Are You Fully Charged? by Tom Rath

Author:Tom Rath
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Missionday
Published: 2014-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Win While Others Succeed

The fundamental premise of a relationship is that two people are better off together than they are divided. You should experience more enjoyment when you are with your spouse than when you are apart. A friendship at work should produce more mutual enjoyment or achievement than if you were working independently. However, it is easy to take this for granted.

A team of researchers that studied new social connections as part of an experiment found that simple conversations made a big difference. When strangers were instructed to get to know one another for 10 minutes, it boosted their subsequent performance on a variety of common tasks. But if these conversations had a competitive edge, the benefit and improvement disappeared.

This experiment may help explain why it is so important to assume positive intent every time you meet another person. When both parties assume positive intent, there is a better chance they will achieve their shared goals and perhaps be a little happier in the process. However, if either person entering into an encounter views it as a competition, the interaction may be doomed from the start.

There is an entire body of literature on what political scientists call “zero-sum” situations. Zero-sum means two parties walk into a scenario in which each person is fighting to win a fixed portion of a limited pie. So if I get 60 percent, the best you can do is get 40 percent. In athletics and politics, there are certainly times when a short-term sum is fixed. Yet viewing a relationship as a zero-sum game is the fastest way to set it up for failure.

You win; someone else loses. The zero-sum mentality is engrained at a young age. Especially in competitive cultures and societies, there is an even more distinct win-versus-loss perspective. An athlete or team wins the gold medal, World Cup, or Super Bowl. The team that comes in second is the loser.

When it comes to the work you do, in many cases, others win more when you succeed. If you build a successful product or business, you create jobs, suppliers, and customers. You also add to the overall economy. Almost anything you do in your work creates more value than you are likely to extract from competitors or rivals. As a result, work teams and organizations that focus the most attention on catching up or beating the competition are the least likely to succeed.

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