Episode 186: Our Obsession with Winning
/Show transcript:
Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.
In this episode we look at society’s obsession with winning. It takes over most aspects of life from sport to school to the workplace. My guest is a three-time Olympian.
“The first two were very much dominated by this macho narrative about who's the winner and you know, if you lose, you've gotta show how much you hate losing 'cause that's what winners do.”
Re- thinking what winning means. Coming up on The Broad Experience.
In the summer of 2004 British rower Cath Bishop was in her early thirties, competing at her third Olympic Games in Athens alongside her crewmate, Katherine Grainger. During the final race the two of them powered through the water, stroke after stroke, one of six pairs of female rowers…
TV commentator: “Looking very good indeed, very lively. Much better than their opening heat, there’s Cath Bishop there in the stroke seat, very very sharp, very, very aggressive…”
Now to get to this point Cath had worked incredibly hard. She’d already competed in two previous Olympics and won a World Championship the year before. But for years she’d found the world of professional sport pretty brutal. The rigorous physical and mental training. The focus on winning above all else. How terrible she felt about herself whenever did poorly.
There’s a lot of pressure when you’re representing your country.
TV commentator: “As Great Britain start to make their charge…Great Britain moving up on Belarus…they’re just about level there with Canada…and they are moving up on the Belarus pair…”
As Cath and her crewmate crossed the finish line after a grueling 7 minutes she was so depleted she wasn’t even sure who’d won…
TV commentator: “This has been a wonderful and remarkable performance by the two Romanians, Great Britain closing to make sure they take the silver…”
They had, in fact, come second. And that experience of winning a silver medal got Cath thinking deeply about this winning culture that had ruled her life for so long. Recently she turned her thoughts and research into a book.
“Quite often what they find is the happiest people are the bronze medalists because they're comparing themselves and thinking, I'm really glad I didn't come fourth. And the gold medalists are often thinking, when does everlasting happiness begin? Is my life changed forever or do I actually still have the same flaws I had two hours ago and the same relationship issues and all of that, you know, there's this sense that you are waiting for this perfect moment and suddenly the heavens are gonna open and you have divine happiness ever after. And of course you're sort of working that all through. And the silver medalists are looking up thinking, oh, you know, I was one place off Nirvana in that divine moment. And so, I was for a long while gonna write about what it's like to come second, 'cause I think it's an experience that happens to all of us.
We go for jobs, we get down to the last two, and we don't get it. And we have runner ups in everything in life…but what I realized in the kind of way I was doing my research and having interviews, I was finding that people who won weren't very happy, and were often feeling slightly depressed and empty and wondering is that it? And I thought, oh, hang on a minute, you know, if winning isn't even working for a lot of our winners, then something has gone very wrong in how we are playing this whole game.”
After the Athens Olympics Cath went back to her nascent career as a diplomat. She moved to Bosnia, and later to Iraq. Today she works in leadership development and she’s the author of The Long Win: the search for a better way to succeed.
AM-T: “I want to start off by you taking me way back. You’re an Olympian, you’re a rower. How did all that begin, I mean how did you get into rowing in the first place. Was it at university or before that?”
“I actually got into it quite late. Yeah. At university. I had at school not been very sporty, and there were certain very sporty types and I was not amongst them.”
But when she went to Cambridge she got into rowing, and that only happened when someone else got injured and Cath offered to take their place…
“I was overjoyed to find a sport that a) I enjoyed b) I actually was decent at. Um, and I really loved the whole environment of being on the river, working with other people, being on a team that was much closer than the teams at school where actually, if you're on a hockey pitch, um, you know, you could run away from the ball. You sort of could opt out.”
AM-T: “I did exactly that. I ran away from the ball, I opted out.”
“And me too. Yeah, exactly, 'cause that hockey ball hurts when it hits your ankles, right? And for me, what was wonderful was when you're in a rowing boat, you can't really opt out 'cause that is quite nuclear to jump in the river. And it's very cold in the British river, in the middle of winter. And so it made me opt in 'cause had no other choice and opting in was a really lovely experience 'cause then all you do is you've just gotta make the best of what you can do at the same time as the other people around you and being around, uh, aware of the natural environment. And that whole experience, that is what was so magical for me.”
As she was leaving university her coaches told her, you know, you could be great at this - if you train and improve your technique, you could compete at an international level.
