Competitiveness: Why It’s Better to Want (Not Need) to Win

Competitiveness ping pong
Photo by Marcus Clark via Unsplash.com

How does he do it? You know, that friend that won’t stop playing until he’s beaten you handily? Doesn’t he realize it’s just ping pong? Damn! His serve is so fast, one miss and that little ball is blistering your cheek!

Don’t we all know someone like this? What seems like a birth defect, ie. Mr. Win-At-ALL-Costs tossing bean bags, oblivious to his kid’s birthday party, can come off as genetic superiority at work. After all, don’t many of our leaders profess to have or freely flaunt an ultra-competitive attitude?

Why can’t we all be more like that?

In reality, we can, and that’s what’s scary.  Think about what it really means to be that competitive. Is it realistic? Is it productive? Here are four reasons why competitiveness, left unchecked, can be a losing strategy:

Competitiveness better than you pageant
Photo by Vonecia Carswell via Unsplash.com

There will always be someone better than you. 

I’m sure you’ve won something before. Felt good, didn’t it? Scoreboards and sales reports are nice ways to tell everyone (including yourself) how great you are.  From that point onward, did you always win?  Probably not.

Unfortunately, winning can feel so good we don’t want to wake up from it.  However, the moment you become the best kid in the neighborhood, there’s someone from the other side of town who’s willing to test you.  When I was a kid I thought the phrase, “Pride cometh before the fall.”, had something to do with the seasons of the year.  Get this, it means that someone will always be better than you.  

Therefore, needing to be the “best” is largely a waste of time.

Competitiveness craftsman
Photo by Clark Young via Unsplash.com

You will miss out on the enjoyment of your craft. 

No one is more deceiving than pro athletes and musicians.  That three pointer that Lebron easily makes while jumping backwards is anything but easy. Heck, try picking up a guitar and doing that finger-tapping-on-the-strings thing like Eddie Van Halen. I did, and it sounded like a bag of staplers. Virtuosos make the impossible look easy.

Little do we realize, the part of the job we see only makes up a small percentage of the actual work these entertainers do. Hours of meticulous practice, travel, and promotion build the backbone of their stardom.

Hero worship aside, few of us envy the countless setbacks and hours of practice that come with such a high level of success.  THAT, my friend is the real work, and if you love it as much as the applause, you’ll go far.  If a career was a meal, our wins would be only the dessert or the wine.

Competitiveness relationships
Photo by Pricilla Du Perez via Unsplash.com

You will miss out on relationships, both professional and personal. 

Many of us make this mistake, especially in competitive environments like sales.  Do you really want to see you coworker trip as she steps up to the stage for her award?  If you knew how much the two of you have in common, you might actually be happy for her. 

Yeah, I know. Many of us get compared and ranked against each other at work. Rarely, however, do the perks of competitiveness outweigh the benefits of sharing. Most co-workers face similar day-to-day challenges. Your willingness to lose to a rival may just get you the vital information you need to be more marketable, within your company and beyond.

If we share our struggles at work, we can form strong bonds, even friendships. And, in case you needed a reminder, friends help us with all aspects of life, not just with things like how to update our laptop OS. Even the best, most successful work teams split up. Good friendships can continue on.

Competitiveness growth
Photo by Ravi Roshan via Unsplash.com

You’ll stunt your own growth.

At its best, our competitiveness helps us focus. Never will you run faster (or have a higher tolerance for sweaty, stinky people) than at a 5k.  Of course, the same performance benefit is true in other pursuits. The drive to compete is how humans and other animals survive, or so we think.

We sometimes picture natural selection as animals fighting for the same piece of meat.  Only the strongest survive!  Meanwhile, reality was a war of attrition.  The weakest animals didn’t lose some Lion Kingesque battle to the death; they simply failed to pass on their genes. The lesson?  If we spend too much time fighting each other we ignore the real enemy: our own weaknesses.  And winning only fools us into thinking we don’t have any. 

So, do you lack competitiveness? Do you lose more than you win? I’d wager these “faults” have made you more realistic, more likely to improve, and a lot easier to be around than any self-proclaimed winners. And, isn’t that something to be thankful for?

