Givers like Meyer do this naturally: they take care to recognize what other people contribute. In
one study, psychologist Michael McCall asked people to fill out a survey measuring whether they
were givers or takers, and to make decisions in pairs about the importance of different items for
surviving in the desert. He randomly told half of the pairs that they failed and the other half that they
succeeded. The takers blamed their partners for failures and claimed credit for successes. The givers
shouldered the blame for failures and gave their partners more credit for successes.
This is George Meyer’s modus operandi: he’s incredibly tough on himself when things go badly,
but quick to congratulate others when things go well. “Bad comedy hurts George physically,” Tim
Long says. Meyer wants each joke to make people laugh—and many to make them think. Although he
holds other people to the same high standards that he sets for himself, he’s more forgiving of their
mistakes. Early in his career, Meyer was fired from a show called Not Necessarily the News after six
weeks. Twenty years later, he ran into the boss who fired him. She apologized—firing him was
clearly a mistake—and braced herself for Meyer to be angry. As he shared the story with me, Meyer
laughed: “It was just lovely to see her again. I said ‘Come on, look where we are; all is forgiven.’
There are a few people in Hollywood who thrive on driving their enemies’ faces into the dirt. That’s
such a hollow motivation. And you don’t want to have all these people out there trying to undermine
you.”
In the Simpsons rewrite room, being more forgiving of others than of himself helped Meyer get the
best ideas out of others. “I tried to create a climate in the room where everybody feels that they can
contribute, that it’s okay to fall on your face many, many times,” he says. This is known as
psychological safety—the belief that you can take a risk without being penalized or punished.
Research by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson shows that in the type of
psychologically safe environment that Meyer helped create, people learn and innovate more.* And
it’s givers who often create such an environment: in one study, engineers who shared ideas without
expecting anything in return were more likely to play a major role in innovation, as they made it safe
to exchange information. Don Payne recalls that when he and fellow writer John Frink joined The
Simpsons, they were intimidated by the talented veterans on the show, but Meyer made it safe to
present their ideas. “George was incredibly supportive, and took us under his wing. He made it very
easy to join in and participate, encouraged us to pitch and didn’t denigrate us. He listened, and asked
for our opinions.”
When revising scripts, many comedy writers cut material ruthlessly, leaving the people who
wrote that material psychologically wounded. Meyer, on the other hand, says he “tried to specialize in
the emotional support of other people.” When writers were freaking out about their scripts being
rewritten, he was often the one to console them and calm them down. “I was always dealing with
people in extremis; I would often talk people down from panic,” Meyer observes. “I got good at
soothing them, and showing them a different way to look at the situation.” At the end of the day, even
if he was trashing their work, they knew he cared about them as people. Carolyn Omine comments
that “George does not mince words; he’ll come right out and tell you if he thinks the joke you pitched
is dumb, but you never feel he’s saying you’re dumb.” Tim Long told me that when you give Meyer a
script to read, “It’s as if you just handed him a baby, and it’s his responsibility to tell you if your
baby’s sick. He really cares about great writing—and about you.”
michael s
(Michael S)
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