“And as soon as someone says, look, you've got potential, you want to have a go. And so I thought, you know, brilliant, why not? But at that point, the narrative really started to change. Once I started to become part of the trialing process for the national team, coming into contact with national team coaches, suddenly it was about, this is not about having fun, now you need to be a serious athlete. We are here to win. That's all that matters. All of this suddenly became the dominant narrative, which was a bit of a shock to me, but I naively really thought, oh, okay. That's, that's obviously really important to making this next step. So I'm gonna have to learn all of this new way of thinking, 'cause obviously that's, that's what champions do. And, and so I did for quite a while, try and take that on board.”
Cath competed in the Atlanta Olympics, the Sydney Olympics and finally Athens.
“So the first two were very much dominated by this macho narrative about, you know, it's all, who's the winner and you know, if you lose, you've gotta show how much you hate losing 'cause that's what winners do. So you've got to be, you know, beating your chest and bereft and grief stricken. And it's the worst thing that could possibly happen, 'cause if there's any sniff that for some reason you are not distraught about losing, oh, well that's a sign that you are not a winner.”
But she didn’t do that well in either Atlanta or Sydney - she came 7th and 9th respectively. She felt like something was off - this narrative about toughening up and winning wasn’t working for her.
At the same time, she says there were some changes in the world of sports psychology, and she went into her third Olympics in Athens thinking not as much about crushing the competition, but rather about improving her performance - including her mindset. It also helped that she’d begun her new career in diplomacy and being in that totally different world had taken her focus off winning.
She took home that silver medal, of which she was very proud. Still, she says, as someone who came second…
“I was left with that sense of how do I, how do I understand it? How do I make sense of that result? How do I walk away and make peace with it? How do I, you know, think about what it means?”
AM-T: “Just hearing you talk about sport made me wonder, what did you think when over the last few months, there was an incident in the last few months with both Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka stepping away and saying i’m not going to do this for a while, I’m not going to compete, or to finish my part in the competition. That must have really struck you having been in the world you were in and having written the book.”
“Yeah, absolutely. I think there have been some kind of real major rethinking moments where athletes are not wanting to go down a track that is gonna lead them into a mental health issue that is ongoing regardless of the medal you have, what is it that's of lasting value that you take with you? What's the story about the way you won the medal? 'cause that matters my goodness in gymnastics, gymnasts all around the world have been through horrendous things in the pursuit of a medal and many have said, they'd give the medal back if they could change the experience. I mean, to me that gold medal does not represent a success that we want to repeat or emulate or that is healthy for sport or society or for the next generation to bring them into sport. And that's where I think, you know, now we've got athletes saying we need to reshape the narrative, for sure.
I think it's also really interesting to look at the journey of Emma Raducanu, this brilliant young British tennis player who came over and won the US Open, who actually got to the fourth round of Wimbledon. She's never won any games on the ATP tour and actually she pulled out of the fourth round match having had some dizziness and her breath not quite being there. And again, commentators piled in saying, oh, she's too weak. Oh, she hasn't got what she takes, but that's not how she rationalized it or her team, you know, they literally were just in that kind of learning place of, well actually we didn't prepare right. And you know, we've got to this position we hadn't prepared for before and now we know how next time to do it better. And she takes that with her, into the US open. She plays qualifying matches. Plus every, every round of the US open and never at any point, does her coach set her a goal to win the match. She's purely there enjoying the process and learning from one game to the next. And so that has been another moment of an athlete redefining a mental approach to success that doesn't focus on winning, but actually brings fantastic results.”
In a minute, how the culture of winning seeps into all our lives, even if we’ve never hit a ball or run a race - and how to think differently.
“I am here with a podcast recommendation. If you like the Broad Experience, check out the Ask a Harvard Professor podcast. There, you’ll hear from some of the world’s most prominent scholars. One recent episode that fits very well with this show features Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin, talking about one of the less discussed reasons why women still earn less than men at work. Subscribe to Ask a Harvard Professor on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.”
AM-T: “You point out there’s a whole vocabulary around winning, a whole set of phrases and language in our everyday lives, like win-win situation, I mean there’s loads of things, but very common nowadays is ‘killing it’ and crushing it. I find that very unattractive, unappealing language for me. But it’s definitely related to the winning language, isn’t it?”
