The most common thing to hear in the Partnerships world is that in order to get something from a partner the best thing to do is give first. And it works, most of the time, especially when you’re the smaller party. For example, the first partnership I worked on at AdRoll was Shopify, and I don’t think this is news to anyone, but AdRoll had less leverage. We were doing partnership deal number one and Shopify had 6,000 ecosystem partners. So we build the integration, we did marketing about Shopify and we became a resource whenever needed on the topic of ad tech. We got a lot in return with 50% of our self-serve sign-up coming from the marketplace, becoming a Shopify Plus Partner, getting introductions via Shopify to other partners and much more.
What I really want to talk about though is that “Give to Get” works…almost anywhere. There’s been two recent moments where this became clear to me.
The first is when you are trying to get something prioritized internally. There’s always competing priorities for product and operations teams and there’s a lot of good ideas floating around most companies. I often hear, “We want to do this thing, but we can’t get it prioritized” and I follow up with, “Well, what have you put together to help prioritize it?” and hope there is a laundry list of things they’ve done. When I want something to get prioritized, I research it, I collect internal and external feedback on it, I talk to cross-functional teams to understand the most efficient way to get it done and the potential blockers, I get a sense of if this is idea would be impactful for various functions and if others think it’s worth prioritizing. Then I put together not only a business case, but a roadmap or plan to how we could get there and I bring people alongside me during that ride. It doesn’t mean that the idea is always prioritized, but I’ve never seen my idea prioritized without doing the leg work.
This same theory works in team management. When you lead a team you need the people on your team to get things done, I know shocking. Leaders can just demand the team does the tasks at hand, but there’s a “give” leaders can provide for a lot in return. Simply, getting to know your team members, what they care about, what’s going on in their life, being a resource for them to brainstorm gives your team a place where they can be heard. While also, providing a leader with a ton of valuable information on the small wins they can help deliver. If you keep hearing that one process is incredibly time consuming, often a leader has the influence to change, evolve or remove that process and can give their team something incredibly valuable: more time and less frustration.
Give to get results in long term profitability, increases your ability to influence and drive innovation and helps you be an impactful and empathic leader. So I encourage everyone to think about something that you’re able to give to a co-worker, team member, partner, customer, etc. and remember it doesn’t need to be a big give, often small gives result in large gets. What I’ve learned throughout this practice is that the giving is actually the most rewarding part, the get is just the cherry on top.
This is not a revolutionary idea I had, it’s one Adam Grant has written a lot about in his book, “Give and Take”, so if you're interested in learning more, I highly recommend it.
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