According to bestselling business author Adam Grant, there are only three personality types that matter in companies – and getting the mix right can give you a powerful advantage. 

What sort of people do you have in your organisation? Hard workers, not-so-hard workers; the engaged, and not engaged; those who demonstrate presenteeism (there in body, but not in mind) or those who need both the carrot and the stick approach?

The chances are you probably have all these people, plus some other categories too. But speak to Adam Grant, professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (and author of the best-selling book ‘Give and Take’), and he’ll say that if you’re looking at these measures to gauge how well your organisation will perform, you’re probably concentrating on the wrong traits entirely. For according to Grant there are only three key ‘types’ of people you need to identify – givers, takers, and matchers.

What's your type?

Givers – as the name suggests – are those employees who naturally do whatever is needed to help others, without thought for their own personal gain. Takers are the reverse, draining those around them (and perhaps even ‘using’ the goodwill of others) for their own advancement. Matchers, meanwhile, will act similarly to the people they most closely work with.

Says Grant: “While the styles and approaches we take at work have a fairly consistent default, there are choices we all make in the way we deal with people. It’s the decisions we take that determine what makes us one of these three.”

Generally speaking, around 55% of workers are matchers, with the rest split evenly between givers and takers. But why does understanding these traits over any others really matter?

“My belief is that as leaders emerge, they should be given the support by HR to return to their truer values. If they are givers, this is the biggest predictor of growth.”

– Adam Grant, author of Give and Take

“Organisational performance directly correlates with the proportion of each type in key parts of the business,” says Grant. “CEOs who are givers provide us with one of the biggest predictors of growth.” He adds: “Having more givers is the most efficient way firms can boost engagement, retention and innovation. And knowing how the ratios of each go up the organisation, or will pan out over time, can be used to influence how you do your recruitment.

“For instance, the key may not be to hire more givers, but to reduce the number of takers – because matchers are the dominant group, and matchers will act more like givers around other givers.”

Making a difference

Knowing who you have in your business (and what you want your composition to move to) is important, argues Grant, because organisational cultures have a large influence –particularly on the choices matchers take.

“This is why HR professionals need to get involved,” he says. “Giving is not always rewarded in our working culture. Companies have been built around people keeping knowledge to themselves, because that’s what gives them their professional advantage. But companies can harness more giving choices by moving reward structures from individual to collective-based targets, and by removing layers of management and creating more systems for collaboration.”

But what if you discover more taker types than you expect? What’s important to remember, reassures Grant, is that predominantly taker-orientated organisations don’t always have to be bad. He argues HR Directors need to find the mix that’s right for them and their industry. He suggests sectors such as banking and finance, which are more aggressive in nature, actually need the sorts of people who can handle lots of pressure, and takers can be good to have around.

“There are definitely more takers in wealth-creating industries,” he accepts. “But I would also argue there is more variation between firms in the same industry than between industries, and things can always be improved at the leadership level.”

He adds: “Leaders are the ones whose decision-making tends to evolve most. At the start of their careers, leaders are often matchers because they don’t want to be seen to be overly generous, or be overly taking. Over time though, they revert to giving more – perhaps through the self confidence that being in a position of leadership gives.”

He says: “My belief is that as leaders emerge, they should be given the support by HR to return to their truer values. If they are givers, this is the biggest predictor of growth.”

The good news is that givers, takers and matchers can be identified at recruitment through psychometric testing. However, there is an important caveat, warns Grant: don’t think measuring for this is the same as measuring EQ – the so-called emotional rather than intelligence quotient of people.

“It’s sometimes assumed givers also have higher EQ,” he says. “But there’s actually not a link I can see. My advice is that it’s better to recruit for cognitive ability first, because the giver, taker or matcher trait is the choice people make of how to use their cognitive ability.”

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