In his book Give And Take: A Revolutionary Approach To Success, Adam Grant argues that there are three kinds of people in the world. Givers devote themselves to the service of others, even at their own expense. Takers devote themselves to the service of their own short and long term interests, often at the expense of others. Matchers seek balance, taking sometimes, giving other times.
What Grant argues - and backs up with research - is that the givers consistently rise to the top, far more than either takers or matchers. In other words, nice guys really do finish first.
Real-life experience validates his claim. Takers burn bridges, hamper teamwork and acquire reputations for being selfish and untrustworthy. Matchers are fair-minded to a fault, meaning that they spend too much time keeping score in the short term, missing opportunities to give more now to get more later. Givers give without worrying about an immediate return. Their giving fosters strong relationships and solid reputations while encouraging others to be more generous. Most of all, givers are invited through doors and presented opportunities that takers and matchers never get to see.
Givers are trusted.
As business owners and managers can attest, trust gets people through the front door and keeps them there. Trust, more so than logic, is the deal maker and the lack of it kills deals and erodes business.
Giving has its limits, of course. Givers aren't stupid. They give for the sake of people, not for the sake of giving, meaning they will say no to takers, cementing their reputations even more.
Conventional politicians stress both their giving personalities and their trustworthiness when seeking the support of voters. All of the main speakers during the Democratic National Convention in Philiadelphia this week repeatedly used the words give and trust to describe Hillary Clinton.
Most politicians are givers or they wouldn't be successful.
Their giving attracts supporters who believe the entire population could use their vision, their energy and their experience and they get elected and re-elected because they earn and keep earning the trust and the respect of voters.
Donald Trump is not most politicians nor is he conventional.
The only time he talks about giving is when he says he gave someone a job, which glosses over the part about the person providing their work to Trump in exchange for being paid for those efforts. The only time he talks about trust is to yell that in these dark times, only he can be trusted to lead the United States and make things right.
Based on his speeches and sound bites, Trump is not only a taker but believes everyone is either a taker or a giver, a winner or a loser, and that only losers give more than what they get in return.
In such a bleak world, there are only absolutes - right or wrong, strong or weak, rich or poor, smart or dumb, American or not, hand on the trigger or looking into the barrel. In Trumpland, people only sign up to be soldiers and police officers or doctors and nurses for the pay, not to protect and help others.
Trump's lack of understanding of both history and humanity is shocking.
Homo sapiens would have never evolved if this Ayn Rand style of self-interest had predominated over giving to our fellow kin and trusting them. Survival of the fittest doesn't apply to the strongest and most ruthless individuals. Instead, it describes the species most able to adapt to their environment and collaborate with their own kind are the ones fittest to survive.
Science and knowledge grew, communities and nations formed, because the bonds of giving and trust hold people together, making them greater than their individual parts. That belief united the divided states against their English oppressors 240 years ago.
Two-and-a-half centuries later, most people hold these truths to be self-evident, that individual success is a myth, that personal triumph is the outcome of the support of many others and that people joined together under one banner can change the world.
In November, we'll find out whether Americans still believe it or whether they have completely lost faith in their republic as "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
