people weren’t as excited, that’s when I felt I had to step up my game.

” He rose to the occasion,

cowriting a hilarious sketch for Breslin that had James Bond villains on a talk show. Breslin played
Goldfinger, offering tips on designing fortresses and griping about having his schemes thwarted by
Bond. The sketch predated the hit Austin Powers spoof of Bond movies by more than a decade.
Meyer’s pattern of giving continued on The Simpsons. Among writers, the most popular task was
typically to write the first draft of an episode, as it allowed them to put their creative stamp on it.
Meyer would generate plenty of ideas for episodes, but he rarely wrote the first draft. Instead, feeling
that his skills were needed more in rewriting, he took responsibility for the dirty work of spending
months helping to rewrite and revise each episode. This is a defining feature of how givers
collaborate: they take on the tasks that are in the group’s best interest, not necessarily their own
personal interests. This makes their groups better off: studies show that on average, from sales teams
to paper mill crews to restaurants, the more giving group members do, the higher the quantity and
quality of their groups’ products and services. But it’s not just their groups that get rewarded: like
Adam Rifkin, successful givers expand the pie in ways that benefit themselves as well as their
groups. Extensive research reveals that people who give their time and knowledge regularly to help
their colleagues end up earning more raises and promotions in a wide range of settings, from banks to
manufacturing companies. “On The Simpsons, I think George surrendered himself to the show,” Tim
Long says. “Intuitively, he understood that the best thing for him was for the show to be as good as
possible.”
There’s a name for Meyer’s actions: in the world of mountaineering, it’s called expedition
behavior. The term was coined by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), which has
provided wilderness education to thousands of people, including crews of NASA astronauts.
Expedition behavior involves putting the group’s goals and mission first, and showing the same
amount of concern for others as you do for yourself. Jeff Ashby, a NASA space shuttle commander
who has flown more than four hundred orbits around Earth, says that “expedition behavior—being
selfless, generous, and putting the team ahead of yourself—is what helps us succeed in space more
than anything else.” John Kanengieter, who directs leadership at NOLS, adds that expedition behavior
is “not a zero-sum game: when you give it away, you gain more in response.”
Part of Meyer’s success came from expanding the pie: the more he contributed to the success of
his shows, the more success there was for the whole team to share. But Meyer’s expedition behavior
also changed the way his colleagues saw him. When givers put a group’s interests ahead of their own,
they signal that their primary goal is to benefit the group. As a result, givers earn the respect of their
collaborators. If Meyer had competed to draft his strongest sketches for Madonna, his fellow writers
might have viewed him as a threat to their own status and careers. By doing his best work for less
coveted guests, Meyer was doing his colleagues a favor. Takers no longer felt that they needed to
compete with him, matchers felt that they owed him, and givers saw him as one of them. “When you
were breaking your story or rewriting your script in the room, George was always a welcome
addition to the group,” says Don Payne, a Simpsons writer since 1998. “He would always come up
with something that would make your scripts better. That’s what draws people to him; they respect
and admire him.”
In addition to building goodwill, volunteering for unpopular tasks and offering feedback gave
Meyer the chance to demonstrate his comedic gifts without leading colleagues to feel insecure. In one
study, University of Minnesota researchers Eugene Kim and Theresa Glomb found that highly talented