Coaching practices for Giving People What They Deserve

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Giving People What They Deserve, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • When something goes well I tend to quietly absorb the credit or just say "great team effort," and I never actually name who did what
  • I bend over backwards to be fair to everyone else and then quietly leave myself out of the equation entirely
  • I give until there’s nothing left of me and call it being a good person, and lately I just feel resentful and empty
  • In this hard situation with someone I keep asking "what do I feel like doing" or "what keeps the peace"
  • I give people the standard generic gesture

Practices that may help

  1. Give recognition generously and specifically
    Call out others’ contributions publicly, specifically, and without claiming credit for yourself.
    Give and Take: The Giver Advantage
  2. Be Fair: include yourself in the fairness you extend to others
    Apply the same standards of fairness to yourself that you would to someone you respect.
    FAST: DBT’s Skill for Maintaining Self-Respect in Relationships
  3. Be otherish, not selfless
    Help others in ways that also serve your own goals and interests.
    Give and Take: The Giver Advantage
  4. Make justice the criterion for action in relationships
    Ask, in every significant interaction: what does justice — giving each person what they are genuinely owed — require here?
    The Stoic Discipline of Action
  5. Make the gift personal and unexpected
    Unsolicited, personal gifts generate more reciprocity obligation than generic or expected ones.
    The Rule of Reciprocity, Made Practical
  6. Give and Take: The Giver Advantage
    Adam Grant’s research shows that “givers” — people who contribute to others without immediate return — populate both the bottom and the top of success distributions, while “matchers” and “takers” cluster in the middle. The difference between givers who burn out and those who thrive is how they protect their own time and energy. The evidence is observational and based on surveys and workplace studies.
  7. Give recognition that names the person’s specific effort, not just the outcome
    Generic praise signals you were not paying attention; specific recognition proves you were.
    Caring Personally: The Foundation of Radical Candor
  8. Screen for takers early
    Identify taker patterns quickly so your generosity flows to matchers and other givers.
    Give and Take: The Giver Advantage
  9. Reciprocity
    Give something first — value, help, a concession — and people feel pulled to give back.
    Cialdini’s Principles of Influence
  10. Give in ways that strengthen social connection
    Make your giving a moment of relationship, not a transaction.
    Prosocial Spending: Why Giving Boosts Happiness

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