Give and Take: a revolutionary Approach to Success pdfdrive com

particularly pronounced among nurses who had reported strong giver tendencies
in a survey. Interestingly, a week after meeting the health-care practitioners who
benefited from the surgical kits, all of the nurses actually felt more inclined
toward giving. Along with reducing burnout among givers, a firsthand
connection to impact can tilt people of all reciprocity styles in the giver
direction. When people know how their work makes a difference, they feel
energized to contribute more.
Building on this idea that seeing impact can reduce the burnout of givers and
motivate others to give, some organizations have designed initiatives to connect
employees to the impact of their products and services. At
Wells Fargo
, a vice
president named Ben Soccorsy created videos of customers talking about how
the company’s low-interest loans helped them reduce and eliminate their
unwanted debt. “In many cases, customers felt like they had a massive weight
lifted off their shoulders: they now had a plan for paying down their debt,”
Soccorsy says. When bankers watched the videos, “it was like a light switch
turned on. Bankers realized the impact their work could have—that this loan can
really make a difference in customers’ lives. It was a really compelling
motivator.” At Medtronic, employees across the company—from engineers to

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salespeople—pay visits to hospitals to see their medical technologies benefiting
patients. “When they’re exhausted,” former Medtronic CEO Bill George told
me, “it’s very important that they get out there and see procedures. They can see
their impact on patients, which reminds them that they’re here to restore people
to full life and health.” Medtronic also holds an annual party for the entire
company, more than thirty thousand employees, at which six patients are invited
to share their stories about how the company’s products have changed their lives.
When they see for the first time how much their work can matter, many
employees break down into tears.
Having a greater impact is one of the reasons why, counterintuitive as it
might seem, giving more can actually help givers avoid burnout. But it’s not the
whole story. There’s a second reason why Conrey’s extra giving was energizing,
and it has to do with where and to whom she gave. Nearly a century ago, the
psychologist
Anitra Karsten
invited people to work on repetitive tasks for as
long as they enjoyed them, but to stop when they were tired. For long periods of
time, the participants toiled away at tasks like drawing pictures and reading
poems aloud, until they couldn’t handle it any longer. One man’s task was to
write ababab over and over. As the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer retells it,
“He went on until he was mentally and physically exhausted. His hand felt
numb, as though it couldn’t move to make even one more mark. At that moment
the investigator asked him to sign his name and address for a different purpose.
He did so quite easily.”
The same strange thing happened to other participants. One woman said she
was so drained that she couldn’t lift her arm to make another mark. But she then
lifted her arm to adjust her hair, apparently without any difficulty or discomfort.
And when participants read poems aloud until their voices were hoarse, they had
no trouble complaining about the task—and when they complained, they didn’t
sound hoarse anymore. According to Langer, they weren’t faking it. Rather, “the
change of context brought renewed energy.”
When Conrey volunteered as a mentor to TFA teachers, it created a change
of context that made giving feel fresh. “Working with adults, doing something
that is kind of teaching, that doesn’t burn me out. That invigorates me,” Conrey
says. Giving more can be exhausting if it’s in the same domain. Instead of giving
more in the same way, over and over, she expanded her contributions to a
different group of people. The same thing happened when she started mentoring
high school students at Minds Matter: she had a new setting and a new group of
people to help. Instead of teaching them Spanish, she was getting them ready for

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college. By shifting her giving to a novel domain, she was able to recharge her
energy.

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