Adam Grant’s Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success is a momentous book that reveals the reason people succeed while others fail to make their dreams come true. Grant observes that effective influence, association, interacting, and leadership skills have one thing in common, that is, people’s manner of exchanging values.
Grant provides that, in dealings people operate either as takers, matchers, or givers. Grant presents takers as the people who constantly strive to obtain as much as they can from others while the intention of matchers is to trade evenly. Conversely, he presents givers as representing people with rare personalities who contribute towards the success of others without expecting something in return (Grant 6). Accordingly, givers are presented as the people who seem to be least prosperous in their professions because they are too caring, too trusting, and always prepared to sacrifice their own interests for the sake of others (256). As such, the book illustrates that success in modern societies no longer focus on talent, passion, hard work, and luck but rather depend on the way people interact. According to the studies that the book presents, practice of the salespersons in North Carolina, engineers in California, and medical students in Belgium reveal comparable patterns. That those who fit the category of givers were the least successful and included medical students who scored the lowest grades (141) and the least effective engineers. Conversely, the book also present givers as constantly ranked highest in their professions. As such, the book presents givers as both ‘chumps’ and ‘champs’.
The book provides that the three interactive approaches have considerable effects on people’s successes or failures. Grant uses his own ground-breaking research to illustrate how an American best networker established his connections and the way one creative genius responsible for popular television shows struggled for years behind the scenes. The research also demonstrate the way a basketball executive credited with various draft bursts changed things and how people could have predicted the failure of Enron four years before its collapse.
Give and Take is important in training people effective networking, negotiation, and operative leadership skills. The book is a guide for teaching various approaches that individuals can adapt in order to achieve success. Trainees can learn not just how to transform themselves but also groups, entire organizations, and their communities. Further, the information can be useful in training venture capitalist optimists as well as those who hope to transform corporations. Through the ideologies provided by Grant, it is possible for people to engage in a paradigm shift based on interaction where trainees can interact and exchange values.
Work Cited
Grant, Adam. Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. New York: the Penguin
Group, 2013.
