The Influence of Leadership Styles: How Givers and Takers Match Up

What’s the difference between givers and takers in leadership?

In Give and Take, Wharton professor Adam Grant challenges the idea that the most successful leaders are those who take the most. Instead, he argues that modern workplaces increasingly reward givers — people who contribute to others without keeping score. That stands in contrast to takers, who focus on advancing their own goals with little investment in others, and matchers, who aim to keep exchanges balanced.

To understand which category best describes your leadership style, consider these common characteristics of givers and takers.

Givers

• Want others to succeed
• Are generous with their time
• Aren’t competitive with peers and share credit for achievements
• Take responsibility for mistakes and work collaboratively to fix problems
• Apply rules with flexibility and context
• Genuinely care about team members’ needs and help them achieve their goals

Takers

• Take credit, even when they’ve done little to earn it
• Shift blame when things go wrong
• Compete with others instead of focusing on workplace collaboration
• Apply rules rigidly (often with exceptions for themselves)
• Avoid investing time in activities that don’t directly benefit them
• Are unwilling to engage in workplace teamwork or share credit

How can you balance being a giver and a taker as a leader?

Dr. Beth Kaplan, author of Braving the Workplace, notes that effective leadership isn’t about choosing one style over the other. Instead, it’s about creating an environment where leaders support growth without burning themselves out or creating unhealthy dependence.

Here are a few ways to balance giver and taker leadership styles in practice.

Find a “matcher” balance.

Most leaders don’t operate strictly as givers or takers. Instead, they act as “matchers,” adjusting their approach based on fairness, context and reciprocity. That kind of balance requires emotional intelligence, which is the ability to read situations, understand others’ needs and recognize your own limits. Becoming a “smart giver” means regularly checking whether your actions are helping the team and remaining sustainable for you.

That balance often comes down to two things:

• Change your mindset. Step back and look beyond your own perspective. Consider how your business decision-making affects your team, your department and the organization as a whole. Helping others is essential to collaboration and trust, but many workplace structures still reward taker behavior. Being aware of that tension helps you lead more intentionally.
• Choose the right leadership response. Effective leaders understand that giving works best when it’s balanced. Knowing when to help, when to push back and when to expect reciprocity leads to better outcomes. And this balanced approach can pay off. Deloitte’s 2025 Global Human Capital Trends report links people-focused, collaborative cultures to stronger results, while unchecked giving often leads to burnout.

Don’t overgive.

Giving too much can lead to poor outcomes for managers and their organizations, including the following:

• Burned-out and overwhelmed leaders: While employee burnout is a common concern, leaders who constantly put others’ needs ahead of their own are also at risk. Over time, overgiving can cause managers to neglect critical responsibilities and become overwhelmed. “Burnout is a concern for everyone at your organization, most especially those who serve as a leader for other employees or feel burdened by additional responsibility,” said Dr. Sam Adeyemi, chief executive officer at Sam Adeyemi GLC, Inc.
  
  That pressure is widespread. According to Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report, 42 percent of managers worldwide reported feeling a lot of stress the previous day. This is a reminder that leaders must manage their energy and boundaries, not just their workload.
• Employees who aren’t empowered: Adeyemi also cautioned that leaders who overgive can become overly involved, sending the unintended message that their team isn’t trusted. Delegating responsibility and showing confidence in others can help you build a culture of empowered employees while helping leaders avoid burnout.

To avoid the downsides of overgiving, leaders can take a more intentional approach:

• Set limits on what you can give. Rather than trying to meet every request, givers need to establish clear boundaries. That might mean being more deliberate about when you step in, instead of trying to be available for everything at all times.
  
  “[All] successful leaders must prioritize self-care and self-assessment,” Adeyemi advised. “You need to put your life vest on first before you start assisting other people. From there, sustained positive leadership is more about a shift in mindset. Don’t give to employees — engage with them. Don’t promise certainty — promise clarity.”
• Be thoughtful about who you give to. Focus on people who truly need support and whose growth benefits the team. Be cautious about overextending yourself to habitual takers, who tend to slow progress rather than move it forward.

Follow the five-minute rule.

In an interview with Knowledge at Wharton, Adam Grant notes that givers tend to land at both extremes of the corporate ladder. Some rise quickly, while others burn out. The difference usually isn’t skill or effort; it comes down to how they decide when to give and when to hold back.

To help givers strike that balance, Grant points to a simple guideline known as the five-minute rule. The idea is straightforward: If you can help someone in five minutes or less, do it. That might mean making a quick introduction, sharing a useful resource or offering brief feedback. These small actions don’t take much time, but over time they build trust, goodwill and strong working relationships.

For leaders, the five-minute rule offers a practical way to stay helpful without overextending. It encourages generosity that’s intentional and sustainable, allowing leaders to support growth without losing focus on their own responsibilities.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Being a leader doesn’t mean doing everything yourself. Asking for help, even from direct reports, can build trust, improve manager-employee relationships and reinforce a sense of shared ownership. While it may feel counterintuitive, it sends a clear message that everyone’s input matters.