“I totally agree. It's a language of aggression and it's a language of violence. I mean even the whole sort of, we don't even really think that things like ‘targets’, you know, that's actually fundamentally comes from a world of putting bullets through targets and you know, deadlines - a deadline, originally that comes from the line that was drawn around prisons. And if prisoners stepped over this line, they'd be shot. So we do have a lot of that language and it's interesting. I think, you know, that's part of what I see as an unhelpful to performance approach in sport as well. If we hate our competitors, that creates a different, we literally release a different hormone in our bodies. It puts us in a different mindset. We actually become afraid of them. We're much closer to that fear driven motivation rather than actually, I need my competitor. They're the one person that understands what you're going through. They're the one person in the world that probably has, you know, most in common with you, and actually you need them in order to get the best performance. So we actually should be striving together, and that's what the original meaning of competition is, so 'competere' in Latin is about striving together.”
How that meaning has changed.
And she says the whole societal love of winning - whether it’s in sport or the workplace or at school - it comes from our long history…emphasis on the HIS.
“It’s come through a male dominated world of, if you think winning starts probably in history books, when we learn, and we look at history, told through the victor's eyes and, you know, mouth, and of course the victors tended to be male through centuries of fighting battles. It was a very aggressive world. It was all about power and wealth, and that was what was important. So if we look at centuries of the history books, then we see this utter focus on domination and who is more superior and, you know, up to a century ago, that's sort of how things worked. And in a conventional world that we used to live in, you could argue that, okay, that's, that's kind of how things functioned.”
She says the problem now is that we are faced with issues that are not win or lose, whether it is climate change, inequality, international trade and security…and global health.
“These are all ongoing issues that aren't about who's got the right answer, the best answer, the most dominant answer, the most powerful person in the debate. They're actually about how we work together to try and create a way forward that works globally. And I think in this world, that narrative is now really falling down and that's why we need to reframe things. And that's why a much more diverse set of voices is important because I think that heroic male voice, which is something that a lot of men as well, don't want to connect with, but almost feel they have to, that's the role they have to emulate and step into, I think there's a lot of male voices who want something different and don't want to be in that heroic fixer mode.”
In her current career, Cath works with teams and organizations on re-framing the way they think about success - with less emphasis on short-term wins, and ticking things off to-do lists…more on long-term gains that traditionally we might not think of as successes. Things like deepening our relationships with colleagues rather than comparing ourselves to them. She says doing this helped improve her mindset a lot when she was getting ready for her final Olympics.
Cath calls the framework she’s developed ‘the three Cs’.
“And the first is with clarity, to actually clarify what matters and to go beyond anything that's just a short term goal that's finite, that will be over. So whether that's a race that's gonna happen and finish, or a set of quarterly results that will happen and finish, what are the things that have lasting value to us, you know, from that race or from those quarterly results? What matters that stays with us? What's the longer term piece? What is the purpose? Why would that race or that set of quarterly results be important? What do they move you closer towards?”
The second C is constant learning.
“We were designed to grow from the moment we're born, we're all about learning. And it's only if things sort of stop that process that we get stuck for a bit, but fundamentally that's what life is about. And it is an intrinsic motivator and much deeper level than, than, you know, an A grade and an A grade distracts really from the process of learning. So I think to have that sense of how can I just each day be improving things, trying things out, what new things am I learning? What other ways in which I could do something differently, or, you know, who can I bring in to challenge or support me? Who might I ask for some feedback that I haven't asked for feedback before?”
Finally she says, the third C is about connections.
“Prioritizing human connections in everything we do. We cannot succeed on our own. Again, the last couple of years have reinforced for us the importance of social connection. So, you know, again, why would we be putting these tasks on our to-do list above developing relationships, connecting with others, reaching out, listening, those are the things, again, that, that for me, I wanna look back at the end of the day, you know, how did I listen to people today?
Who did I get to know a bit better? Beyond the transaction that you may have needed within your meeting, you know, who did I get to know in a different way? And what questions did I ask about them and, and how might that enable us perhaps to collaborate in a different way in the future. So to really kind of put the quality of the relationships as actually that's part of my success today, not just ticking off a set of tasks that I won't remember in a year's time.”
I told Cath that when it comes to the middle C - constant learning - I’ve been wanting to re-learn Spanish for a long time. Intending to…thinking about it a lot…but I haven’t quite decided how that goal ranks in importance alongside all the other stuff I have to do.
“So I think you're right, you hit the nail on the head. You’ve got to clarify whether it's important enough, if it isn't actually that important to you, then it won't happen for sure. And I think, you know, you were talking about, oh, there's all these apps I could do. And you're looking at what you could do, but you haven't clarified why it matters and you haven't made the case to yourself about why, and it's only gonna happen if you really have a strong sense of why this is more important than all those other things you can leap into.”
