{"id":31434,"date":"2015-05-26T02:00:22","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T06:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31434"},"modified":"2015-05-23T11:44:36","modified_gmt":"2015-05-23T15:44:36","slug":"nice-guys-really-do-finish-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/05\/26\/nice-guys-really-do-finish-last\/","title":{"rendered":"Nice guys really do<\/em> finish last"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least, that’s what this article in The Atlantic<\/em> by Jerry Useem<\/a> says:<\/p>\n

At the University of Amsterdam, researchers have found that semi-obnoxious behavior not only can make a person seem<\/em> more powerful, but can make them more powerful, period. The same goes for overconfidence. Act like you\u2019re the smartest person in the room, a series of striking studies demonstrates, and you\u2019ll up your chances of running the show. People will even pay to be treated shabbily: snobbish, condescending salespeople at luxury retailers extract more money from shoppers than their more agreeable counterparts do. And \u201cagreeableness,\u201d other research shows, is a trait that tends to make you poorer. \u201cWe believe<\/em> we want people who are modest, authentic, and all the things we rate positively\u201d to be our leaders, says Jeffrey Pfeffer, a business professor at Stanford. \u201cBut we find it\u2019s all the things we rate negatively\u201d\u2014like immodesty\u2014\u201cthat are the best predictors of higher salaries or getting chosen for a leadership position.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pfeffer is concerned for his M.B.A. students: \u201cMost of my students have a problem because they\u2019re way too nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

He tells a story about a former student who visited his office. The young man had been kicked out of his start-up by \u2014 Pfeffer speaks the words incredulously \u2014 the Stanford alumni mentor<\/em> he himself had invited into his company. Had there been warning signs?, Pfeffer asked. Yes, said the student. He hadn\u2019t heeded them, because he\u2019d figured the mentor was too big of a deal in Silicon Valley to bother meddling in his little affairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens if you put a python and a chicken in a cage together?,\u201d Pfeffer asked him. The former student looked lost. \u201cDoes the python ask what kind<\/em> of chicken it is? No. The python eats the chicken. And that\u2019s what she\u201d \u2014 the alumni mentor \u2014 \u201cdoes. She eats people like you for breakfast.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Grant\u2019s framework, the mentor in this story would be classified as a \u201ctaker,\u201d which brings us to a major complexity in his findings. Givers dominate not only the top of the success ladder but the bottom, too, precisely because they risk exploitation by takers. It\u2019s a nuance that\u2019s often lost in the book\u2019s popular rendering. \u201cI\u2019ve become the nice-guys-finish-first guy,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

Give and Take<\/em> seeks to pinpoint what, exactly, separates successful givers from \u201cdoormat\u201d givers (the subtleties of which we will return to). But it does not consider what separates successful jerks, like Steve Jobs, from failed ones like \u2026 well, Steve Jobs, who was pushed out of his<\/em> start-up by the mentor he\u2019d<\/em> recruited, in 1985.<\/p>\n

The fact is, me-first behavior is highly adaptive in certain professional situations, just like selflessness is in others. The question is, why<\/em> \u2014 and, for those inclined to the instrumental, how can you distinguish between the two?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At least, that’s what this article in The Atlantic by Jerry Useem says: At the University of Amsterdam, researchers have found that semi-obnoxious behavior not only can make a person seem more powerful, but can make them more powerful, period. The same goes for overconfidence. Act like you\u2019re the smartest person in the room, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,16],"tags":[572,261,139],"class_list":["post-31434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-science","tag-leadership","tag-management","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8b0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31434"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31436,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31434\/revisions\/31436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}