Healthy Competition

A long time ago I heard someone say “If you want to go fast, go alone, If you want to go far, go with a team”. I also heard a long time ago that your teammates are there to compliment you, not compete with you. When I read those two quotes, I think that it means if you want to win, not only today but in the future, you need to have a good team. In order to have a good team you need a group of people who compliment each other, we all can’t have the same strengths or weaknesses. But, we also need to have a group of people who want to see each other get better. So in the second quote, I read not competing with you as not pushing someone down. All of this leads to what I call healthy competition. I’m sure you probably knew this by how much I talk about sports,  but I love to win! That means that I also hate losing. The older I get the stranger my relationship is with winning and losing. I still want to win, but I want others to win at the same time. I also hate watching others lose. I know most of my greatest lessons came at the expense of losing, but I hate that feeling. So how do you know if the competition you have is healthy? A few things to look for, First, everyone gets better. If you are only as strong as your weakest person, then it doesn’t matter how much better you get if the person at the bottom never improves. This means that sometimes you have to slow down. Second, no one leaves feeling hurt or embarrassed. No one wants to be on a team where they feel less than. You also can’t win if someone is unable to play because they are hurt either mentally or physically. So how can you be a part of a team that pushes you more than you have ever been pushed, while still thinking of everyone’s feelings and thinking non-stop about winning? The first thing I think of is clarity. One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone gives a list of five things that are the number one priority. I find it to be amusing because I think what you find most often is five people, working on five different projects, all thinking that they are doing exactly what the company wants most. In the end, the company loses because they didn’t hit their goals and the team loses because they get poor reviews because the ultimate goal wasn’t achieved. What is the main goal for tonight? What is the main goal for the month? What is the main goal for the year? If you ask five team members, they better all say the same thing. If not, you have no clarity. When you have no clarity, another funny thing happens. You get passionate and competitive about the wrong things. I had a stretch of time when I was more passionate and competitive about the basketball hoop at work than I was at the job. Every single night, right around the same time, I would stop everything and go shoot for a few minutes. When I say for a few minutes, I really do mean a few minutes. Always less than five minutes. But for those few minutes, do you know what I did? I kept track of my stats and made sure I always used the same form. My goal was to get better every single night. My number one priority for those few minutes was to hit as many baskets with as few shots as possible. I had clarity, I pushed myself and I had a lot of fun! My main point with all of this is that sometimes we can have a lot of fun with our teammates, but it’s not making us any better at work. Why can’t we have the same fire shooting baskets as we do with hitting our production numbers or our KPI’s (key performance Indicators)? Why can we give constructive criticism about playtime, but none when it comes to work time? I mentioned it last week, but I’m heading into a busy season. Sometimes when I think about it, I dread it. I don’t want to do it. Other times I feel excited. I’m ready for it. I have ideas where I really push people and build healthy competition with everyone. In the end, everyone knows their personal goal and they know the team goal. Everyone is helping each other on a regular basis.More importantly everyone is getting better and everyone is having fun.