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

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

To understand which category best describes your leadership style, such as a modern leader, consider these characteristics of givers and takers in leadership:

Givers

• Want people to succeed.
• Are generous with their time.
• Aren’t competitive with their peers, and they share credit for achievements. Conversely, they share the blame for mistakes and work collaboratively to institute fixes.
• Are flexible in applying rules.
• Genuinely care about the needs of team members and work to help them achieve their goals.

Takers

• Take all the credit (even when they’ve done the least to earn it).
• Blame others for mistakes.
• Compete with others instead of working with others.
• Are rigid in applying rules (except possibly when applying the rules to themselves).
• Do not commit their time to helping others or participate in activities that do not directly benefit themselves.
• Do not share or play well with others.

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

Dr. Beth Kaplan, author of “Braving the Workplace” said, “The ideal balance in leadership is about cultivating a culture where leaders provide support and foster growth without undermining their own well-being or creating dependency.”

Follow these tips for balancing the giver and taker leadership styles:

Find a “matching” balance

Except for extreme cases, no one is (or should be) exclusively a giver or a taker. Instead, most people are matchers, striving to balance the two effectively to become a “smart giver.” Finding your right balance requires constant assessment and evaluation of daily decisions and situations that arise. This way, you can do the following:

• Change your mindset: Zoom out from your perspective to consider how your thinking, decision-making and leadership style affect those around you. How do your decisions align with the overall goals of your department and the broader organization? While a willingness to help others underpins collaboration and teamwork, organizational structures tend to promote takers.
• Choose the best course of leadership action: Decide, moment to moment, whether to be a giver or a taker to address a particular situation. Studies show a correlation between giving behavior and higher profitability, productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction rates; also, it leads to lower turnover rates and costs of doing business. However, there can be a downside.

Don’t overgive

Givers who exclusively put the needs of others before their own tend to become overwhelmed; this behavior causes them to neglect their own responsibilities and sets themselves up for burnout. [Read related: 10 Ways to Prevent Employee Burnout]

“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,” Dr. Sam Adeyemi, chief executive officer at Sam Adeyemi GLC, Inc., said. “In fact, over half of all managers report feeling ‘burned out’ at any given time, which is almost frightening to think about in the context of day-to-day business.”

Instead of accommodating every single need of others, givers need to set boundaries. For example, they can select certain people to help or set fixed mentoring times for new employees. Adeyemi explained overgiving leaders are heavy-handed managers that send signals to the team that they aren’t trusted. He said leaders should show faith in their team and delegate, which also helps prevent burnout.

“This is why all successful leaders must prioritize self-care and self-assessment,” said Adeyemi. “Remember, you need to put your life vest on first before you start assisting other people. From there, sustained positive leadership is much more about a shift in mindset. Don’t give to employees — engage with them. Don’t promise certainty — promise clarity.”

Be strategic about who you choose to help, advised Akira Hirai, founder and former CEO of Cayenne Consulting. Be there for those who genuinely need your help while advancing the goals of the team and the company. Consider wisely before electing to help people who are primarily takers; their main goal is to advance their own interests, which ultimately won’t benefit the growth of the team or the company.

Follow the five-minute rule

In the journal Knowledge at Wharton, Grant explained that givers are usually at the top and the bottom of the corporate ladder, with matchers and takers in the middle. However, the difference between the bottom and the top has nothing to do with competency or hard work.

Purely zero-sum situations rarely pay off for the giver, he said, but most scenarios are more nuanced. The payoff for the giver often happens over time and may not be immediately clear. The five-minute rule lets you immediately assess the payoff for assisting someone while protecting your time and energy. The rule states that you should always be willing to provide assistance if it will take five minutes or less, regardless of who is asking for help. Embracing this mindset encourages others to become givers as well. It also makes others more likely to lend a hand when you need help.

Leaders who are givers recognize motivation; they will devote themselves to aiding the development of employees who want to improve. Takers are always distrustful of others and are less likely to offer assistance because they see their colleagues’ growth and improvement as a threat. [Learn more about how to identify a true leader in your organization.]

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

Even if you’re in a leadership role, you shouldn’t hesitate to ask for help — even from your direct reports. Although it may seem counterintuitive, doing so can have surprising benefits, as Mary Parker Follett’s management theory shows. Don’t confine yourself to asking for help from your peers or leadership team. When creating a giving culture, everyone needs to know how they contribute to the company’s success.