Sincerely,
Meaning2work.com

Ps.  For a deeper dive into human motivation, check out The Motivation Myth:  How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win by Jeff Haden.  I also really liked a recent Episode of Ryan Holiday’s Podcast entitled The Daily Stoic:  We’re lucky not to get what we want. 

4 Reasons to Love Selling (And Why They’re Making You Less Effective)

Do you like your sales job for the wrong reasons?

“Pride cometh before a fall” – Biblical Proverb

Many of the stereotypes of salespeople are unfair. Not all of us are the money-hungry, hyper-competitive, egotists portrayed in movies like Boiler Room. Still, some grains of truth can be found in the way we act when times are good. Consider the following reasons why, as a salesperson, you might love your job:

You love the money and all it brings
The fit of a new suit. The sparkle of a new stone. The smell of a new car. Who doesn’t savor these things?

You enjoy the respect you receive from mangement and co-workers.
You just finshed a great sales year. Your name mentioned multiple times at the sales meeting. Co-workers are asking for your secrets. Life is good!

Your customers love you!
Obviously they do. They buy from you, don’t they? Being liked is much better than the alternative. No doubt, a salesperson can make the difference when choosing between two similar products.

You play to win. And, more often than not, you do.
You’ve never shied away from a fight. You take pride in how focused you are on achieving your goals. Other salespeople aren’t as effective because they’re less confident or they get distracted with customer concerns.

“Yes? So what’s the problem?”, might be the response of a typical salesman at this point. Read on, if you dare, and see how your love for sales may betray you.

Big Money, Bigger Problems
The joy of spending money is in all things new. Alas, like the sales contest you won last month, all things new become old. After a long day of enticing customers with new things, we often, ourselves fall victim to them. Sometimes we make them the very purpose of our work.

Do we expect physicians to work soley for the money? Of course not. They take an oath to put a patient’s welfare before themselves. Teachers consistently say they teach for the joy of teaching. Yes, there are others, perhaps a vast majority of people, for whom work is strictly a means to a paycheck. Sales is different. Salespeople are enticed with wealth.

“Glittering prizes and endless compromises, Shatter the illusion of integrity.”Neil Peart

In the place of taking serious oaths, salespeople jump and cheer at sales meetings for the new goodies that define next year’s success. Houses have house payments. Expensive jewelry needs to be insured. Luxury cars have luxury repair bills. As years tick by, a salesperson’s “success” accumulates until she wakes up to working for a company she hates, just to pay the bills.

The price of fame
One month after finishing on top of the salesforce you receive the new year’s sales goal. You now have to sell 30% more than you did last year! Within a span of weeks, the intense effort you put in last year becomes “not enough”. Following traditional (and de-motivating) sales management logic, you can never be allowed to feel too confident. Why? Because confident salespeople are lazy! Salespeople respond by working harder to regain that original feeling of confidence. There is another group of people who live in constant pursuit of an original good feeling. They’re called drug addicts.

When you work for the respect of your co-workers you give up something much more important. Respect for yourself.

Your customer is cheating on you
The result of basking in too much customer praise is, however, blindness. We get so wrapped up in being charming that we fail to realize our customers have jobs to do and lives of their own. Salespeople who believe they are loved are often not listening to their customers. Take away the product they sell and away goes the romance. Relationships are important. Still more important is the problem you solve for your customer. That’s why you’re getting their time and attention. If you’ve done your job correctly, your customer is in love with your product, not you.

Playing to an empty stadium
However effective in short-term scenarios, theres a problem with focusing on competition in sales. Customers don’t care. When buying a car, do you want to work with the Salesman of the Year to wait on you or someone who needs your business? Customers like what you and your company do to help them solve problems. The more difficult their problems, the more creativity is required. When we’re in competition mode, our brains can only focus on a few things. To customers, this makes you appear single-minded. This isn’t helpful when an innovative solution is required.

Should salespeople fear success instead?
No. Don’t fear success. Fear the all-consuming need for success. It’s easy to love something when it gives you immediate rewards. A new car never looks (or smells) better than the day you drive it off the lot. Romantic relationships feel great when we haven’t been with the other person long enough to have a disagreement. Being a salesperson feels great when you’re on top. What matters is this, do you have a reason to go to work when times aren’t good? Don’t let what feels good now set you up for disappointment in the future.

Sincerely,
Meaning2work