No, I’m not telling you to ask HR to start putting pints of blood in the break room.
Stay with me..
Vampire bats have a bizarre survival strategy that’s surprisingly relevant to your team. In the wild, if a bat fails to feed one night, it doesn’t just cross its wings and hope for better luck tomorrow. Instead, a well-fed roost-mate will regurgitate a small amount of blood to share, just enough to help the hungry bat survive until the next hunt. Minus the regurgitation of blood, it’s a charming gesture, right?
The wild part? This blood-sharing isn’t random. It’s strategic. Bats only share with bats who’ve shared with them in the past. They give small doses, micro-donations of survival, that act as low-risk tests of trust. Over time, a network of reciprocal relationships forms.
Chiropterologists (people who study bats) have found that the bats who share the most, have a higher survival rate.
Sharing isn’t just caring.
Sharing is survival.
And whether it’s bats or boardrooms, the same pattern holds true: teams built on reciprocity thrive. Not because it’s nice to do but because it’s better for the bottom line.
High-trust, high-performance teams run on reciprocity, not obligation.
The teams that give freely, share generously, and support each other consistently outperform those that hoard knowledge or operate in silos.
Just like bats, the small favors that build a connection with your co-workers today will be what saves you tomorrow (thankfully, without needing to share blood).
Reciprocity builds trust. Research shows that people who help others in their group, even at a small cost to themselves, build stronger social bonds.
The reciprocity model vampire bats live by? It’s the same principle that fuels what we call a Culture of Connection™ where the individuals in the group know they are better together.
What Reciprocity Looks Like at Work
- Mentoring a new hire
- Offering to review a teammate’s presentation
- Sharing that elusive Google Doc instead of saying, “Just search your inbox.”
In Dance Floor Theory, we call these micro-actions of engagement. They may not seem like much individually, but built up over time over the whole group will have a massive impact on the culture.
One Harvard Business Review study found that employees who feel a strong connection with their team are more engaged, more productive, and more likely to stay. That’s the difference between a team that thrives and one that just survives.
Meanwhile, collaboration directly impacts quality. One study found that teams where colleagues help each other frequently saw higher product quality and greater efficiency, and not just in creative fields. Mutual support lifts performance across industries, from manufacturing to finance.
And there’s the trust factor: teams that know they’re supported are more willing to take risks. Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety, the feeling that you can speak up without fear, is the #1 driver of high-performing teams. And that safety is built, drop by drop, through mutual support.
Bats do it with blood. Humans do it with deadline coverage, Slack threads, and “I got you” moments.
Want your team to thrive? Build a culture where small daily acts of support are the norm. Celebrate the quiet contributions. Encourage the helpful check-ins. Invest in the give-and-take, and your people will build a safety net for each other, one low-risk, high-trust moment at a time.
You don’t need to trade blood to build a high-trust culture. But you do need to build reciprocity into your team’s DNA. Because a team that feeds each other, even in small ways, is a team that survives, and succeeds, together.
