By Renee Jensen

Are all successful leaders competitive by nature?  If pressed to name a leader who is not the least bit competitive, I don’t think I could.  I can honestly say that I have never met a successful leader who isn’t always striving to be better, improve themselves, or at very least outperform a friendly competitor.

Competitiveness can sometimes get a bad rap, but being competitive doesn’t need to have a negative connotation. Sure, it’s fun to play a better golf game than your buddies, beat your spouse at a friendly game of cards, or win a bet that pays nothing more than bragging rights. But this isn’t what competition brings to mind for me. Instead, I think of competitiveness as the kind of drive and determination that makes for the best, most successful version of yourself.

Young children often say, “When I grow up, I want to be like _____.”  Maybe you’ve said that yourself about a leader you admire.  To grow as a leader, we constantly compare ourselves to these people that we hold in such high esteem to assess our own development and career trajectory.  This results in a constant competitive state where we compare ourselves against what we see as better than what we are in any given moment.   

Let me give you an example that will put this into perspective.  Have you ever played a sport or game that has a professional level?  When you go out to the golf course, do you constantly find yourself thinking, “If only I were as good as Tiger!”  Okay, so maybe Tiger Woods is out of reach for most of us, but maybe when you play with colleagues you find yourself wishing you could drive as far as Fred or putt as good as Jill.  Was there ever a point in time where you were so terrible compared to your friends that you thought you shouldn’t play anymore?  Have you ever paused to consider how the impacts of this type of competition impact your mood, your performance, your self-esteem, and even your desire to continue playing?

On the other hand, what if that very same game you instead stopped to think to yourself, “I may not have played as well as others but, I played better today than I did last time.”  What if even though you came in last place and played a terrible game compared to others, you focused on competition with yourself, not judging yourself compared to others but evaluating your performance based solely on your personal progress. Your attitude and self-esteem in this moment will be completely different despite playing the exact same game with the exact same outcome.  The first example leaves you defeated and frustrated. In contrast, the second example leaves you excited about coming back again to see if you can continue improving on your own personal performance.

This is a very important concept in leadership as well.  To be the best leader you can be, you have to stop comparing yourself to others—just STOP it!  It does nothing positive for you as a leader to constantly feel as if you have fallen short or have not achieved what someone else around you has, or that you must strive to be more like someone else to be successful. What if in your professional life, you took the same positive approach as our golf example?  Instead of comparing your professional achievement to others, create an ideal version of yourself and constantly work towards the improvement of you, one step at a time, and based solely on—you got it—yourself. 

I often encounter this challenge with young leaders who are still in school or just beginning their careers.  Often, they are still searching for who and what they want from their professional careers, so they look for mentors and examples around them and then strive to be more like them.  This is a completely natural tendency.  Society has taught us that mentors and being influenced by someone else’s positive performance is a good thing.  And these are good things! But how you go about embracing these examples is key.  A mentor or someone you look up to professionally should help guide you in developing your ideas of your very own, unique, ideal professional self.  You should look for key behaviors, leadership styles, and personality traits that you admire and incorporate these into your vision of your future self, while avoiding latching onto outcomes as much as possible.

As you become clearer about the ideal leader you want to be, you should continually evaluate your performance based on you and only you.  Please do not compare yourself to others or say, “I wish I was more like ____.”  You are your own unique leader, and that’s what makes you special.

Just like our moms always told us: nobody is perfect. And you don’t need to be either.  Even your professional idol has flaws or things they wish they would have done differently or characteristics that could be improved.  So my best advice to aspiring leaders, and even seasoned leaders still searching for their sweet spot, is this:

Be in competition with yourself, looking for every opportunity to grow into the leader you want to become, not the leader that someone else is.