Lead-Across Principle #2
PUT COMPLETING FELLOW
LEADERS AHEAD OF COMPETING
WITH THEM
Chris Hodges, a good leader who is a native of Baton Rouge, is well-known for telling Boudreaux jokes, a type of humor popular in Louisiana. Recently on a trip for EQUIP, he told me this one (I’ll try to capture the accent in writing as best I can—just think Justin Wilson):
A group of Cajuns was sitting around bragging about how successful they were. Thibideaux says, “I just bought me another shrimp boat, yeah, and I got me a crew of ten people workin’ for me.”
“Dat ain’t nottin’,” says Landry, “I been promoted at the refinery, and now I got fifty men workin’ for me.”
Boudreaux hears this, and he doesn’t want to look bad in front of his friends, so he says, “Oh yeah, well I got three hundred people under me.”
Thibideaux says, “What you talkin’ ’bout, Boudreaux? You mow lawns all day.”
“Dat’s true,” says Boudreaux, “but now I’m cuttin’ da grass at the cemetery, and I got three hundred people under me.”
There’s nothing wrong with competition. The problem for many leaders is that they end up competing against their peers in their own organization in a way that hurts the team and them. It all depends on how you handle competition and how you channel it. In healthy working environments, there is both competition and teamwork. The issue is to know when each is appropriate. When it comes to your teammates, you want to compete in such a way that instead of competing with them, you are completing them. Those are two totally different mind-sets.
Winning at all costs will cost you when it comes to your peers.
COMPETING VS. COMPLETING
COMPETING COMPLETING
Scarcity mind-set Abundance mind-set
Me first Organization first
Destroys trust Develops trust
Thinks win—lose Thinks win—win
Single thinking Shared thinking
(my good ideas) (our great ideas)
Excluding others Including others
Winning at all costs will cost you when it comes to your peers. If your goal is to beat your peers, then you will never be able to lead across with them.
HOW TO BALANCE COMPETING AND COMPLETING
The bottom line is that the success of the whole team is more important than any individual wins. Organizations need both competition and teamwork to win. When those two elements exist in the right balance, great team chemistry is the result.
So how do you balance competing and completing? How do you learn to easily shift from one to the other? Here’s what I recommend.
1. ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR NATURAL DESIRE TO COMPETE
About four or five years after I graduated from college, I went back to play in an alumni basketball game against the college’s then-current team. Back when I played for the team, I had been a shooting guard, but this time they assigned me to cover the team’s point guard. As I watched him in warm-ups, I knew I was in trouble. He was a lot faster than I was. So I quickly developed a strategy.
The first time he tried to take the ball inside to the hoop, I fouled him. I don’t mean I tapped his hand as he shot the ball. I mean I really fouled him—hard. He got up, limped to the line for his free throws, and clanged both of them off the back of the rim. So far, so good.
The next time his team came down the floor and he tried to set up a shot from outside, I fouled him hard again. As he got up, he started grumbling under his breath.
Soon after that when there was a loose ball, I dove after it, but I also made sure I landed right on top of him. I wasn’t as big then as I am now, but I was heavier than he was.
He popped up and barked at me, “You’re playing too hard. It’s only a game.”
“Okay,” I said with a grin, “then let me win.”
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, competitiveness is a natural leadership instinct. I haven’t met a leader yet who didn’t like to win. I look back now and recognize that I wasn’t very mature. The good news is that the alumni team won the game. The bad news is that I didn’t make a friend that day.
The key to being competitive is channeling it in a positive way. If you squash it, you lose an edge that motivates you to do some of your best work. If you let it run wild, you run over your teammates and alienate them. But if you control it and direct it, competitiveness can help you succeed.
2. EMBRACE HEALTHY COMPETITION
Every winning team I’ve ever seen or been a part of experienced healthy competition among team members. Healthy competition does so many positive things for a team, many of which cannot be achieved through anything else.
HEALTHY COMPETITION HELPS BRING OUT YOUR BEST. How many world records do you suppose are set when a runner runs alone? I don’t know of one! People function at peak capacity when they have someone else pushing them. That’s true whether you’re learning, practicing, or playing in the game.
HEALTHY COMPETITION PROMOTES HONEST ASSESSMENT. What is the quickest way for you to measure your effectiveness in your profession? Maybe you have long-term measurements in place, such as monthly or yearly goals. But what if you want to know how you’re doing today? How would you go about measuring it? You could look at your to-do list. But what if you set the bar too low for yourself? You could ask your boss. But maybe the best way would be to see what others in your line of work are doing. If you are significantly behind or ahead of them, wouldn’t that tell you something? And if you were behind, wouldn’t you try to figure out what you’re doing wrong? It may not be the only way to assess yourself, but it certainly can provide a good reality check.
HEALTHY COMPETITION CREATES CAMARADERIE. When people compete together, it often creates a connection between them, whether they are on the same team or opposing teams. When competition is ongoing and friendly on the same team, it creates an even stronger bond that can lead to great camaraderie.
HEALTHY COMPETITION DOESN’T BECOME PERSONAL. Competition between teammates is ultimately about having fun. When competition is healthy, teammates remain friends when the game is done. They play against each other for the thrill of it, and when they’re done, they can walk away together without hard feelings.
I love the joke about the rooster who dragged an ostrich egg into the henhouse. He laid it down for all the hens to see and said, “I don’t want to intimidate you girls, but I just want to show you what they’re doing up the road.” Competition can definitely help motivate a team to get going.
3. PUT COMPETITION IN ITS PROPER PLACE
The whole goal of healthy competition is to leverage it for the corporate win. Competition in practice helps teammates to improve one another for game day. If it is channeled correctly, it is used to beat the other team.
The whole goal of healthy competition is to leverage it for the corporate win.
Of course, some leaders can take this to the extreme. Tommy Lasorda, former manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, has told the story about the day his team was scheduled to play on the road against the Cincinnati Reds. In the morning, Lasorda went to mass. As he settled into his pew, the manager of the Reds, Johnny McNamara, happened to come into the same church and sit down in the same pew.
The men eyed one another, but neither spoke.
When mass was over, they had begun to walk out when Lasorda discovered that the other manager had paused to light a candle. He figured that gave the Reds an edge. “When he left, I went down and blew that candle out,” Lasorda said. “All throughout the game, I kept hollering to him, ‘Hey, Mac, it ain’t gonna work. I blew it out.’ We clobbered them that day, 13–2.”
4. KNOW WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE
No matter how much you desire to win, if you want to cultivate the ability to compete in a healthy way, you must make sure you never cross the line by “going for the throat” with your peers, because if you do, you will alienate them. And that line is not difficult to define. I’d say that when competitiveness raises the bar and makes others better, that’s healthy. Anytime it lowers morale and hurts the team, it’s unhealthy and out of line.
When I was leading Skyline Church in the San Diego area, my staff was very competent and very competitive. The core group who always led the charge consisted of Dan Reiland, Sheryl Fleisher, and Tim Elmore. They all had their own departments and own areas of expertise, but they were always competing, always trying to one-up each other. Their friendly competition kept them on their toes, and it inspired the rest of the staff to join in and do their best. But as hard-driving and competitive as they were, if any one of them had a problem, the others were right there, ready to jump in and lend a hand. They always put the team’s win ahead of their own.
Today those three leaders are out doing different things in different organizations across the country, but they remain friends. They keep in touch, share stories, and still help one another whenever they can. The kind of bond that develops when you compete together doesn’t die easily. They have a deep respect for each other that continues to give them credibility—and influence—with one another.
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