Perhaps it's because I'm Canadian, but for most of my career I've been given the advice to not be too helpful at work. Helping others is wonderful, the advice goes, but you have to look out for your own career first so that you're not taken advantage of.
So I was fascinated to discover Give and Take by Adam Grant. In this book, Grant investigates if it pays to be helpful. He begins by categorizing people as either a) "givers", people who primarily give more help to others than they expect in return, b) “takers”, who primarily look for benefit from others, and c) “matchers”, who try to keep in balance the help they give and receive.
What Grant found appears to validate the advice I’ve always been given: the least successful people in their careers tend to be the givers. They don't look out for themselves, and their own goals get sidetracked because all of their time is spent helping others. Takers and matchers, by contrast, tend to be more successful.
But, there's a twist. The most successful group of all is actually also the givers. Some givers actually tend to be the most successful of all — they are just the ones who are careful to avoid going out of their way for the takers.
This is tremendously inspiring. It tell us that we can be successful in service of others, with just a little bit of awareness towards who we're dealing with.
I'm curious to find people who've achieved great success in this way. I think one such person from my own field, design, may be Dann Petty. Dann is talented independent designer who keeps busy working with some big-name clients, but if you look at his Twitter profile it seems like he spends all of his time just helping other designers. He's constantly working to connect designers to his contacts with good job opportunities, he organizes events to connect disparate designers, and shares examples of good work and how to learn from it. Given the community he's built and success that he has had, I suspect he's figured out a way to have a great career by giving help and supporting others.