Yes, you are totally right about the unhelpful urge to "win" and my actions being wrong. Also, exactly as you say, in the end the outcome is negative both for myself and the team.
Being viewed unfavorably by potential workplaces because of telling this story is a great fear, I admit.
Either I completely misunderstood the article, or ...
I also had a similar feeling, and I think it's more productive to focus on results and goals, rather than "winning" or "losing". Nobody wants to be a loser.
Further, I don't like the term battle, as it has a negative connotation, and this is exactly what you need to control or even to get rid of in a team: battle, win/lose, blood, emotions, arguments.
In general I find the article pretty superficial and somewhat biased. In a real work environment you might have the best idea ever that might lead the product/company towards success, however, in front of you there is a senior dev/team lead to convince, and he is defensive and negative (and who knows, maybe he is having a bad moment in his life). How do you "win" this "battle"? By rationally "showing the numbers"? If we were all robots, this approach would possibly work, but in a team of 5 people there are 5 animals with 1) emotions, 2) personal problems, 3) different personalities, with ambitions, etc etc.
> if the other side is in "I win, you lose" mode, none of these coping strategies really work.
If I'm dealing with a person like that, and the thing they want to "win" isn't something important for work, then I just let them "win". It's no skin off my nose. Let them have their meaningless victory.
If it is something important for work, then I just make the best factual case I can to whoever matters and roll with the results.
This is very true! But that doesn't make it right.
Life usually has objective victory conditions. Even if you're playing by your own rules, the rules tend to be objective, because humans tend to care about the real world, not what we can convince ourselves.
If your startup fails, you are not going to wave a wand in your mind and say "I've won!" If you do, you will not feel fulfilled. You will not feel happy. Even if your startup was viciously heaving its death throes for years and you finally, finally pulled the plug, you will not feel "victory" in the sense you would if you were bought by Oracle and made a millionaire, because of your stock options.
It's very true that people try to convince themselves, following a loss, that they in fact won. They try to convince themselves that now they're free to start the next company, which will surely be a success, or that the person who left them wasn't right for them anyways, and that they'll meet someone new.
But in reality, the next company is sometimes also a failure, and the person who left you sometimes was your only soulmate, driven away by your workaholism or your nagging or whatever else you did.
We can lie to ourselves, but it's hard to truly deceive yourself. Think back to the times in your life when you've lost; you know what they are, and you know how they feel. When you lose again, and you will lose again, you'll know that you've lost then too.
I think the article is looking for winners and losers in the wrong place. There will inevitably be winning and losing companies. People that put more energy into making sure that they, personally, win over other people in the organization are not focused on making sure the company wins. Asking "How do I win?" is a very different question from asking "How do we make the company win?".
I fear I'm one of these unsuspecting losers...except I guess that comment makes me suspecting.
IDK, I don't want to play the game but it only gets worse in the corporate world. I wish there was a good solution, where someone could play it straight and get rewarded justly.
But when you get caught in curating the environment that leads to a "win", it would probably hit strongly the other way.
I disagree about the win/loss theory in general though. I think it is really a dissonance about what people expect and value in in or out groups.
Someone afraid to speak up in certain groups might be quite outgoing in another. So there isn't really an absolute level of success. There are also very successful people that are anxious. Expectations towards yourself play a large role though.
I think that's what the author defines as a "winning" battle. Notice that "winning" and "losing" in the article are NOT "my idea won" and "my idea lost", but rather... "bringing this up netted improvement" and "bringing this up netted bad feelings".
First, I think you hit the nail on the head in:Is this the name of the game ? Yeah it is , always has , always will be. Does it suck for the loser ? Yes for course.
However, I didn't really ask for anything. In fact, what I think that bestcoder69 is missing is that the person who is asking/showing empathy is actually PC.
If we look at what he wrote, he doesn't just come out and say something like tough luck for them, this is business, instead he says things like "we could have handled this better" and "...will retro this next week" and then lays out what the lessons should be for his team_
Just because empathy is important in business doesn't mean you aren't allowed to win.
To the downvoters: would love to hear stories similar to that of the OP. I personally have never seen somebody in that situation win without major buy-in, especially from managers or C-levels. But wouldn’t mind being shown wrong.
Nit-pick: I don't like the language of wins [versus losses]. I get that people like short words that are associated with happiness and success, but the underlying messaging are that if we're not winning, we're losing, or that we "have to win".
In reality, failure should be normal, expected, and even desired, because if you're not failing, you're not trying new things or taking risks. You should lose sometimes. But success is preferred to failure, so I would prefer to get Tiny Successes through Tiny Improvements.
There's a difference between ending up winning (I did my thing and others liked what I did) and searching for a win (I need to get ahead / win), which leads to most likely not being true to your nature.
For example Linus wanted to make an operating system, he didn't want to win (I would think), but ended up "winning". But if you want to be like Linus, you'll probably get lost.
I didn't participate, but there's also the concept of "sour grapes". If one wins, then one describes how hard fought and thought out the victory was; if one loses, then one says one didn't spend much time on it at all ("if only I had more time...").
I think you proved SkeuomorphicBee's point. You are oblivious to the fact that you got f-ed over. You are talking past the argument thinking people won't notice that your feel good blog post is about how you think you won, but actually got screwed and are oh-so happy about it.
It is sadly too common for people to feel vindicated and/or thrilled anytime they manage to "win" like this, akin to the so-called beggar mentality, where any material gain to oneself regardless of actual need is considered a positive.
These kinds of people like to think of themselves as smart when in reality they are just selfish.
Any action that cannot sustainably be extended to everyone else in the world should be considered suspect as to whether it's actually good.
Being viewed unfavorably by potential workplaces because of telling this story is a great fear, I admit.
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