I am Extraordinarily Aggressive — Here is How I Preserve It from Changing into a Drawback | Jive Update

I am Extraordinarily Aggressive — Here is How I Preserve It from Changing into a Drawback


Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their very own.

I’m aggressive, and I hate to lose. After I really feel like somebody goes to be higher than me at one thing, it flips a swap someplace deep within me and places me into overdrive.

This is not restricted to the work I do at FutureFund, my free fundraising platform for Ok-12 college teams. I need to be the most effective athlete, coach, household man and software program engineer that I will be. And for probably the most half, this works. It motivates me to attempt for excellence and hold difficult myself as a substitute of turning into too snug and stagnating.

However the identical tendency that drives me to excel at this stuff can generally grow to be counterproductive. My dislike of dropping is definitely so sturdy that I typically hate enjoying board video games. As you may think about, that may actually put a damper on household sport night time if I do not hold it in test.

A number of folks in tech are like this as a result of it is a aggressive panorama. Possibly it is the identical for you: something you do, it’s a must to do 100% — and since you put 100% of your self into one thing, it is nearly unattainable to your success or failure to not really feel like a mirrored image of who you’re. Like me, you have got a model, and that model is: if you do one thing, you’ll succeed.

The trick is to maintain your sense of competitors wholesome in order that it serves your work and private targets as a substitute of getting in your manner. Here is how I do it — and how one can, too.

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The way in which you reply to competitors is a selection

Not everybody responds to competitors in the identical manner. Individuals are likely to fall into one in all two teams once they witness another person succeeding at a objective they’ve for themselves.

The primary group tries to sabotage the success they see in others. They ask how they will shift their competitors’s fame in order that it is destructive. That is extra generally accepted than you may assume. We are likely to look down on manufacturers who run apparent smear campaigns in opposition to their rivals, however plenty of corporations get away with writing press releases that favorably evaluate their services or products to these of their largest rivals.

The second group tries to enhance themselves to allow them to match and surpass the success they see others experiencing. They grow to be motivated to raised themselves as a substitute of casting aspersions on their rivals. This method can really feel like much more work, however I’ve discovered that it is also continuously far more rewarding.

The primary group’s method may work at first — however there are apparent dangers. Not solely can this blow again on you for those who’re too heavy-handed, however it will possibly additionally provoke your rivals and inspire them to work tougher in opposition to you than they usually would have. However the largest drawback is that specializing in others would not do something to enhance your skills.

The second group’s method requires you to be unflinchingly sincere with your self and your workforce about your strengths and weaknesses, which will be difficult at first. But it surely additionally pays dividends. You be taught the place to speculate your effort and time for optimum positive factors. You grow to be extra environment friendly and fewer more likely to blame others to your errors, and also you in the end get nearer to turning into the most effective you will be at what you are doing.

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Eager to win vs. hating to lose

As soon as you have chosen to inspire your self as a substitute of tearing down your rivals, the following query is the best way to do it. Here is a method to consider it that is all the time helped me:

It is not nearly desirous to win; it is about hating to lose. When you’re something like me, the frustration of dropping is often stronger for you than the enjoyment of successful.

This does not allow you to be a sore loser on these events when it inevitably does occur — you do not need to destroy household sport night time. However making it a precedence to keep away from unfavorable outcomes is commonly useful as a result of it makes you extra more likely to repair the sorts of issues that folks may let slide in the event that they’re too targeted on their wins.

Considered one of FutureFund’s main rivals in the end went out of enterprise as a result of their help workforce routinely took weeks to get again to folks. This problem would have been straightforward to appropriate, however they let it grow to be their Achilles heel. Though it won’t have felt necessary sufficient for them to repair, it turned out to be necessary for his or her customers.

So we determined that one in all our non-negotiables can be to reply help tickets in an inexpensive period of time — a few hours or much less. That was straightforward to decide to, however it had a profoundly constructive impression on our success.

Take into consideration this within the context of your startup. Staying aggressive means celebrating your wins, however by no means letting your self be complacent about the place there’s room for enchancment.

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You outline what successful is

Lastly, you want a wholesome strategy to quantify and acknowledge your wins. That may be tough as a result of, in enterprise, it is not all the time clear who’s successful. There aren’t any common goalposts that everybody can see.

Here is my rule: competitors is wholesome if you resolve what success appears like as a substitute of letting others do it. Measure your progress by how far you have are available relation to the targets you have set as a substitute of letting your rivals management the narrative and all the time being one step behind them.

Success, for me, is about being somewhat higher than I used to be the day earlier than. Whenever you’re in a startup, your product will not be good at first — or possibly ever. However you’re employed to ensure it is higher right this moment than it was final month — or final week, or yesterday. This manner, you may at the least ensure you’re not off course.

When you’ve chosen your mission fastidiously, this type of progress turns into a significantly better benchmark for achievement than what another firm is doing. You may learn extra about that in my subsequent article beneath:

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