It was interesting because the person who was most verbal about it and with whom I had previous interaction is the one I would have considered to be far more competitive than I.

In this exercise, we were told the purpose was effective communication and the objective was to “win as many points as you can”. That’s it…so we had to interpret that for ourselves.

While I learned something about effective communication during the exercise and most of us failed miserably at it…what really had me thinking was the competitiveness aspect. What I realized was is that some of us approach and even interpret competitiveness differently.

I looked at our exercise as a game…something to have fun with. I was going to play the game to win, but if I lost, that would have been just fine. In other words, I wanted to compete and see how it turned out.

Well, the other person in the room wanted to approach it from the perspective that everyone should win. She, with good reasoning, felt the instructor laid out the objective of the game to be for the greater good. In other words, she wanted to set it up so each team in the room got an equal amount of points.

My team – also with good reason – wanted to do things a little differently and go for the win on our own.

As soon as our approach was clear to other teams in the room, the backlash ensued. They couldn’t believe we weren’t going along with the group and one person got so upset, she declared that she didn’t want to play anymore and said in the real world, she wouldn’t do business with us.

At first, I interpreted this as a fear of not losing…which I think is the essence of competitiveness. But after further discussion as a group, it’s clearer that this person simply felt her way was the correct way. Even after she calmed down and our differing points of view were more clear to one another, she still kept defending her “win-win” approach was the correct one.

And I think feeling so strongly that it’s your way or the highway is also an aspect of being competitive. In other words, in order to succeed…it has to happen your way.

So let’s turn it back to how you approach your business? Do you take risks and play? Do you approach things with the fear of losing? Or are you insistent things should go the way you set out? Or is something else?

All of those approaches have advantages and drawbacks…no right or wrong answer, of course!

I think it describes me perfectly!

If I could only go back in time and decide NOT to pour my son’s apple juice into a cup beside my laptop. It went into the cup with such force, it splashed back out onto my laptop.

But alas, what’s done is done. Seems to work okay, but some keys need a little extra punch and make a horrible clicking noise. I’ll keep furious typing and perhaps it will go away.