Over the years, I’ve had a number of people tell me that life is a game of “give and take.” While that phrase does sound logical, it’s simply not true. Instead, life is about giving and receiving. The reason for this is that none of us like “takers.” Takers are all about themselves and they’re out to exploit others, so most of us choose to avoid them. As a result, takers are, for the most part, lonely and unsuccessful people. “Givers,” on the other hand, are people who help others without expecting anything in return. All of us absolutely love givers and we tend to want to do kind things for them. This is why givers are so much more successful than takers and why they live profoundly happier and have more meaningful lives as well.
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Recommended Reading
Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard
Transform Your Workplace!
Imagine a company where people are excited about coming to work and giving their best efforts every day. In this innovative and engrossing business parable, Harry Paul and Ross Reck show managers at all levels how they can immediately and easily increase productivity by tapping into the discretionary effort of the people who work for them. Starting from the most basic aspect of business reality—that people intentionally regulate the amount of effort they put into their jobs based upon how they feel they’re being treated—the authors point out that the most important part of the job of every manager, team leader, supervisor, and executive is to treat people in such a way that they become excited about applying all their discretionary effort toward performing their jobs.
At the book’s center is the story of Nancy Kim, a human resources director at a magazine that is struggling with all the problems associated with unhappy employees—low productivity and morale along with high absenteeism and turnover. After she openly challenges the CEO’s new management-by-the-numbers system, she’s charged with turning the situation around immediately. Filled with real-world studies, Instant Turnaround! shows anyone how to turn the workplace into a destination—a place where working hard feels like hardly working because it’s engaging, enjoyable, and fulfilling.
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