Managing a Taker in Your Midst
Introduction
In a previous article I offered a concise summary of
's TED talk, Are you a giver or a taker?. The talk is, itself, a compact presentation of his book on the topic collating scads of research.A friend who kindly reviewed that article wanted to know,
What can I do if there is already a taker on my team? Is my only recourse letting that person go? Can their behavior be improved?
Grant's TED talk does not venture into the details of remediation of taker behavior, but his book does, as do a few other resources mentioned below.
Evaluation
If you missed identifying a taker during team building, begin by documenting the behaviors. This is to support your compassionate conversation with the person, not "paper trail to fire them" documentation.
Start this compassionate Radical Candor exercise by clarifying what is going awry. Focus on the behaviors identified as taker style and the subsequent impact of those behaviors on the team. Remember to avoid fundamental attribution error. The issue is the behavior and not them as a person.
It is important to ask what led them to taking more than giving. "Are you OK? Are you overloaded with work?" These should be open ended so you can get their actual thoughts and not an attempt to tell you something they think you want to hear, or might find acceptable.
Don't go in with your mind made up regarding the why. Ask questions with respect. Practice your leadership communication skills.
During this conversation they may become defensive and try to explain away the events, especially by addressing intent. This is where you need to acknowledge that, regardless of intent, the impact is what matters. Be kind but firm that not correcting the behavior will affect subsequent performance reviews.
Here are some great resources for good question asking approaches and skills:
Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling, Edgar H. Schein, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2013.
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, Michael Bungay Stanier, Page Two, 2016.
The Leader Lab: Core Skills to Become a Great Manager, Faster, Tania Luna and LeeAnn Renninger, Wiley, 2021.
Causes
There can be more than one cause of taker behavior so you may need different strategies depending on context. This article discusses three cases guided by the answers you elicited during the evaluation stage.
The True Positive Case
The simple case is when your team member is a taker by disposition. Good guidance for this case exists in chapters 8 and 9 of Grant's book, which share exercises specifically constructed for addressing taker behavior. Doing more than summarizing those would be an article all on its own and I'd like to focus on the other cases. I invite you to look through the material in the book, as there is a lot there.
The short version is that making taker behaviors visible to the taker and the team will lead takers to match more or maybe even give more. Here are a few to whet your appetite.
Set up situations within your team to demonstrate low cost acts of giving.
Run a "reciprocity ring" exercise that allows the team members to help each other.
Encourage the team to embrace the "five minute favor" for other team members.
There are some caveats. Grant states that changing taker behavior can be situational. If the taker goes to another relationship or team, they tend to reset. I assume that is because they do not identify with the new individuals or group.
The False Positive Case
It is possible that their behavior is a false positive with respect to the why. Two possibilities called out are:
Maybe they used to be a giver or a matcher but got burned a lot by takers. It would be natural to become more selfish as a means of self protection.
and
Maybe they don't know that they are deviating from the norm and are accidentally falling into taker land. They may well be a matcher by disposition.
If they are being self protective, then ensure that they are in a psychologically safe space and know it. Explain that the whole team cares about them and are, together, working toward success.
Likewise, a natural matcher who is just unaware of team norms will likely adjust their behavior immediately after you explain to them that they are outside of the norm.
Finally, the exercises in chapters 8 and 9 of Grant's book apply as a means to shift attitudes in a lasting way.
On the bright side, you have a higher probability to get permanent behavioral changes in these situations.
The "Yes, AND..." Case
You have likely met a narcissist or two already in your life. If you had long lasting contact with that person then you know something of the difficulties involved. A narcissist is a canonical taker. We know that narcissists have inflated, fragile egos. They can be driven by insecurities leading them to believe they have to claim everything for themselves.
One thing will be clear, however - a narcissist displays multiple problematic behaviors beyond taking and present a much greater problem than your typical taker.
Identifying a true narcissist can be a delicate matter. The clinical path would be to have them take a diagnostic questionnaire, but that is pretty intrusive. There is some belief that a single question has strong diagnostic power for narcissism, but the question will be offensive to nearly everyone. I advise against it.
Rely on your observations and your initial, compassionately candid conversations to answer these questions:
Do they have significant resistance to accepting feedback or criticism?
Do they lack empathy for others?
Do they think they're always right and never apologize?
Do they constantly pick on or bad mouth others?
Do they primarily talk about themselves?
Do they always need to be praised and admired?
If you have enough yes's then you'll have your work cut out for you. Here are some resources on managing these folks.
The difficult news is that narcissism is considered incurable, so your last-ditch path may be to invite them to find happiness elsewhere. If you are lucky, however, they may respond with behavior changes to the methods described in the referenced articles.
Wrap Up
Pervasive taker behavior changes may be elusive, but there are methods that can produce measurable change.
Use clear, direct, compassionate communication and good questions to evaluate which situation you are facing. You can have false positives, a situation that is easier to manage. Or you may have a narcissist who poses additional difficulties.
However, it is possible to mitigate a taker's behavior in most cases and doing so will move your team in the right direction.
Regardless of the cause of taker behavior, and even if you haven't identified serious taker behavior on your team, the exercises in chapters 8 and 9 of Grant's book will be good for your team morale and performance.
Resources
* Another talk by Adam Grant: Turning takers into givers
* In the Company of Givers and Takers - Harvard Business Review