Read Online B00AFPTSI0 EBOK by Adam M. Grant Ph.D. - Free Book Online
Authors: Adam M. Grant Ph.D.
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something
, we won’t succeed. We can’t
pursue
the benefits of networks ; the benefits ensue from investments in meaningful activities and relationships.”
Before we make the leap of investing in relationships, though, we need to be able to recognize takers in our everyday interactions. For many of us, a challenge of networking lies in trying to guess the motives or intentions of a new contact, especially since we’ve seen that takers can be quite adept at posing as givers when there’s a potential return. Is the next person you meet interested in a genuine connection or merely seeking personal gains—and is there a good way to tell the difference?
Luckily, research shows that takers leak clues. Well, more precisely, takers
lek
clues.
In the animal kingdom,
lekking
refers to a ritual in which males show off their desirability as mates. When it’s time to breed, they gather in a common place and take their established positions. They put on extravagant displays to impress and court female audiences. Some do mating dances. Some sing alluring songs. Some even do acrobatics. The most striking display of lekking occurs among male peacocks. Each mating season, the males assume their positions and begin parading their plumage. They strut. They spread their feathers. They spin around to flaunt their tails.
In the CEO kingdom, takers do a dance that looks remarkably similar.
In a landmark study, strategy professors Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambrick studied more than a hundred CEOs in computer hardware and software companies . They analyzed each company’s annual reports over more than a decade, looking for signs of lekking. What they found would forever change the face of leadership.
It turns out that we could have anticipated the collapse of Enron as early as 1997, without ever meeting Ken Lay or looking at a single number. The warning signs of Enron’s demise are visible in a single image, captured four years before the company unraveled. Take a look at the two pictures of CEOs below, reproduced from their companies’ annual reports. Both men started their lives in poverty, worked in the Nixon administration, founded their own companies, became rich CEOs, and donated substantial sums of money to charity. Can you tell from their faces—or their clothes—which one was a taker?
The man on the left is Jon Huntsman Sr., a giver whom we’ll meet in chapter 6, from his company’s 2006 annual report. The photo on the right depicts Ken Lay. Thousands of experts have analyzed Enron’s financial statements, but they’ve missed an important fact: a picture really is worth a thousand words. Had we looked more carefully at the Enron reports, we might have recognized the telltale signs of takers lekking at the helm.
But these signs aren’t where I expected to find them—they’re not in the faces or attire of the CEOs. In their study of CEOs in the computer industry, Chatterjee and Hambrick had a hunch that takers would see themselves as the suns in their companies’ solar systems. They found several clues of takers lekking at the top. One signal appeared in CEO interviews. Since takers tend to be self-absorbed, they’re more likely to use first-person singular pronouns like
I
,
me
,
mine
,
my
, and
myself
—versus first-person plural pronouns like
we
,
us
,
our
,
ours
, and
ourselves
. In the computer industry, when talking about the company, on average, 21 percent of CEOs’ first-person pronouns were in the singular. For the extreme takers, 39 percent of their first-person pronouns were in the singular. Of every ten words that the taker CEOs uttered referencing themselves, four were about themselves alone and no one else.
Another signal was compensation: the taker CEOs earned far more money than other senior executives in their companies. The takers saw themselves as superior, so they felt entitled to substantial pay discrepancies in their own favor. In the computer industry, a typical taker CEO took home more
, we won’t succeed. We can’t
pursue
the benefits of networks ; the benefits ensue from investments in meaningful activities and relationships.”
Before we make the leap of investing in relationships, though, we need to be able to recognize takers in our everyday interactions. For many of us, a challenge of networking lies in trying to guess the motives or intentions of a new contact, especially since we’ve seen that takers can be quite adept at posing as givers when there’s a potential return. Is the next person you meet interested in a genuine connection or merely seeking personal gains—and is there a good way to tell the difference?
Luckily, research shows that takers leak clues. Well, more precisely, takers
lek
clues.
In the animal kingdom,
lekking
refers to a ritual in which males show off their desirability as mates. When it’s time to breed, they gather in a common place and take their established positions. They put on extravagant displays to impress and court female audiences. Some do mating dances. Some sing alluring songs. Some even do acrobatics. The most striking display of lekking occurs among male peacocks. Each mating season, the males assume their positions and begin parading their plumage. They strut. They spread their feathers. They spin around to flaunt their tails.
In the CEO kingdom, takers do a dance that looks remarkably similar.
In a landmark study, strategy professors Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambrick studied more than a hundred CEOs in computer hardware and software companies . They analyzed each company’s annual reports over more than a decade, looking for signs of lekking. What they found would forever change the face of leadership.
It turns out that we could have anticipated the collapse of Enron as early as 1997, without ever meeting Ken Lay or looking at a single number. The warning signs of Enron’s demise are visible in a single image, captured four years before the company unraveled. Take a look at the two pictures of CEOs below, reproduced from their companies’ annual reports. Both men started their lives in poverty, worked in the Nixon administration, founded their own companies, became rich CEOs, and donated substantial sums of money to charity. Can you tell from their faces—or their clothes—which one was a taker?
The man on the left is Jon Huntsman Sr., a giver whom we’ll meet in chapter 6, from his company’s 2006 annual report. The photo on the right depicts Ken Lay. Thousands of experts have analyzed Enron’s financial statements, but they’ve missed an important fact: a picture really is worth a thousand words. Had we looked more carefully at the Enron reports, we might have recognized the telltale signs of takers lekking at the helm.
But these signs aren’t where I expected to find them—they’re not in the faces or attire of the CEOs. In their study of CEOs in the computer industry, Chatterjee and Hambrick had a hunch that takers would see themselves as the suns in their companies’ solar systems. They found several clues of takers lekking at the top. One signal appeared in CEO interviews. Since takers tend to be self-absorbed, they’re more likely to use first-person singular pronouns like
I
,
me
,
mine
,
my
, and
myself
—versus first-person plural pronouns like
we
,
us
,
our
,
ours
, and
ourselves
. In the computer industry, when talking about the company, on average, 21 percent of CEOs’ first-person pronouns were in the singular. For the extreme takers, 39 percent of their first-person pronouns were in the singular. Of every ten words that the taker CEOs uttered referencing themselves, four were about themselves alone and no one else.
Another signal was compensation: the taker CEOs earned far more money than other senior executives in their companies. The takers saw themselves as superior, so they felt entitled to substantial pay discrepancies in their own favor. In the computer industry, a typical taker CEO took home more
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