Holding Back Your Desire to Win
Good morning, fellow leaders. If you did a personality assessment of our current business coaching clients here at BusinessCoach.com, you’d find a high number of them would be classified as “driven to win”. Their personalities may vary and their backgrounds may clash, but all the leaders in our client stable do have this in common: they want to win and win big in their particular business game.There are two reasons for this. One is that we made a decision a few years ago not to take on any clients who hadn’t been in business at least five years in their current enterprise. We wanted clients who had escaped the elephant graveyard years of business startups (the first five years). As you know, this puts you into a winner’s neighborhood. The second reason is that we use a different approach in acquiring our clients. We don’t “sell” people into using our coaching because they need it. We “enroll” already successful people into a relationship that will take their current level of success and jet it up to a new altitude in 12 to 18 months. So we deal with winners who want to go from winning respectably to winning spectacularly. That’s great company to be in, I’ll tell you.
But there is a set of occupational hazards that come from being “win” driven. One of them has to do with unconsciously de-motivating people who come to us with a good idea. Sounds dumb to do that, right? I mean, shouldn’t we all be excited when our key people come to us with good ideas instead of problems? Sure. But here’s the winner’s trap. Maybe you fell into it earlier this afternoon.
It happens this way: A person comes to us with an idea. They think it’s good. You think it’s good, too. But you can't help but reply like this: “Good idea. But it would be even better if you did it this way.” You‘re proud of yourself for improving an already good idea, and you think you’ve motivated that person and sent them off to do a great job with it. But in reality, because you unconsciously had to “win” by adding your input to their idea, you probably knocked down their enthusiasm and confidence by a pretty high factor. You made their idea all about you.
See how that works? It’s subtle, but it has an effect.
I want to advise you to work against this impulse by doing what our leader at BusinessCoach.com, Gary Henson, does so well: learn to make solutions, discussions, ideas, and victories all about the team members, and not about you. Gary’s made this a priority for years. I can say it’s become a natural part of his style with his clients and his employees. It doesn’t make him any less driven to win. In fact, he’s the first guy I’ve worked for that has a “billion dollar vision”, literally. But it does make him a person who is perceived by his clients as being there to take a stand for them as clients, and not for himself as a coach. That’s coaching; when your client’s win is your biggest victory.
Practice this. Work at it. Just try it for a week or two. When any person brings an idea to you, don’t tweak it at all, even if the obvious screams out at you. Believe me, if the issue is that obvious, they’ll see it on their own pretty quickly. Just practice praising the idea, unleashing the employee, and celebrating their success.
Make it all about them. That’s true winning.
As always, if you have any stories or questions to share, I’d love to hear them!
Joe Pursch
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