For many of us, one of our favorite parts of childhood was playing in sports. It taught us many lessons about life, including teamwork, sportsmanship, competition, and being the best you can be each day.
Every day on the playground, at every elementary school I ever went to, the first thing we would do was pick teams and play a game. The two captains for the day would flip a coin to see who picked first, while everyone else lined up and waited to be chosen. The best athletes would always be picked first, but on any given day the teams would be different depending on who were the captains and who won the flip.
One day you could be on the team with the best mix of talent, and the next day you could be on the team that had a more difficult struggle to come out on top.
Either way, you took the field and played as hard as you could, always striving to find a way to win. Sometimes you won and sometimes you didn’t, but no matter what the outcome, the next day you were back on the field, campaigning hard to be a captain so you could pick a team or doing all you could to be picked by the captain of the team you wanted to play with.
Getting mad when you lost or bragging about winning that particular day was not something you did. That kind of behavior never went over very well with your classmates; besides, you could be sure that your day was coming when you would be on the losing side and not want to hear about it!
Most kids just enjoyed the win for the day or handled the loss without throwing a glove or kicking and screaming. We just accepted the outcome, learned from the loss, and played the game the next day with everything we had in us.
When we grew up competing in sports, we knew that, after the game, the winner would be rewarded and the loser would go home to figure out how to win the next game. But, it was more than that, because good sportsmanship didn’t end when the game ended. You knew:
- If the loser got mad or threw things, he’d be labeled a sore loser.
- If the winner gloated and stuck his chest out, he’d be labeled an arrogant, prideful winner.
For some reason, when we get into business, we forget about the lessons we learned in our childhood. We get angry at our competition when we lose a job to them, or we get arrogant and brag when we beat them. We have employees sign non-competes. Can you imagine trying to get the best athlete on the playground to sign that he will only play for your team? They would run you off the playground.
Somehow, adulthood has helped us forget our competition is not our enemy — they’re merely our competition and, more importantly, they’re still people, just like us.
I have always felt that a good, strong competitor makes any company that I am involved with better. It forces us to figure out better ways to accomplish our company’s goals.
A good competitor will force you to try to develop a culture that is like a family. This helps us focus on making sure that our company provides an avenue for employees to reach their personal and family goals.
If someone wants to leave, we should wish them well and do all that we can to help them achieve their individual goals for themselves and their families.
I have always tried my best to be a good competitor, and it has paid off in so many ways in my career. I am sure in a career that has now spanned almost 40 years, you will find someone that would say I am not a good competitor, but I have sincerely tried to be. I have made great friends all over the US over the years, friends who I can call for advice or help, friends who have never said that they do not want to help me.
Among my most important business lessons are these:
- Being a good competitor will pay off!
- Always give back whenever possible!
Our businesses are the teams, the industry is our playing field, and each of us simply wants to do our best at our game. Some days, we hit it out of the park; some days, we watch someone else score the buzzer beater and end that day as the big winner. But, win or lose, the next day we are back at it and hard at work again.
So, why can’t we learn from our 10-year-old selves how to compete? Good sportsmanship doesn’t have to be a childhood ideal. The truth is, how we act when we win or lose defines us more than our success or failure on any given day.
Starting as a high school graduate working for Tom and Bart Whatley (ABO-Mabank Texas) in 1983, Don Groom’s career in the industry has taken him through four states and five companies, including 23 years at Stark Truss Company. Currently, Don is the managing partner and CEO of TrussWorks LLC in Caldwell, TX.