t necessarily helpful, and unfriendly people can be quite generous. Make sure you don’t undervalue disagreeable givers — and watch out for agreeable takers. Conscientiousness: This is the only major personality trait where we’ve consistently seen overlap with giving styles. Since conscientious people have a strong sense of duty and responsibility, they tend to spend more time helping others. Also, their industriousness means they’re less likely to be free riders and social loafers. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: Seriously, you’re still using that outdated framework? Here’s why Adam broke up with the MBTI and you should too. Can I judge my own style accurately? No. But if you go around telling people “I’m a giver,” you might be a taker. (Here’s a fun video Adam made — he went in search of generous celebrities and found this instead.) Self-awareness is a real challenge. One barrier is ego: Most of us want to see ourselves as givers or matchers; few people are willing to admit that they’re takers. A second barrier is knowledge: You’re aware of all the acts of generosity you’ve ever done but only a small fraction of other people’s giving. Even if you overcome those two hurdles, you have to factor in many kinds of giving behaviors, figure out how common or rare each one is, and compare yourself against that benchmark. Few of us bother to try, and those who do find that it can be about as simple and fun as differential calculus. For those who asked about diagnostic tools, Adam has created some free assessments — which allow you to rate yourself or get others to rate you. How important is it for a leader to be a giver? We think it’s critical. Companies led by narcissistic takers have more volatile performance, because takers tend to be overconfident about their own strategies and put their own interests ahead of the firm’s. Meanwhile companies with servant-leader CEOs have better financial performance. When you have a giver at the top, you never have questions about that person’s loyalty. Of course, it’s especially important for leaders to be thoughtful about whom, how, and when they help. But as long as they align their giving with organizational goals, they’re the people you want in the corner office. How can I find out if an organization has a culture of givers, matchers, or takers? Our favorite approach is to start collecting stories. Ask people to tell you a story about something that happened at their organization but wouldn’t occur elsewhere. Once you have a bunch, start looking at the patterns. In giver cultures you’ll hear about the unusual generosity of senior leaders — how they go out of their way to support employees who are struggling or encourage stars to leave for better opportunities. Stories in matcher cultures are mostly about meritocracy: People are treated fairly; loyalty is rewarded. In taker cultures you’ll hear about self-centered behaviors like volunteering for interesting and important assignments while “delegating” grunt work to others. If the stories don’t give you clues, you can ask targeted questions. Are people in this organization more likely to share or hoard knowledge? To give or take credit for collective achievements? To focus on mentoring those below them or pleasing those above them? The Big Idea

More on Being Generous Without Being a Doormat

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