Moment 173. Why the Participation Trophy is Killing Your Team

Welcome to the No Bullshit Leadership Podcast. In a world where knowledge has become a commodity, this podcast is designed to give you something more. Access to the experience of a successful CEO who has already walked the path. So join your host Martin Moore who will unlock and bring to life your own leadership experiences and accelerate your journey to leadership excellence. Welcome to Moments with Marty, your short, sharp shot of leadership insight to help you stay on track between our weekly episodes of the No Bullshit Leadership Podcast. One of the most underrated principles of people leadership is competition. In business, competition is obvious. You have products and customers and markets. You develop strategies to outmaneuver your competitors. You look for efficiencies to give you any edge you can possibly find. When competition is weak, performance is poor. It breeds inefficiency and complacency. All you need to do is look at the markets that are dominated by natural monopolies. Infrastructure businesses in industries like rail, electricity and water, un notoriously fat, dumb and happy. But that's not the fault of the people in those businesses. It's because the companies are rewarded exactly the same, regardless of how they perform. Regulators calculate how much revenue each company earns based on the size of its asset base. Effectively, the higher the value of the assets, the more revenue they make. This perverse incentive rewards inefficiency and overspending. And it all just washes through the system with no accountability and very few checks and balances. This is your classic, victimless crime. In highly competitive markets, though, it's quite the opposite. In the face of cutthroat competition, it is truly survival of the fittest. Now, this might sound a bit brutal, but it's how markets work. It's also how customers get the best deal. So, knowing that in business, stronger competition results in better outcomes for consumers, why are we so reluctant to increase competitive pressure within our teams? Many business leaders affirm believers in competition except when it comes to people. How on earth has this come to pass? Someone somewhere decided many years ago that it was a good idea to raise kids in an environment that shunned comparison and competition. This ideology was noble to make everyone feel included, equal and accepted. Some sporting leagues even banned scorekeeping in children's matches, so that it became about participation rather than about winning. But make no mistake. Every parent on that sideline was silently keeping score. And every kid on the field still hated playing on the same team as the unfortunate soul who was born without the gift of eye-hand coordination. Participation trophies and 10th place ribbons have become so ubiquitous that we don't question our surrender to this force equivalence. But unfortunately, that's just not how the world works. One of the most critical performance levers of leadership is differentiation. Of course, you need to ensure that every single team member is given the opportunity to excel. But the mistake many leaders make is trying to treat everyone the same regardless of their effort, behavior and performance. As a leader, you have to differentiate based on merit. No ifs, no buts. If there's no reward for exceptional performance and no consequences for poor performance, you will no doubt achieve uniformity in your team, but it will be uniform mediocrity. You need to give the majority of your time and attention to your best people, and you need to develop them, promote them and pay them over the odds. Why? Because they've earned it. Because they deliver. Because it's best for the team and it's best for the company. And it's actually fairer to differentiate than it is to artificially equalize your best and your worst people. If you look at any professional team that managed to reach the pinnacle of its sport, Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls or Tom Brady's New England Patriots, the one thing they have in common is the relentless pursuit of performance excellence. And this is impossible to achieve, unless you have competition within the team. Your leadership should be strong and clear. Creating a merit-based competitive environment within your team benefits every stakeholder, especially your people. This brand of leadership doesn't just give you an edge. It is the edge. If you want to go deeper on how to bring out the best in your team, have a listen to episode 179 of the No Bullshit Leadership Podcast. Survival of the fittest. We'll leave a link in the show notes. I really hope you enjoyed this moment and that it gives you that extra little spark to be a No Bullshit leader.