Be Generous With Your Time at Work

This is the second in a three-part series of posts on behaviors a person should adopt to be successful in their career. The first can be found here. As stated before – I do not believe these are the only behaviors required to be successful – but they form a strong foundation on which to build. This being LinkedIn, I’ll try to keep the topic limited to the workplace versus generosity in broader society.  

The economist Walter E. Williams passed away recently and while I wasn’t a frequent reader of his, I did come across a story he tells about one his professors, Armen Alchian, which got me thinking about the barriers to generosity.  In Dr. Williams words:

I explained that unlike my wife, who assumed that everyone was her friend until they prove differently, my assumption was everyone was an enemy until they proved otherwise. The result: My wife's vision maximized the number of her friends but maximized her chances of betrayal. My vision minimized my chances of betrayal at a cost of minimizing the number of my friends.

Alchian, donning a mischievous smile asked, "Williams, have you considered a third alternative, namely, that people don't give a damn about you one way or another?"

The story made me think about the risk, cost and benefit of being generous with your time at work.  Time is a form of currency and by being generous with it you run the risk of losing it with no return on the investment. 

Risk

Nobody wants to be a fool or be taken advantage of.  As the above story highlights, by being generous you increase the risk that you waste time helping someone and receive nothing in return.  By being less generous you minimize the risk of wasting your time but are virtually guaranteed to get no return on your time. If you follow the advice of Mrs. Williams and assume positive intentions from everyone, until they prove otherwise, you can more easily build a broad professional network.  There are so many articles and opinion pieces on how to build a network.  I suggest its easiest to do so by just being willing to listen to the people who want to talk.  These folks exist all over your organization and run the spectrum from the new college hire who, in six short months, knows how to run your department, to the veteran employee who wishes the company would go back to the way things were during the “good times”.  

Yes, following this strategy means you will risk wasting some time here or there, but it also lets you place many small bets and increase the odds of meeting truly remarkable people.  

Cost

The cost of being generous with your time can mostly be thought of as opportunity cost.  If I opt to help someone at work or in my professional network, then I’m going to have less time available to do something else.  This requires that you be more strategic in thinking about how to be generous with your time.  Not every action requires you to drop everything in the moment or that all your time always be shared via dynamic interaction e.g. face to face meeting, video conf, or phone call.  If someone is seeking feedback on a business proposal this can be done almost exclusively through email and during off-hours when you have time available to support the request.  

Since generosity, for these purposes, is limited to sharing your time, you can’t go to an ATM and pick up a few additional minutes or gain a line of credit to get more than 24 hours in a day.  You must be judicious in how you share your time.  It’s okay for you to set limits lest you allow yourself to become so overwhelmed you can’t attend to your own needs.

Benefit

The risk of being generous is that you receive nothing in return for sharing your time with others and the cost of being generous is that you could be spending that time on some other alternative use of your time. Does the potential benefit of sharing your time with others offset the risk & cost?  

If, as Armen said in the opening vignette, “nobody gives a damn about you one way or another” then being generous can carry a very high benefit. The old saying “It isn’t what you know, but who you know” should be revised to read “It isn’t what you know, but who knows you”. By being generous with your time and sharing your knowledge you can help expand the number of folks who know you i.e. the number of folks who give a damn about you. 

Freely sharing your time with someone builds a bank of trust. There will come a time when you need to draw against the credits accrued in this bank.  If you have been generous with your time and listen and help others, most people (not all – there is still risk of being foolish) will return the favor since they recognize the capital you have built with them.

This behavior is foundational to long term success because as your career advances you will be faced with new situations and novel problems.  Having a strong network will give you additional tools to help resolve these and drive results for the business.   We are all busy but volunteering a few minutes of your time here and there to mentor a new team member, listen to the advice of an old-hand or share coffee with someone who is struggling on the job will help you to identify and invest in mentors, advisors, and friends who will help you navigate the professional challenges which lay ahead of you.

The idea that placing small bets only leads to small wins applies to a blackjack table. Human capital is not bounded by the rules of a game. By placing many small bets with your time, you can reap an incredible return on the investment by creating a broad network of folks who know you.