ISSUE 87
4 JUNE 2026 | READ ONLINE
Hi Reader,
I saw something this week that I made.
Except my name wasn't on it.
The shape of the idea, the order of the points, and a phrase I had worked hard to get right. All of it there, just wearing someone else's jacket. I sat with a complicated little feeling for a while. Part flattered. Part deflated. Part wondering, again, why I give so much of it away.
And it isn't the first time. A framework I spent months on, showing up elsewhere with the corners filed off. Something I offered freely in a conversation, coming back later as someone else's headline.
Here is the honest part. My first instinct is to pull everything back. Hold the good stuff. Stop giving first. It feels like the sensible, grown-up response.
It is also the opposite of what works.
If you have sat in one of my workshops, you have heard me on reciprocity. It is the first of Robert Cialdini's principles of influence. When you give to someone, they feel a genuine pull to give back. Not because they are keeping score, but because returning a kindness is one of the most deeply wired rules we have. Especially when you lead without a title, it is your most underrated source of influence.
So giving first is not naive. It is the strategy.
Then why does it sting when someone takes and gives nothing back?
Because our wiring runs a crooked tally. A 2025 study in Frontiers in Cognition found that a stingy act registers far more strongly than an equally generous one. Losses simply weigh more heavily than gains. So one person who borrowed your work without a word can drown out the ten who credited you, referred you, and sent something your way.
And here's another thing. The 2025 World Happiness Report, produced in collaboration with Gallup and the University of Oxford, found that we badly underestimate how kind others are. Lost wallets came back far more often than anyone predicted. Most people, given the chance, reciprocate. We just don't expect them to.
I try to remember that, too. Most people aren't really taking. They are borrowing. Or they have forgotten where the idea came from. Or they are a few steps behind and reaching for a handhold, the way I once did with people more generous than me.
None of which means you have to be a doormat. You can name it, protect your work, and be clear about your lines. Generosity and boundaries are not opposites.
Decades of cooperation research have landed on one strategy that wins over time. Game theorists call it generous tit-for-tat, and the version in Scientific American is simple. Lead with the open hand. Forgive the occasional misstep, because grudges are expensive. Just don't keep pouring into someone who only ever pours out. Kindness, it turns out, pays. The approaches built to exploit people tend to lose in the end.
Out in the garden, this is the part that I try to remember. Gardeners give cuttings. Someone admires your plant, you snip a piece, and they grow their own. The original doesn't shrink. It keeps growing. Your cutting in on someone else's bed is the reason a neighbor turns up at your gate three seasons on with something for you.
Give the cutting. Keep growing the plant.
A Small Experiment for This Week
Option A: Give first, on purpose. Pick one person and give before they ask. An introduction, a piece of advice, credit in a room they are not in. Ask for nothing in return, and watch what reciprocity does on its own timeline.
Option B: Think about someone who left you feeling short-changed. Then widen the frame and list everyone who gave back, kept their word, and showed up. You might find that, by thinking about this as a single person, the fuller picture is kinder and mostly in your favor.
Most people are more generous than we give them credit for. So am I, on my better days.
I'll keep giving the cuttings.
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