Nuala Walsh is CEO MindEquity, Behavioral Scientist and TEDx speaker, holding multiple Board roles in business, sport and nonprofits.
As a business leader, you’ve probably been advised to cultivate “a winning mindset.” You may well have given others similar advice!
Yet too many confuse a “winning mindset” with a “win/lose mindset.” The trick is to know the difference—one helps you win, the other ensures you lose.
Two Ways Mindset Affects The Ability To Win
As a board advisor turned behavioral scientist, I’ve previously written about how obsessive goal hunting distorts our decisions. Two other factors can derail our perspective: a disproportionate focus on winning and unrealistic expectations of winning.
1. Disproportionate Focus On Winning
Of course, goal focus is Management 101. After all, it explains how Space X launches tourists into orbit, athletes secure Olympic victories and robotics drive next-generation technologies.
While goal-hunting can lead to incredible success, obsessively thinking about results can lead you down the slippery slope.
Human fixation with achievement pervades business, law, music, finance and sports. Too many scandals have been rooted in the relentless hunt for profits, rankings, awards and magazine covers. Among others, I think of Theranos’ blood-testing system or the now-defunct FTX cryptocurrency exchange. It’s a long list.
This isn’t new, but these lessons aren’t always learned.
When tennis legend John McEnroe was invited as the first athlete to ever grace the Stanford commencement podium to showcase how to win at life, many tuned in, including me. More than most, McEnroe understands the danger of an all-consuming win/lose mentality and warns aspiring leaders against it: “Measure your success by how much you evolve, not necessarily how much you win.”
Why? Because when high performers are preoccupied with smashing the competition or securing a promotion, excessive tunnel vision sets in.
Part of this narrow perspective stems from characterizing people and ideas in binary ways. For instance, you might think, “Are revenues above or below target?” or “Is the crowd for or against me?” This success/failure narrative provides simplicity, but it leaves little room for nuanced perspective.
So how can you temper an obsessive focus on winning? After three decades in industry, I understand it. I’ve also observed it and, occasionally, lived it. Behavioral science points to several simple but often-ignored solutions.
• Choose your attitude. Savvy leaders limit black-and-white thinking and broaden what constitutes achievement. Anything less than success is not necessarily failure. It’s not a question of settling for less or giving up, but giving yourself a break.
• Choose the right comparison. One study shows only 1 out of 10 high achievers are happy with success. It’s why silver medalists typically look more miserable than bronze medalists. Rather than measuring yourself against elite high-performers, consider the broader population. Relative performance matters to maximize perspective.
• Choose your frame. If you reach the Wimbledon final or last stage of a sales pitch, is that success or failure? What if it’s against the odds? Leicester City football club overcame staggering odds of 5,000-to-1 to win the 2016 Premier League. By controlling the frame, you broaden perspective beyond winning or losing and improve the ability to cope with disappointment.
2. Unrealistic Expectations Of Winning
The second contributor to a winning mindset is managing expectations about winning itself. The ambitious often self-impose unrealistic expectations rather than accepting practical, financial or physical constraints. Not everyone can be top dog. And even when you are, the only way to go is down.
No one is immune from the harsh effects of unrealism, even superstars. For example, Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds once told Variety, “Expectations were eating me alive.”
McEnroe knows how to win, earning 155 combined ATP singles and doubles titles including seven Grand Slams. He understands this mental trap, advising leaders, “Don’t get crushed under the weight of your own expectations.”
Even though high expectations motivate us to go the extra mile, this ticking time bomb can trigger hot states. Many public companies crumble under the weight of shareholder pressure just as entrepreneurs and athletes neglect the low likelihood of success.
What to do?
Leaders can mitigate unrealistic expectations in several ways. It starts with believing your personal best is good enough.
• Find a pressure valve. Smart leaders develop a pressure valve in high-stakes situations. Having a method of release can help regulate anxiety. This can be as simple as exercise or meditation. Wharton professor Adam Grant advocates a “challenge network” to provide a buffer zone that insulates leaders against poor decisions.
• Redefine winning. You can always redefine winning. For instance, Sinead O’Connor maintained an authentic voice artistically and commercially, transitioning from pop singer to protest singer, from Catholicism to Islam. When the public turned against her in the 1990s, she redefined winning: “They broke my heart, and they killed me, but I didn’t die.” Modern society often cancels virtue-signaling but rewards those who are true to self.
• Look beyond titles. Many high-achievers let titles and transient awards define them—but not all. Recently a triple-Olympic-gold-medal long jumper told me how her medals live in the attic. Time passes and with it, today’s priorities and obsessions.
Cultivating a range of identities protects you against loss of position. That way, it matters less if you’re no longer “champion,” “head of” or “director.” For instance McEnroe reshaped his career and is now a sought-after tennis commentator, musician, art collector and voice actor.
Winning In Business—And Life
The real winners in business, sport and life own their destinies, controlling all-or-nothing perspectives, polarized thinking and unrealistic expectations.
Winners also learn from others. As Otto von Bismarck is believed to have said, “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes.”
Those who achieve success understand it doesn’t bring happiness; those who don’t understand this crave success. A balanced perspective can mean the difference between winning in life and struggling in life.
It’s time for a winning mindset.
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