Losing: An attitude adjustment
For many years, we've told ourselves that it's ok to fail, that we have to fail sometimes or we're not really trying anything worth trying. (While most people give the notion lipservice, whether or not we actually believe that as a part of the Western business canon is another matter--I'm not particularly convinced.)
I want to spark another idea: it has to be ok to lose. Losing is not a personal insult; it doesn't make you less of a person. I think we as a society have lost our grip on this.
Reaching back to early athletics--when they start keeping score, at least--we're taught what sportsmanship is. But if you look around you wouldn't know it. In politics if you win, you have a mandate to bully, and if you lose you have to find a scapegoat to blame. In our organizations, when our boss decides to go a direction we argued against, we may not practice sabotage, but we start plotting the "I told you so" speech. A group of members or volunteers that feels jilted has a kneejerk reaction to start a new organization.
It's time to remember what sportsmanship is. I always thought of it like this: Winning is important. Try like hell to win. If you do that, then you can be at peace with the outcome, because you've taken pride in yourself and you've worked to your ability. The stakes of life are different. As much as it may seem otherwise, politics isn't a game, and neither are our organizations. But we'll be much better off if we inject sportsmanship into how we conduct ourselves in those arenas.
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Comments
The idea of good sportsmanship in associations and professional societies has great merit and deserves further consideration. There are harsh realities in business, sports, politics and the non-profit universe. Succinctly put, sometimes your best is just not good enough.
In life that means you fail occasionally. If you are at all self-reflective you work like heck to derive a few inspiring life lessons from your experience. Most importantly, you get up, dust yourself off, and get back into the fray.
Associations and professional societies need women and men who know good sportsmanship, have experienced a few life lessons (failures, if you prefer) and bring the resilience and inner strength to overcome those doubts. It's well past time that association execs and volunteers alike come to recognize that mistakes are the currency of progress. We can fail better and thrive.
Posted by: Kerry C Stackpole FASAE IOM CAE | June 29, 2011 11:42 AM
Sportsmanship should also include acceptance of dissent. Association members should not refrain from voting "no" because they fear being ostracized or worry they'll be tagged as enemies of the organization.
Split votes should be accepted, and dissenters should not be bullied into switching sides. If losing is OK for them, it should be OK for the association, too.
Posted by: David M. Patt, CAE | June 29, 2011 3:22 PM
As I think of the American competitiveness, the moment you make it "OK" to lose, you build a sense of entitlement at mediocre effort. The challenge with an entire generation is they have been taught it's OK to lose and we will still reward you for it. We have managed our success to the least common set of self-esteem instead of teaching them why they lost and how they can improve to winning.
It's not OK to lose. Not in business or not in associations. We are going to fail once in a while and we need to learn how to fail graciously, learn from our mistakes to not repeat the same mistakes next time, not not make it OK.
What is always OK is when you give every bit effort you can possible come up with and you don't win. That is not losing. That is being defeated by a better opponent.
I see so many people lose because they don't give their best effort and even mediocrity beats them out. That isn't OK.
I can remember an article sharing how a mid-western little league association made a new rule that a home-run hit over the fence by anyone who achieved greatness was changed to only be a double for the sake of the hurt felt by the pitcher.
How is that right? Why do we take away the experience of greatness and innovation of someone because someone else did not perform as well.
In life, there are winners and I'm sorry losers. We should not be making losing "OK." We should teach people "how to lose gracefully and professionally and learn from their mistakes and shortcoming so they can improve and achieve greatness."
The lesson for the little leaguer is you don't throw the fast ball right down the middle to the guy who hit the home-run the next time he comes up to bat. Instead, you taught him to just keep throwing it down the middle because worst cast I'm protected and they can only hit a double off me.
Crazy. If you lose over and over and over at something and you are taught that losing is OK, you never feel a real sense of, "I don't like this losing. I need to look at doing it another way."
Losing is suppose to hurt. Otherwise there would be no drive to change to winning.
Posted by: Tom Morrison | June 30, 2011 8:38 AM