Comment by Havoc
1 day ago
Also, people that don't have an adversarial bone in their body. They just want everyone to be happy and succeed.
A lot of people reckon that applies to them, but the real deal is pretty scarce in my experience.
Always find people like that inspiring.
I am not competitive. That’s a deliberate stance, and comes as a result of my life experiences (long story, get your hanky).
In order to “win,” someone else needs to “lose.”
That’s not something that I am personally comfortable with, but I totally understand that it’s not reasonable to expect others, to have the same attitude.
I’m also quite capable of preventing others from treating my attitude as “weakness,” and trying to make me the “loser.”
Kindness is not weakness.
> In order to “win,” someone else needs to “lose.”
Only in zero sum. I don't think many things are really zero sum. The reason why both parties say thank you in a financial transaction is because the first party values the thing more than the money and the other party values the money more than the thing. Win-win.
I prefer winning as a team. I also like significantly contributing to that, but never at someone else's expense. I am the first to say "we did this" vs "i did this."
I worked for a Japanese company, and they explicitly discouraged individual recognition. It was always the team; even if one person was the keystone.
I had a boss that authored a book on how to use some of our software. It was a good book, and he busted his ass, writing it (alone).
His bosses made him completely remove any mention of his name.
I feel that was going a bit too far, but I understand why.
They used to say "The nail that sticks up, gets hammered down."
The Japanese have the strongest teams I've ever seen, but it is difficult to get individual recognition.
I'm sure it's a lot easier if you're a rich woman living in NYC.
I like people like that too, but surely the world and more narrowly the human experience also benefit from having people that are competitive or even disagreeable?
Mostly, yes, but I think at its core, the world benefits from honesty more than out right agreeable- or disagreeableness. We should speak up when we feel the need to agree or disagree, but we shouldn't play devil's advocate for the sake of it.
We absolutely should play devil's advocate. It is the attempt to think about a situation from a different angle and usually is understood to be such. Not an attack; a shake up to see if the structure stands to opposition.
You can be competitive and supportive of your enemies.