The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 161 - Competition

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jennifer.

Jen: I have been thinking a lot about competition.

Pete: Oh, okay.

Jen: Now, I'm a pretty competitive person. (I think my parents would agree.) And I want to unpack what it means to be competitive, or to compete without becoming an asshole.

Pete: Yeah, it feels like an important thing to get clear on. How might we compete without being an asshole? This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Okay, so there are a couple origins for this thought. The first is that in my industry, in the theatre industry, it is a highly competitive landscape right now. There are very few opportunities and there is an abundance of people vying for those opportunities, so your work has to be at such a competitive level to be able to move things forward. So, that's on my mind a lot. But I heard someone the other day use the word "competitiveness". And I was like, "Eww. I don't like competitiveness."

Pete: Oh.

Jen: This idea that (at least this is how I'm thinking of it) in order for me to succeed, I have to take you down.

Pete: Oh, no.

Jen: I want my work to be competitive. Like I want my work to be excellent, and I want to constantly be topping myself in terms of how good my work is. But I don't want to take in competitiveness.

Pete: Curious. Okay. So, what I hear is...is what you're saying the distinction between the two? One is, I'm competing with my own work or my own version of what's good. And the other is, I'm competing with someone else and in the process of competing with them, I have to remove them or take them down or knock them out of the way or something like that. Is that the kind of the distinction you're making?

Jen: Yeah, that's kind of the distinction. I mean, I've always like had a bit of a cynical take on, "You're only ever competing with yourself," because that's just not true. When there is one spot and two people, you're competing with the other person. But I like to think that the healthy form of competition is to not worry so much about the other person and to worry about the quality of work that you are putting out. So if it doesn't go your way, that you can say to yourself, "That is the best work I can possibly do. That the work is competitive, even though I was not the preferred choice this time, or even though I didn't win this time."

Pete: Yes. Yeah, I feel like the summary I want to make is that being competitive doesn't have to be zero sum.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Meaning, it doesn't have to be at the expense of knocking someone else out of the way. And even as I say that though, I'm wondering...and I'm sure you could make an argument that that's still true, even though there's two of you and you're both competing amongst yourselves to be in a competitive position. But I guess that's the approach one takes to producing the work, is focusing on their work, making it competitive, as opposed to focusing on the other, knocking them down, which then makes you competitive. I feel like I'm going around in circles a little bit.

Jen: Yes. It's Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.

Pete: I have no idea who those two people are.

Jen: What...? What? Are you serious?

Pete: Tell me more. Tell me more.

Jen: Oh my gosh, okay. Oh, this is amazing. Australian listeners, I'm so glad you're here.

Pete: I mean, it's possible Australians have heard of these two and it could just be that Pete is a little ignorant. So, I don't want to be representing the entire country, right now.

Jen: It's totally okay. So in 1994, these two US figure skaters were in a rivalry, as all figure skaters who are competing at that level are. But one of them, Tonya Harding, decided to hire someone to literally bash Nancy Kerrigan's leg to take her out of the competition.

Pete: No way.

Jen: And it was a whole thing. And in fact, there was a movie made about it a couple years ago, incredible acting in the movie.

Pete: Woah.

Jen: Right? Now, that is competitiveness. That is, "I am so worried that Nancy Kerrigan's figure skating is competitive that I have to actually take her out in order for me to have a chance of succeeding." I mean, it was so crazy. But in any case, that's what I think of. Here's Nancy Kerrigan, also competitive and working at the highest level, not needing to bash in someone else's kneecaps in order to do her best work.

Pete: Yeah. I guess to go back to the way you teed this episode up, one is assholery and one is not. Like, that's brutal. Wow, what a story.

Jen: It was totes brutal. So as I've been thinking about competitiveness versus being competitive or doing competitive work, I started thinking about this in the context of How to Decide which is a book we've talked about a lot recently by Annie Duke, and this idea that you can feel good about the decisions you make even when the outcomes are not what you wish them to be, if you are making smart decisions. And I feel like there's some correlation there between doing your absolute best work, your most competitive work, even if the competition doesn't fall in your favor.

