Last night, Chris and I watched an Adam Grant presentation for Dreamforce, where Grant discussed the concept of givers, takers, and matchers in life and at work. After a lot of research and data, he found that the best sales performers were givers, but at the same time, the very worst were also givers, too. It wasn’t so cut and dry as to givers belonging in one performance area, matchers in  second, and takers in a third.

In an ideal world, we’d all be givers. We’d expect nothing in return when we give, whether it’s our time, money, or energy. But we do not live in an ideal world. My mom taught to be a matcher. She said whenever people do something nice for me, I need to do something back for them. But she took that meaning to the extreme; if someone took her out to dinner today, she’d offer to take them out to dinner tomorrow, or next week. That always sounded a bit too forward and stupid to me, and it always drove me crazy. But as crazy as I thought it was, in many ways, I mimicked it for better or worse without always realizing it. It’s taken me a lot of time to try to wean myself out of that thinking.

It’s hard to be a giver, though, when you’ve been burned by a lot of people in the past. It’s hard to let another person borrow money when so many people in the past have borrowed and never paid it back. It’s hard to chip in for a birthday cake for a colleague when that colleague doesn’t really seem to appreciate the thought that went behind that. Sometimes, i think, I rather just give money to a homeless person on the street or a charity (which I actually do). In those cases, someone in real need really needs your help. I definitely don’t think I’m a taker, but I’m somewhere between a giver and a matcher depending on the circumstance.