Playing to Win "or" Playing not to Lose?

“Win or lose, I believe in giving my best and that is what I always do.”

Lin Dan – 2 time Olympic Champion, 5 time World Champion

If someone asked you if you were playing-to-win or playing-not-to-lose in your business, how would you answer? What a silly question. Of course we’re all out to win in business right! Or are we? What if we think we’re playing-to-win but there’s actually a subtle and insidious storyline going on in the background? Often we’re not aware of how it’s keeping us and our business from being all it can be. Would uncovering that storyline be valuable to you?

Playing-not-to-lose doesn’t sound appealing does it? It can be a bit hard on our self-esteem and the vision we have of our self as a leader when we’re called on it. It doesn’t sound good because, playing-not-to-lose is ultimately about avoiding fear.

When you ask people if they experience fear in their professional life, they will usually tell you no. Here’s the subtle and insidious part. Most of us learned long ago to avoid situations in which fear may come up. By avoiding situations where we might lose, fail, be emotionally hurt, or be rejected we end up playing-not-to-lose. For most of us, when our status or sense of belonging become threatened, we automatically avoid the situation from where the fear is coming from.

As some of you know, I love teaching softball and baseball hitting. There are times where one my students may be quite a bit behind the abilities of the others. Unfortunately as kids (and adults) tend to do they will sometimes snicker or outright laugh at the struggling student. At that point the student will go one of two ways and I can usually tell fairly quickly which path they’ll chose. One type of student will laugh with the others realizing how far they have to go to catch up but then quickly focus on what it will take to get there. No fear. Many though end up quitting. When asked why, they typically say they don’t like ball anymore. It’s interesting to me how many of these kids come in full of enthusiasm only to say a few weeks later they’re not interested anymore thereby taking away the fear of being emotionally hurt or rejected. But at what cost? If you asked them if they were afraid of ball what do you think they would say? Do you see the subtleness of this? When we are asked whether we experience fear, the reasonable answer we tell ourselves is no. Fear avoidance.

It comes down to how we define winning and losing. Let’s say you’re a golfer and I have you play a five year old who’s never played before. You win match after match by ridiculous margins. Are you really a winner?

If you want to stretch yourself as a leader, and grow a little, look for the things you avoid doing in your business and your life. Are you not doing them because you believe the consequences of embarrassment or being seen as a loser or a failure would be awful? Do you allow your imagination to take over and head straight for the worst possible outcome it can dream of? When we play not to lose, the game is about survival. To survive we need to avoid the awful stuff our imaginations keep playing in our mind like a blockbuster horror movie. We chose not to take risks because we fear what might happen. We play it safe.

Playing-to-win means engaging with life. To look back when you’re old and gray with no regrets. It’s the way to thrive on this adventure we call life! Playing-to-win means there is no such thing as failure, only learning and growth.

Be honest with yourself. Did you sense a little excitement reading about playing-to-win? How much fun that could be? What would it be like to track down your hidden fears and slay them? Do you think it could lead to a little more fulfilling life, one you could look back on with pride?