According to Hollywood, the way get ahead in business is to be very ruthless and heartless. Citizen Kane, There Will Be Blood, or The Wolf Of Wall Street. That kind of thing. Neither nice nor pretty.
Thankfully for us more sensitive souls, Professor Adam Grant’s (Wharton School of Business), popular research utterly refutes this Hollywood idea as featured in this NYT Magazine article.
“For Grant, helping is not the enemy of productivity, a time-sapping diversion from the actual work at hand; it is the mother lode, the motivator that spurs increased productivity and creativity. In some sense, he has built a career in professional motivation by trying to unpack the puzzle of his own success. He has always helped; he has always been productive. How, he has wondered for most of his professional life, does the interplay of those two factors work for everyone else?”
It confirms something the smart money has always known- that success is for the most part a collaborative process, not a predatory one… and that “being helpful” is not pious add-on, but something deep and integral to the game.
Go check it out. It’s good stuff.
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