Giving and Taking in a Team
Updated: Dec 8, 2019
I remember watching this video a few years ago when the dynamics of my organization wasn't quite working well together.
It can be rather stressful when you are working with a team that simply wasn't connecting and the difference of personalities got in the way.
After watching Adam Grant explain this dynamic of Giver, Matchers, and Takers has on the success of an organization. The reason why some teams fall made sense in this context.
Givers of an organization can make a group successful only if they are not spending their time fighting the struggle against Takers.
My Givers of the team were slowly but surely fading. Our daily meeting were becoming dreadful and a headache, we eventually gave into our Takers.
As I reflect on that year, I realized that we did not do what was best for our students, and they were the ones who suffered through our inability to work together, our lessons were not developed to benefit our learners, and we did not deliver to the best of our abilities. At the end of the year, our Takers eventually left to pursue other paths. As Grant said, Takers do not last long.
That next year, we added another Giver to the team, but also still had added another Taker. It was a rough year as well, our two original Givers were drowning in work, and I saw to help the new Giver to relieve their stress. This year also ended with a Taker leaving, but we also lost a Giver in the process.
This was one of the most frustrating things for myself because I spent 5 years at the same organization only to see the constant change different team members to my team and not having any consistency to truly make a successful years.
As I started the Digital Learning and Leadership program at Lamar University, in 5302, we had to read Carol Dweck's book, Growth Mindset, and I couldn't stop thinking about Adam Grant's video about Givers and Takers.
Was it that Givers and Takers had growth and fixed mindsets?
I spent much of my time reflecting on this question of similarities. I believe that a Giver was a person that had a growth mindsets; whereas, a Taker had a fixed mindset.
As I re-watched this Ted Talk, Adam Grant pointed out there can be disagreeableness from a Giver and agreeableness from a Taker.
Carol Dweck and Adam Grant both have great points into how an individual mindset can make or break an organization.
I think there should be an exploration to what happens when we develop growth mindset with Giver personalities? What are the possibilities to an organization that had these thinkers performing for them?
Reference
TED. (2017, 24 Jan). Are you a giver or taker?|adam grant. Retrieve from https://youtu.be/YyXRYgjQXX0
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