Pete: I really like that. Yeah, I tend to agree. There's a rhyme there between...like there's also a rhyme with the dichotomy of control (which we've talked about, I'm sure, at some stage) which is the stoic idea that there are two things in this world, one is things that are within our control and the other are things that are outside our control. And so, it's best that we spend time focusing on things we can control. I feel like there's these three rhymes all floating around, Annie Duke, stoicism, competitiveness, whereby what I think you're saying is, it's healthy for us to compete, i.e. do as much as we possibly can within our control to present our work in as high a standard as we can, without having to break someone's leg. Because that, like the other people, the other figure skater in that example, what they do is outside of our control. And then layered on top of that, to your point, Annie Duke, what then is determined by the judges or the casting director or the person hiring for a new job and they've got three candidates, the outside of your control bit is what their decision actually is.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Yeah. Which, I think...I feel like this is quite empowering in a way, because it's giving you agency of the things that you have control of and then acknowledging the reality of the world we live in, which is there are a bunch of things outside of your control. One of the hardest things, I find, is we have to get somewhat comfortable with that. That I can do everything in my power to set myself up to get this promotion or get this new deal or whatever it is in hypothetical examples, and I have to hold at the same time the paradox that it's very possible that this is not going to go the way I want it to because it's outside my control.

Jen: Yes. Exactly. Okay. Now let's flip this and look at it from a different angle, which is using an aversion to competition as a hiding place. So I experience this with a lot of my clients, who are like, "I don't like the competition in this business. I don't want to know what other people are doing." Some people, when I ask them about the research they've done for something they're auditioning for, they'll say, "Oh, it feels like cheating to me. And I'm like, "What...? What?" And I realize that...and this might be like too much of a blanket statement so, you know, soften the edges a little bit. But stating, "I don't want to know about the competition," or, "I don't want to be competitive," or any of that eliminates the opportunity for you to have a worthy rival (in Simon Sinek's Infinite Game vernacular), and to learn from what other people are doing, and to better your own performance by educating yourself about what else is going on in the field/what else is going on in the landscape. And then, the other point I want to make about this is in one of my favorite books of all time, Thanks for the Feedback by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, they talk about three different kinds of feedback, one of them being evaluation. Which, knowing how you sit in relationship to other people, or where your work sits in relationship to other people's work is very useful feedback.

Pete: So, I have some color to add to this. And I think you called me out.

Jen: [singing] "Jen calls Peter out."

Pete: [singing] "It's happening again." Because...I'll use myself as an example, as the guinea pig in what you just described. I have definitely said to myself, I'm sure to other people at some point, "I'm not a competitive person," or some version of, "I don't want to compete." I don't know if I've said that I don't want to compete, but I've said some version of that for sure. No doubt. And if I'm honest in this moment, I think when I do that, when I say that, I'm being really lazy. And I think behind the laziness is actually fear. And I think what's actually happening is I'm afraid to look at competition, or people doing similar things or playing in a similar space because it might spark my imposter, that will then say, "I told you. You have no idea what you're doing. Look at all these other people doing amazing things. You're not very good at this. You're not good enough." Or the fear of discovering, "Other people do this better." And so, I tell myself the story, "Oh, I don't like looking at competition because it takes away my focus from what I'm doing." I've definitely said some version of that.

Jen: We all have.

Pete: Yeah. It's fear in disguise. It's fear in disguise, I think. Yeah. So, thank you for that. That feels like a kick in the guts, but a good one...if that's possible.

Jen: Love having my guts kicked, feels so good.

Pete: Does that resonate with you though? Like, it's a fear of our imposter or not wanting to spark negative thoughts, so we just avoid it altogether.

Jen: Absolutely, 100%. You know, I have clients who go to these (I won't fall down the rabbit hole too far right now) pay-to-play classes. And they'll tell me that they're going and they'll say, you know, "What should I do," or, "What should I say while I'm there?" And I'll say, "Ask the person...," usually it's a casting director, "...is this work competitive?" And they're like, "Oh my gosh. No. I could never ask that." And I'm like, "I know, because it's scary to know that one of the answers might be 'No.'"

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: So instead, you know, you come in with all of these sort of like pleasantry questions to ask. But the, "Is my work competitive," I mean, that's the meat and potatoes of it all. Is your work competitive enough to get you to where you want to go? And if the answer is, "No," at least you know and you can start working on whatever the challenges are. And P.S., you don't have to always believe someone when they tell you that your work is not competitive. Consider the source. Consider the source, or ask the right people. But if the right person is telling you your work is not competitive, then you have room to grow.

Pete: Okay. So Pete's been called out, we've got competition versus competitiveness, Annie Duke...there's a lot. How do we piece all this together? What do we do about this distinction between breaking someone's leg and putting ourselves in a position to have our own work be considered competitive?

Jen: I think maybe it's first to offer yourself an agnostic point of view about competition, where it's like, it's not good/it's not bad.

Pete: It just is. Yeah, like the story we tell ourself about competition or competitiveness is what might make it good or bad. But what if it just was?

Jen: Exactly. And what if we all accepted that it is possible to compete without being an asshole?

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.