Givers Vs Takers - 03/30/20 12:15 AM
Quote:
In Negotiations, Givers Are Smarter Than Takers
Generosity is a sign of intelligence, and givers are the rising tide that lifts all boats.
By Adam Grant
March 27, 2020
In 2010, a Costa Rican diplomat named Christiana Figueres set out to do something that many people saw as impossible. The United Nations had appointed her to build a global agreement to fight climate change. She needed to get 195 countries on board, and one of the biggest challenges was Saudi Arabia. Their economy was dependent on oil and gas exports, so they had every incentive to keep profiting from that rather than reducing their carbon footprint.
When the pie seems fixed, it’s common to panic and treat resources as scarce. In crisis, we often do whatever it takes to protect ourselves. That’s especially clear today: In the past few weeks, we’ve seen hoarders collect thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer, and spreaders ignore warnings to maintain physical distance to avoid infecting vulnerable groups. We’ve watched policymakers withhold emergency funds. “It’s give and take, but it’s got to be mostly take,” President Trump said in 2015, summing up his negotiation philosophy. “You got to mostly take.”
That was the art of the deal: Be a taker. But now there’s a science of the deal, with decades of evidence on what separates great negotiators from their peers. It tells a different story: Being a giver may actually be a sign of intelligence.
In one of my favorite studies, researchers tested people’s intelligence with a series of quantitative, verbal and analytical reasoning problems. Then they sent them off to negotiate. Intelligence paid off — but not in the way you might expect. The smarter people were, the better their counterparts did in the negotiation. They used their brainpower to expand the pie, finding ways to help the other side that cost them nothing.
This isn’t an isolated result. In a comprehensive analysis of 28 studies, the most successful negotiators cared as much about the other party’s success as their own. They refused to see negotiations as win-lose or the world as zero-sum. They understood that before you could claim value, you needed to create value. They didn’t declare victory until they could help everyone win.
This isn’t limited to negotiation. Economists find that the higher that Americans score on intelligence tests, the more they give to charity — even after adjusting for their wealth, income, education, age and health. Psychologists demonstrate that the smarter people are, the less likely they are to take resources for themselves — and the more likely they are to give to a group. I’ve discovered in my own research that when success is a sprint, givers may well finish last. But if it’s a marathon, the takers tend to fall behind and the givers often finish first.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/smart...e=pocket-newtab
Generosity is a sign of intelligence, and givers are the rising tide that lifts all boats.
By Adam Grant
March 27, 2020
In 2010, a Costa Rican diplomat named Christiana Figueres set out to do something that many people saw as impossible. The United Nations had appointed her to build a global agreement to fight climate change. She needed to get 195 countries on board, and one of the biggest challenges was Saudi Arabia. Their economy was dependent on oil and gas exports, so they had every incentive to keep profiting from that rather than reducing their carbon footprint.
When the pie seems fixed, it’s common to panic and treat resources as scarce. In crisis, we often do whatever it takes to protect ourselves. That’s especially clear today: In the past few weeks, we’ve seen hoarders collect thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer, and spreaders ignore warnings to maintain physical distance to avoid infecting vulnerable groups. We’ve watched policymakers withhold emergency funds. “It’s give and take, but it’s got to be mostly take,” President Trump said in 2015, summing up his negotiation philosophy. “You got to mostly take.”
That was the art of the deal: Be a taker. But now there’s a science of the deal, with decades of evidence on what separates great negotiators from their peers. It tells a different story: Being a giver may actually be a sign of intelligence.
In one of my favorite studies, researchers tested people’s intelligence with a series of quantitative, verbal and analytical reasoning problems. Then they sent them off to negotiate. Intelligence paid off — but not in the way you might expect. The smarter people were, the better their counterparts did in the negotiation. They used their brainpower to expand the pie, finding ways to help the other side that cost them nothing.
This isn’t an isolated result. In a comprehensive analysis of 28 studies, the most successful negotiators cared as much about the other party’s success as their own. They refused to see negotiations as win-lose or the world as zero-sum. They understood that before you could claim value, you needed to create value. They didn’t declare victory until they could help everyone win.
This isn’t limited to negotiation. Economists find that the higher that Americans score on intelligence tests, the more they give to charity — even after adjusting for their wealth, income, education, age and health. Psychologists demonstrate that the smarter people are, the less likely they are to take resources for themselves — and the more likely they are to give to a group. I’ve discovered in my own research that when success is a sprint, givers may well finish last. But if it’s a marathon, the takers tend to fall behind and the givers often finish first.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/smart...e=pocket-newtab