AM-T: Oh, I know why I want to re-learn Spanish, I just didn’t want to drag you through it, there are career and personal reasons why I’m keen to be able to speak it again.
“So if the why is stronger than the other whys for the things you're spending your time on, then you will do it. But if you believe at some level that I'd like to do it, but actually I believe this is more important for me to do today then of course I'm gonna go and do those other things. So there is, I think that need… when we're clarifying what matters we are clarifying it at that sort of deeper level of not just you know when you say ‘I've got an intention to do it,’ and I think, well, that's only the beginning, isn’t it. We all go to work with good intentions, but the workplace can often be a very difficult and unhelpful and un-compassionate place.
So I think it is about sort of having that sense of do I think this is the right thing to do. Do I really want to do it? Is it gonna make a difference? Am I gonna regret in the future not doing this? Do I believe it's more important than this other work I've got to do? I mean, when I was writing the book it took me some years to write the book, you know, absolutely nobody else was scheduling it. And there were times when I put it to one side for a couple of months and I thought, oh, I've got all these other things. I've got this work, I've got this stuff in my diary. I've got, you know, family commitments, very important, but I came back to it because I kept thinking, do you know what, this is more important than these other things that I'm doing. And so I'm gonna come back and pick it up again.”
AM-T: “Mm, yeah, no you’re right and I’m really looking forward to doing this, and with me because I work for myself - well same for somebody in a company, you’ve always got the client or the thing coming at you from work that you have to give your time to, and it’s balancing those other things you have to do… it’s a question of really thinking about what’s most important to you and making it happen.”
“It is. And I think it's important to be thinking about that on a daily basis. So quite often we have a moment where we, you know, at new year's or at a certain point, we think, oh, yes, now I must do this. But it's actually getting up in the morning, going ‘what really matters today?’ Being quite honest about that, you know, and thinking, is it just getting through the list of the electronic calendar? Is that really what's important about today? And in a year's time am I gonna remember anything I've done today? What are the things that matter most? And that's the question to keep answering, to keep asking yourself, otherwise you're in an automatic pilot, the months and the years kind of just roll by, and we actually haven't done things that have a lasting value.”
AM-T: “Mmm, yeah. And perhaps if you are somebody who’s been in an environment where it has been about targets and KPIs, key performance indicators, it’s quite a switch in mindset to think what long-term success, which, let’s face it, society thinks success is all the showy things, so you have to get comfortable in yourself with success being something a bit different, something that’s day to day or week to week, and that might be a bit quieter and less showy.”
“Yes, I think that is right. And it's really interesting about how our brains work, that we have the opportunity almost to tap into something that's maybe less showy, but sort of so much more meaningful, that kind of resonates much more strongly within us. If you think about it we're almost sort of working on an addict’s part of our brain. So we kind of use what a gambler would use that, you know, oh, I've, I've hit a target. I got a little dopamine hit from that, or the next one, do the next one, do the next thing. And there's nothing about addiction that we generally see as positive, but that's the loop that we're really using by this winning, ‘I wanna win something. I wanna win the next one. And the next one,’ and often each time we win, it's got a sort of diminishing return.
I don't think if we step back, we would think that's a healthy way to live our lives. There is this other part of our brains that is open and ready for longer term thinking that is linked to a sense of the values, the purpose that we have, why we're doing things to kind of connect into, you know, our ancestors, the future generations, all of this thinking that can be so strong in other cultures that actually we would very naturally fit into if we just allow ourselves to let our minds go there or to read a bit more about it. And that's where I think there is then just a sort of untapped well, that I think once we get started on that, we suddenly realize, hang on, we've been in the wrong game.”
Cath Bishop. Her book is The Long Win: the search for a better way to succeed. You’ll find photos and links to more information about Cath under this episode at TheBroadExperience.com.
As usual I’m interested to hear from you - is this long win approach something you can see your organization adopting? Or maybe it’s something you’ve thought about personally since the pandemic began? You know how to get hold of me, via email, Facebook or Instagram.
That’s The Broad Experience for this time, and it’s the last show of the year. I think I may re-release an old show at some point around new year’s.
I am taking a break to gather some new material and you’ll hear from me again in 2022.
I hope you all enjoy a good holiday season despite the crazy world we still live in.
I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte. Thanks as ever for listening.