Wins, Losses, and Your Personal Scoreboard
We cannot let others define our scoreboards.
Winning and losing is one of my favorite leadership topics—and often the one that is least dissected and discussed. Some define wins as salary, position, status, a deal, a grade, a promotion, or outscoring an opponent on the field or court.
Yet, we don’t pause long enough to consider or define what constitutes a win on our personal scoreboard. If we don’t take time to think about our scoreboard, we are always chasing someone else’s definition of what it looks like for us to win. Where does that take you? Often, out of your game and into someone else’s game – often with their own home field advantage.
I find it fascinating to understand how leaders at all levels think about wins and losses. Personally, I want and expect the win every single time. I never fear losing because I never expect to lose. While someone else may have more talent, or may perform better on a given day, I don’t interpret “not winning” as a loss unless any bit of effort was missing. But losses are as much a part of leadership and life as any win. Some leaders find their joy from being in the battle and playing from behind (real or manufactured)—and that is where they stay. Their thrill comes from the competition and when the stakes are the highest, they don’t just want to be in the arena, they want to be in the spotlight. Understanding how Ws and Ls impact and influence behavior helps to shape performance.
Let’s take that pause to begin to unpack and explore the idea of a leadership scoreboard – your personal scoreboard – and dissect a brief, ongoing tool you can add to your leadership repertoire to capture and navigate your wins and losses more effectively and intentionally. Too often, we give the wins (and losses) away to others or to the organization.
Leaders constantly keep score and manipulate the scoreboard to tell their story—whatever it may be in each moment.
Am I advancing in my company fast enough?
Is the bottom line big enough?
Do I have enough power?
Is my voice strong enough?
Am I making enough money?
Am I positioned in a way that gives me the best options?
We cannot let others define our scoreboards—otherwise we would lose every day. As leaders, we must devise our own scoreboard to keep us on track and in touch with our real goals – never ceding that authority to anyone else. In the NFL, I work with leaders training them to focus on the everyday wins—those we have the most control over. Every day, every person in the organization has a chance to win or achieve or accomplish something great. I am happy to stack those daily wins and measure them. As I tell organizations, if you can win on 348 days, it makes it a lot easier to have success on the 17 days that you compete on the field. This is true in the NCAA too. And it’s even more true outside of the confines of sports, where the wins and the losses can appear even more complex.
You have the power to own your scoreboard and to change your game. Too often the game that is lost is the game never played—the game in our minds. Approximately eighty thousand thoughts go through the mind of a leader each day. Most of them are then repeated in your mind over and over. Most are not real, yet often we process them through a negative lens, which convinces us we are losing. This thought pattern takes us out of the current moment and keeps us in an unbalanced cycle where we’re always playing catch-up or thinking we are behind. Leaders can practice engaging with their scoreboard in a healthier, more growth-oriented way.
Try thinking about your big wins (always start with the positive!), then think about defining what future wins look like. What is most important to you where you are now and where you want to be? Take some time to create your own scoreboard and use the exercise below to unpack your relationship with it.
I’d love to hear how this exercise benefits you. I am always happy to talk about scoreboards – personal as well as sports (especially with the fall kickoff). If you’re interested in reading more about the concept of winning and losing, and for evidence-based ways to become a human-centered leader and design cultures of belonging, check out my soon-to-be-released book Belonging Rules, available for pre-order here: https://bit.ly/3VYo6Nr
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