“Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?”
- Adam Grant, Givers and Takers
For the past several years I have concluded morning announcements, classes, and presentations with, “Do GREAT things!” And in many instances, the phrase has caught on. Partly because I say it often enough that it sticks in peoples minds, but also because it’s catchy and people easily connect with it.
Who doesn’t want to do great things?
Recently though, as my school has begun to absorb this phrase and I’ve continued to promote it, I’ve begun to ask myself, “What does it mean? What does it look like?”
Because in my mind, to “do GREAT things” has never been synonymous with being successful. It also has never meant not being successful largely because to do GREAT things is to transcend success. I believe it can and will lead to success, both individually and communally, but I also believe it is so much bigger than simple monetary rewards.
So what does it mean?
In his newest book, Givers and Takers: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, Adam Grant writes this about givers:
Givers and takers differ in their attitudes and actions towards other people. If you’re a taker, you help others strategically, when the benefits to you outweigh the personal costs. If you’re a giver, you might use a different cost-benefit analysis: you help whenever the benefits to others exceed the personal costs . . . if you’re a giver at work, you simply strive to be generous in sharing your time, energy, knowledge, skills, ideas, and connections with other people who can benefit from them (pg 5).
Givers are people who consider others as more important than themselves. Or at least they consider the needs of others as more important than their own personal gain and glory.
They’re the ones who use their gifts and talents and resources to help others. People like Chef Andres who takes his expertise of running high-end, highly efficient, and well sought after cooking skills and runs TOWARDS chaos and world catastrophes so he can serve over 150,000 meals a day to those in need.
Givers are people like Mark Bustos, an upscale hair stylist who gives haircuts to the homeless for free.
Givers are the kind of people who inspire the world to be better by using their gifts and talents to make the world better. Because here’s the thing about giving. When we give to others, it inspires others to give to others. However they can, whenever they can.
To do GREAT things we don’t have to pay off someone’s mortgage, donate our last kidney, or jump in front of a bullet. To paraphrase Simon Sinek, we don’t have to find something new or do something dangerous to be givers. We simply need to do what you’re already doing, what you’re good at, and then do it for someone else (via). Doing GREAT things does not mean we need to change the whole world., it simply means we need to change our world.
And if it feels good, that’s okay too.
For a long while I struggled with the argument that we should give because of how it makes us feel because I wanted giving to be something completely selfless. I didn’t want to give because it made me feel good but because it was the right and noble thing to do. Doing it because it made me feel good made the act selfish which seemed to defeat the purpose. (Friends did an episode on this too, if you remember.)
But so what!
So what if giving makes me feel good! I enjoy doing a lot of things that make me feel good, things like writing, reading, camping with my family, and having Saturday morning backyard fires. And because I enjoy them I want to do them more. So if giving to others makes me or you feel good and therefore inspires or encourages us to do it more, THAT’S GREAT!. That means more people are being fed, more families are being blessed, and more people are being cared for. It means more GREAT things are happening!
And that’s the point.
To do GREAT things is to do little things greatly. It means to Give, whatever we can, whenever we can, to whomever we can. It means using our gifts, talents, passions, and resources for the benefit of others.
But that is only the be beginning.
: do GREAT things :
Give. Relate. Explore. Analyze. Try.
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