Give and Take: WHY HELPING OTHERS DRIVES OUR SUCCESS

Advice seeking is also consistently more influential than the matcher’s default approach of trading
favors.
This is true even in the upper echelons of major corporations. Recently, strategy professors Ithai
Stern and James Westphal studied executives at 350 large U.S. industrial and service firms, hoping to
find out how executives land seats on boards of directors. Board seats are coveted by executives, as
they often pay six-figure salaries, send clear status signals, and enrich networks by granting access to
the corporate elite.
Takers assume that the best path to a board seat is ingratiation. They flatter a director with
compliments, or track down his friends to praise him indirectly. Yet Stern and Westphal found that
flattery only worked when it was coupled with advice seeking. Instead of just complimenting a
director, executives who got board seats were more likely to seek advice along with the compliment.
When praising a director’s skill, the advice-seeking executives asked how she mastered it. When
extolling a director’s success in a task, these executives asked for recommendations about how to
replicate his success. When executives asked a director for advice in this manner, that director was
significantly more likely to recommend them for a board appointment—and they landed more board
seats as a result.
Advice seeking is a form of powerless communication that combines expressing vulnerability,
asking questions, and talking tentatively. When we ask others for advice, we’re posing a question that
conveys uncertainty and makes us vulnerable. Instead of confidently projecting that we have all the
answers, we’re admitting that others might have superior knowledge. As a result, takers and matchers
tend to shy away from advice seeking. From a taker’s perspective, asking for advice means
acknowledging that you don’t have all the answers. Takers may fear that seeking advice might make
them look weak, dependent, or incompetent. They’re wrong: research shows that people who
regularly seek advice and help from knowledgeable colleagues are actually rated more favorably by
supervisors than those who never seek advice and help.
Appearing vulnerable doesn’t bother givers, who worry far less about protecting their egos and
projecting certainty. When givers ask for advice, it’s because they’re genuinely interested in learning
from others. Matchers hold back on advice seeking for a different reason: they might owe something
in return.
According to Liljenquist, advice seeking has four benefits: learning, perspective taking,
commitment, and flattery. When Annie asked for advice, she discovered something she didn’t know
before: the company’s jet had extra seats, and it traveled back and forth between her two key
locations. Had she lobbied more assertively instead of seeking advice, she might never have gained
this information. In fact, Annie had several previous conversations in which no one mentioned the jet.
This brings us to the second benefit of advice seeking: encouraging others to take our
perspectives. In Annie’s previous conversations, where she didn’t ask for advice, the department
head focused on the company’s interest in transferring her while saving as much money as possible.
The advice request changed the conversation. When we ask for advice, in order to give us a
recommendation, advisers have to look at the problem or dilemma from our point of view. It was only
when Annie sought guidance that the department head ended up considering the problem from her
perspective, at which point the corporate jet dawned on him as a solution.
Once the department head proposed this solution, the third benefit of advice seeking kicked in:
commitment. The department head played a key role in generating the jet solution. Since it was his