That idea has long roots in leadership thinking, including the following: 

• Mary Parker Follett’s management theory emphasized collaboration and shared responsibility well before modern leadership models caught up. In practice, this means leaders shouldn’t limit requests for help to peers or executives. A healthy giving culture depends on contributions flowing in all directions.
• Grant often emphasizes the power of asking for advice. When leaders look to their team members for help and input, they give people a meaningful way to contribute while showing how trusted they are. Something as simple as asking a detail-oriented team member to review a document can make a difference.

“Building on Adam Grant’s work on givers and takers, leaders can establish practical boundaries while sustaining team morale by creating clear expectations around contributions,” Kaplan explained. “Making both giving and asking for help part of team routines prevents any one person from carrying too much of the load.”

Stick to your area of expertise.

Being generous doesn’t mean trying to help with everything. When leaders stretch themselves too thin, giving quickly becomes exhausting and unsustainable. A better approach is to focus on one or two areas where you genuinely add the most value.

When people know what you’re good at, they’re more likely to come to you with the right kinds of requests. Over time, this helps you build a reputation as someone who’s helpful and effective without having to be the go-to person for every problem. For example, if you’re known for your accounting skills, people are far more likely to ask for financial guidance than for help editing marketing copy.

Learn how to deal with takers.

Every organization includes a mix of givers, matchers and takers. The challenge for leaders is learning how to give without letting takers drain their time, energy or team momentum. Here are a few strategies that can help.

• Motivate takers appropriately. Adeyemi advises leaders to first identify the takers on their teams and understand what drives them. “Takers are highly motivated by their own goals,” Adeyemi explained. “Effective leaders look for ways to align those goals with organizational objectives, then hold employees accountable for delivering results.”
• Adopt a matcher mindset. Dealing with takers doesn’t mean cutting them off entirely. Instead, givers often need to shift into a matcher mindset when working with them. Matching — giving with an expectation of reciprocity — helps prevent overgiving and allows leaders to focus their energy on people who contribute consistently. “When a team’s culture is dominated by one or more takers, a giving leader often needs to shift into a matcher role,” Adeyemi said. “That means holding takers accountable and being clear about expectations around contribution and follow-through.”
• Stay consistent and balanced. Even leaders with the best intentions will sometimes give too much, while takers continue to push for more. To keep things balanced, Adeyemi recommends getting clear early on about what’s being offered and what’s expected in return. When someone does what they said they would, saying so publicly goes a long way. Taken together, these small habits help leaders protect their time, stay fair and keep things moving without giving up the generosity that makes their leadership style work.

Don’t become a people pleaser.

Givers naturally want to help others, but that instinct can sometimes drift into people-pleasing. Giving doesn’t mean always saying yes or trying to keep everyone happy. Leadership comes with hard choices, and not every decision will be popular.

Rather than aiming to be liked, givers are better served by earning respect. When leaders are clear about their values and priorities, they’re more likely to make decisions based on what’s best for the organization, even when those decisions are uncomfortable.

For example, if layoffs are truly in the company’s best interest, a giving leader will move forward thoughtfully and responsibly, even knowing the decision won’t be well received. In moments like these, leadership isn’t about avoiding disappointment; it’s about acting with fairness, clarity and long-term responsibility.

Give back.

Encouraging a culture of giving does more than feel good: It strengthens how teams work together and supports better business outcomes like the following:

• More teamwork and loyalty: Encouraging giving behaviors helps teams collaborate more effectively and support one another in reaching shared goals. When employees feel supported by their peers, they’re more likely to stay engaged, committed and loyal to the organization.
• Stronger business performance. A giving culture also makes it easier to identify employees who consistently contribute beyond their own roles. These givers often become key drivers of long-term success because they work in ways that benefit both themselves and the company. There’s a clear return on this approach: Research published in Harvard Business Review found that high-trust organizations report lower stress, higher energy at work and greater productivity than low-trust workplaces.
• More effective responsibility distribution: The idea that giving is always better than receiving doesn’t fully apply to leadership. When leaders give thoughtfully — and encourage others to do the same — teams are more likely to share responsibility, build trust and succeed together. “Encourage team members to support each other, creating a network of mutual giving that distributes the giver role across the team rather than centralizing it with the leader,” Kaplan advised.

Balance leadership: The power of giving without overextending

Effective and even inspirational leadership today isn’t about going it alone. It’s about knowing when to give, when to set boundaries and how to support others without burning yourself out. Leaders who strike that balance tend to build stronger teams, higher trust and better long-term results.

By combining the generosity of givers with the fairness of matchers, leaders can encourage collaboration and shared growth while still protecting their own well-being. When giving is thoughtful and sustainable, teams are better positioned to succeed together, and organizations are set up for lasting success.

Amanda Clark contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.