The value of giving at work - redefining personal success

Performance reviews. Two words most of us dread. After all, it's a period of time wholly dedicated to getting feedback on your work and demonstrating your worth to your employer.

There’s often a lot on the line. History shows if you want a shot at that bonus or raise, you need to walk into your review armed with a measurable list of your achievements, and moreover, be ready to take all the credit for said successes.

Or do you?

Business leaders are quickly realising that there’s another path to success, one that focuses less on individual achievements and more on making a difference to the lives of others.

We’re talking about giving.

Giving is now considered a critical metric of business. It’s associated with improved organisational success, such as higher profitability, productivity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

But giving is also linked to more personal success for individuals. Look around your workplace, and you’ll quickly see that the people who soar to the highest levels tend to add the most value to others; advancing everyone’s interests in their work in the process.

So, by focusing on giving at work, you can not only prove your intrinsic value to your leaders (and soar through that performance review), but also put yourself on a path to career success.

In this article, we’ll look at how giving can help you thrive, and what practical steps you can take to weave giving into your BAU.

The power of giving

We’re taught the importance of giving even before we set foot in kindergarten. Our parents and teachers tell us to help others and be generous. It’s ingrained in our cultural thinking that going out of our way to help others will help us feel good.

However by the time we get into the working world, the emphasis on giving has faded. Suddenly we’re told that being a ‘go-getter’ is the key to success.

But giving is a decisive success factor, and there’s a wealth of research to prove it.

Here’s how giving can improve your working life:

Become more successful

Organisational psychologist Adam Grant, author of Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success and host of WorkLife, shares research showing that employees at every level of an organisation are more successful when they make giving central to their work. One study found that givers produced 50% more annual revenue, on average, than those who focused less on helping others.

It doesn’t need to be much – giving just five minutes of your time to help someone else can have a huge multiplier effect on performance.

Feel happier

Ever experienced the “helper’s high”? It’s that burst of joyful energy you get when you help others. An Emory University study found that helping others can light up the same part of the brain that gets a hit when we receive a reward or experience pleasure – and science shows the feeling can linger for hours.

Even small (or imagined!) acts of generosity can change the activity in our brains to increase our feelings of happiness, according to a study published in the Nature Communications journal.

Create more time

If you’ve ever felt like there aren’t enough hours in the day, start spending time on others. According to a study published by the Association for Psychological Science, giving affects how we experience time – we’re more likely to feel an expanded sense of time when we spend time on others.

So how can you become a giver at work?

With such wide-ranging benefits, it’s no wonder organisations are putting a greater emphasis on creating cultures that reward and encourage giving – it can make a real difference to how you prove your value at work.

Here are four steps you can take to bring more giving into your work life:

1. Approach every interaction as a giver

A Giver Culture is defined by Adam Grant as one where people freely ask for and offer help to others. They give to others without the expectation of receiving anything in return, and they ask for what they need.

Every time you interact with another person at work, you have a choice: do you try to claim as much value as you can from that person, or should you contribute value without worrying about what you get in return? Try to approach every interaction as a giver, and see how that impacts your success.

2. Ask “how can I help?”

It’s not always clear how you can give to people and add value, so make these words part of your daily vocabulary.

By actively listening to others and finding out what they need, you can help meet that need yourself (if you have the skills and resources), or you can tap your network. Do this without any expectations of return and start the chain of generosity.

3. Do five-minute favours

Giving doesn’t have to take much time out of your schedule. Grant advocates setting up a block of time in your day to do five-minute favours. This could be sharing knowledge, making introductions for others, and assisting other employees in small tasks.

His research showed that bundling the helping acts together creates an even bigger impact on your well-being than spreading them out. So why not block out 20 minutes for a big boost in energy?

4. Ask for help

The willingness to ask for help is the key to being a successful giver. Often, getting people to ask for what they need is a challenge in workplaces. Therefore, asking for help is the fuel required to drive the cycle of giving and receiving. By asking for help, you can help make giving the norm.

Over to you

Now that you understand how giving can boost your productivity, performance and happiness, how can you ensure it’s recognised in your performance review?

While the very nature of giving is such that it doesn’t require a fanfare in return, it doesn’t mean you can’t be strategic about capturing its upsides along the way.

Prepare for your performance review by noting some concrete examples of how you’ve helped your colleagues. This shouldn’t be an exhaustive list of every favour you’ve ever granted. Instead, focus on the most significant ways you’ve helped others to achieve their goals.

At the end of the day, trust that others will recognise your acts of giving. Any good manager knows that peer recognition is the highest form of praise, and this in itself demonstrates your true value.

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