According to Grant, one of the best ways to develop strong relationships is by seeking advice; it gives people a chance to contribute in meaningful and fulfilling ways. For example, if one of your team members is very detail-oriented, ask them to review your work for typos and other errors. Your team member gets to shine by contributing to your work, and you benefit from seeking their expertise.

“Building on Adam Grant’s work on givers and takers, leaders can establish practical boundaries with takers while sustaining team morale by creating structured, transparent expectations around contributions,” Kaplan said. “Leaders can set clear norms for expected behaviors and make ‘help requests’ part of team routines, where both giving and asking for help are encouraged. This prevents any single individual from over-relying on others without reciprocating.”

Stick to your area of expertise

Embracing the spirit of giving is excellent. However, stretching yourself too thin by trying to help everyone with anything they need is taxing and counterproductive in the long run. Instead, choose one or two areas where you can impart your expertise. This will not only earn you a reputation as a generous expert who’s willing to help but will also streamline the requests you receive. If you’ve earned a reputation for being an expert accountant, it’s unlikely someone will ask you to revise their marketing copy. That’s not what you’ve helped others with in the past.

When you’re setting manageable boundaries for the types of tasks you’re willing to assist with, consider setting expectations around when people can come to you for help. If you find yourself overwhelmed with requests for your expertise throughout the workweek, carve out a dedicated time block for tackling all the requests you receive. Allocating specific chunks of time during your week to help others protects your own time and evokes greater feelings of appreciation and fulfillment.

Learn how to deal with takers

Any organization will have its fair share of givers, matchers and takers. However, give judiciously — otherwise, you’ll find yourself at the bottom of the corporate ladder while everyone you helped rises above you.

“Identify your takers and motivate them accordingly. Takers are very motivated to achieve their own goals,” said Adeyemi. “This is why an adaptable leader finds organizational objectives that align with these goals, pairs those objectives with the employee in question and subsequently unearths the hidden potential of the taker mentality.”

When dealing with takers, givers need to become matchers. This will keep them from overgiving and help them focus their efforts on other givers and matchers, instead of on takers.

“When your working culture has become hijacked by a ‘taker’ or group of takers, the standard response from a giving leader is to adopt a ‘matcher’ mentality,” Adeyemi said. “This requires the givers of your team — leaders included — to hold the takers of the team more accountable during moments of reciprocation.”

He explained this strategy is well-intentioned but requires a highly nuanced and subjective understanding from each leader involved. “Even with the right guidance, giving leaders are going to overgive, and takers are oftentimes going to take more than they contribute,” Adeyemi explained. “That said, there are few practical steps you can take to encourage an equilibrium: start everything with clear expectations. What’s being offered and requested in return? Lean on employee evaluations. Are you stressing the importance of reciprocation? Acknowledge reciprocation publicly.”

Don’t become a people pleaser

Givers naturally enjoy giving to others, but this tendency can lead to people pleasing. Giving doesn’t mean you always say yes or go out of your way to make everyone like you. Leaders must make tough decisions, and you can’t always please everyone.

Instead, aim to become respected as a giver. Then, even during the toughest times, you’ll do what’s best for the company rather than please certain individuals or groups of people. For example, if layoffs are in the company’s best interest, a giver will make that choice even though it will not be popular. [Learn leadership tips for managing a remote team.]

Give back

Promoting giving behavior at your business serves two purposes:

• Facilitates employee teamwork and loyalty: Promoting giving behavior allows you to adopt giving leadership behaviors to encourage teamwork, ensure goals are achieved, and foster employee loyalty and dedication. [Read Why Teamwork Is Crucial to Workplace Success.]
• Helps the business: Encouraging giving behavior helps you identify givers in your organization so you can focus your attention on key personnel who will work to benefit themselves and the good of the company. Creating a giving culture reinforces positive behaviors that improve growth and business success.

“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 said.

The old adage that giving is better than receiving doesn’t necessarily apply to leadership qualities. If you give sensibly, you and your workforce will reap the monetary and emotional rewards of succeeding together.

Balance leadership: The power of giving without overextending

In today’s workplace, effective leadership goes beyond individual achievement. It thrives on a balanced approach to giving. Research suggests that leaders who generously support their teams while setting boundaries to avoid burnout create a culture that boosts productivity, loyalty and resilience. By blending the strengths of givers and matchers, leaders can foster collaboration and mutual growth without sacrificing their own well-being. This balanced approach helps teams succeed and positions your organization for sustainable, collective success.

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