You’ve probably heard the saying: ‘It’s better to give than receive’ but, in the world of business, it’s not so black and white.

DAVE KOSCHIK,
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBER

I’m a big fan of psychologist Adam Grant who spoke to partners at our Global Partner Meeting earlier this year. In his book, “Give and Take”, he describes three types of people in any organization: givers, takers and matchers.

Adam believes that the majority of people fall into the matcher category (those who both give and take), but that there will always be people who focus more on helping others (givers) and those who are motivated purely by their own ambition (takers).

Of course the initial assumption is that givers are good and takers are bad, right?

And maybe there’s some truth in that, but Adam’s book also includes a quote from Microsoft pioneer Bill Gates that I love: “There are two great forces of human nature; self-interest and caring for others, and people are most successful when they are a ‘hybrid engine’ of the two”.

What that means is that there are ‘giving and taking’ elements in all of us. In fact, we’d find it hard to function or achieve anything if we didn’t have a combination of the two.

When you think about it, it’s pretty obvious: if we were all driven by a ‘no, you first’ attitude, we’d struggle to take the initiative and, conversely, if we only ever cared about ourselves, we’d never function as a team.

That’s why, as Adam explains, every successful business needs a ‘hybrid engine’ of self-interest and caring for others to drive it forward.

Better than the sum of our parts

Clearly, as a large firm with an aggressive growth strategy, we can’t afford to have thousands of solo practitioners doing their own thing, pursuing their own ambition.

Instead, we want to create a place where we support each other and open doors for each other when we can.

That’s obviously easier said than done, because we all bring our own ambition, mindset and approach to the table, and everybody inevitably has baggage.

To an extent, we all have some level of self-interest, because we all want to provide for ourselves or our families, we all want to have a secure retirement, and we all want to have a certain standard of living.

There’s obviously nothing wrong with that, but it has to be coupled with an acknowledgment that others in the Firm matter as well.

For instance, when we think of developing our younger lawyers, we should be doing that for their benefit as well as the Firm’s.

Achieving this balance can be a really powerful thing if we get it right and that’s why I find the whole concept of Give and Take so interesting.

Giving something back

Speaking from my own experience, I know I’ve benefitted from a lot of givers within the Firm and, in fact, that’s why I stayed with the Firm my entire career.

At White & Case, I found myself in a group where people took an interest in my career, showed faith in me and introduced me to clients. I appreciated that I could be part of a team and, as a result, this helped me grow and spread my wings.

This manifested itself in a number of different ways, from trusting me to do the next big deal, to allowing me to head a transaction with a new client that we were trying to impress.

There was a lot of daily interaction and positive reinforcement, which opened up a whole new world to me and there is no doubt in my mind that I have thrived and been happy at the Firm because I was the beneficiary of this kind of giving.

The challenge for all of us is to turn this into a virtuous circle so that, once we are in a position to give back, we pass that generosity on.

That doesn’t mean this has to wait until we’re in a senior role either, we can do it at a very junior level, for instance mentoring someone while still being mentored ourselves.

In fact, we should never stop doing both of these at the same time, so we continually thrive as givers and takers.

Working as a team

Coming from the Banking group, it’s always been remarkable to me that while a lot of people come through the group at various times, over time we’ve all come to recognize that we are in this together and that we are better off with our clients knowing a bunch of us and trusting a bunch of us, rather than keeping things to ourselves.

That attitude has benefited us all, and the clients love it too, because they know the strength and depth of the team. Sure, they might have their favorites, but by prioritizing the team we have helped build and sustain the practice.

We work in a world where there are a lot of time demands and a lot of pressure from clients, so it’s vital we have this type of supportive group around us, always knowing we will get back as much as we put in. It’s a good feeling – and it’s good business.

This is an important part of partner stewardship, which is vital to realizing our 2020 strategy.

We have to invest in the Firm and our people, because we’re a people business. It’s about us all wanting to leave White & Case in a better place than when we came in and we won’t do this without investing in the Firm and in others.

And giving doesn’t have to be altruistic, selfless, or time-consuming. It can even be a quick word of encouragement for somebody, or a door opening, which makes giving both manageable and effective.

For more on Adam Grant, please visit www.adamgrant.net