To Give or Take?
According to conventional wisdom, highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability, and opportunity. If we want to succeed, we need a combination of hard work, talent, and luck. However there is one component that’s critical but often neglected: success depends heavily on how we approach our interactions with other people.
This workshop is my interpretation of the book Give and Take by Adam Grant, where he offers a research-backed view of what makes some people more or less successful. The goal of the workshop is to show how reciprocity and success are linked, and ultimately that helping others drives our success.
Scope
- Team building
- Workshop
- Augmented Reality
- Magic
- Performance
Tech
- Snap Lens Studio
- OBS
- Zoom
In each personal or professional interaction we choose one of the three following styles

Takers like to get more than they give. They tilt reciprocity in their own favor, putting their own interests ahead of others’ needs. Takers believe that the world is a very competitive place.

In the workplace give and take becomes more complicated. Professionally, few of us act purely like givers or takers, adopting a third style instead. We become matchers, striving to preserve an equal balance of giving and getting. Matchers operate on the principle of fairness: when they help others, they protect themselves by seeking reciprocity. If you’re a matcher, you believe in eye for an eye, and your relationships are governed by even exchanges of favors.

In the workplace, givers are a relatively rare breed. They tilt reciprocity in the other direction, preferring to give more than they get. Givers are other-focused, paying more attention to what other people need from them.



Presentation
I delivered a presentation where my goal was to answer the most important question: “Of these three styles, which one tends to be the most successful?”
The presentation contained custom-created AR elements to make the delivery more engaging. I designed virtual backgrounds, overlays, messages, and other media triggered by gestures.
Implementation
Snap Lens Studio · OBS · Zoom
Audience
Experiential learning company “Abracademy”
Duration
20 min
Interactive AR magic
I designed, developed and performed a series of interactive magic tricks enhanced and delivered with Augmented Reality techniques. The goal is to strengthen connections and create deeper empathy between teammates. The tricks are centered around a person’s ability to detect different personality types using intuition. AR features such as image markers, gesture, and object detection allow me to make magical and intelligent lenses with machine learning (SnapML).
Implementation
Snap Lens Studio · OBS · Zoom
Challenges
I used the backs and faces of playing cards as image markers to trigger overlays. Although it worked perfectly on the Snap mobile app, the marker tracking is currently not supported on the Snap Camera desktop app. As a workaround, I had the Snap Lens Studio window running on an external monitor. I captured the live simulator window using OBS and streamed it over Zoom using OBS Virtual Camera.




Brainstorming
I facilitated a virtual brainstorming session where participants shared their ideas on an online collaborative canvas. I had each participant begin by silently brainstorming ideas and placing them into the “solo brainstorm space”. Once each participant was done, I had everyone move their ideas into the “group sharing space” and sort their answers by personality styles.
Implementation
Mural Board · Zoom
Duration
15 min
Reflections
After the presentation, I asked participants to self-reflect on their answers given during the brainstorming session. Reflections helped them identify their own styles as well as the different interaction styles of their teammates. It made them realize that helping others helps themselves. Giving more than they get can result in great individual and group success.
