Written by Marshall Goldsmith

The most common behavior problem I have found in the executives I have
worked with is an obsession with winning - and this isn't just CEO's.

It's common in most highly successful people, including me. When the issue is important, naturally we all want to win. But if it's trivial, we still want to win. Even if it's not worth our time, or it's to our disadvantage, we often try to win anyway.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about. You want to go to dinner at
restaurant X. Your spouse wants to go to dinner to restaurant Y. You
have a heated debate. You go to restaurant Y. The food's bad, the
service is awful. Now you've got two options. Option A - critique the
food, point out to your spouse how wrong he or she was and how this
debacle could have been avoided if he or she had listened to you.
Option B - be quiet, eat the food, and try to have a nice evening.

What do 75% of my executive clients say they would do in this situation?
Critique the food. What do they agree they should do? Shut up. If they
do a cost-benefit analysis, they realize that their marriage is more
important than winning the argument. So I tell my clients, "Before you get into any conflict, take a deep breath and ask yourself, 'Is it worth it? What do I have to gain by winning? What do I have to lose?' "

(Watch this video of Marshall Goldsmith on "Being Right" )

A related problem is what I call adding too much value. Imagine you're
the CEO. I come to you with an idea that you think is very good, but
rather than just say, "Great idea!", your tendency - because you have
to win - is to say, "Good idea, but do it this way." Well, you may have
improved the quality of my idea by 5%, but you've reduced my commitment
to executing it by 30% because you took away my ownership.

The higher up you get on the corporate ladder
, the more you need to make other people winners, and not make it about
winning yourself. One of my clients said once he got into the habit of
taking a breath before he talked, he realized about half of what he was
going to say wasn't worth saying. Even though he thought he was right,
he realized he had more to gain by not winning.

My parting advice: Don't always insist on winning.

Sometimes, you have more to gain by not winning. Before you get into any conflict,
ask yourself what you have to gain by winning, or what you stand to
lose.

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