Don’t strive to be the best. It creates an illusion of an endpoint—and a delusion that the goal is to be superior to others. Strive to be better. The person you’re competing with is your past self, and the bar you’re setting is for your future self. – Adam Grant Wharton School , Professor, NY Times Bestselling Author, Public Speaker
Striving to be better, not the best. Do you agree with Adam Grant?
When his tweet caught my eye last week, I was skeptical at first. Why not be the best that you can be? What’s wrong with that? Once he focused on the argument about “illusion” and “delusion”, I get it. He wanted us to form a healthy attitude towards improving ourselves as the true goal worth reaching for. He wanted us to focus on the process that would make us better people, even if that may not help us arrive at the peak. His intention is well and good.
The trouble I have with his argument about “illusion of an endpoint” and “delusion that the goal is to be superior to others” is that we may not be painting a full picture that is less rosy and more cruel in the real world. We would be doing a disservice to young people if we only teach them to focus on their future self, and to ignore the larger environment in which they work, live and compete in. Yes, competition.
In the business and professional workplace, whether it is Fortune 500 companies in corporate America, in the start-up world, or the freelancing economy, we are all competing with everyone else for limited resources and opportunities. You have to convince the decision makers whom you are trying to impress with your resume or past work experiences, or your products and services, that you are the best choice. You want them to pick you over the rest. Granted, the best case scenario is there are multiple winners. But that’s not always the case. You are operating in the most powerful and competitive economy in the world. America is a capitalistic, merit-based, performance and profit-driven society where you need to win buy-ins with your optimal performance and maximum efforts. You have to pitch yourself as the best candidate for the job and lay out the case. You have to present your ideas that they are the means to achieve the best possible outcome. The rhetoric of “best” needs to be included. Whether we call it an illusion or delusion, we must accept that the reality that both forces are at play when more than one player wants the same thing you do.
One of the hardest things for students with no or limited work experience to grapple with is the unpredictable and fast-changing marketplace. It pays attention to those who position themselves with a whole-hearted motivation to be the best they can be. There is no shame in saying that, or sharing that ideal.
We should be honest about what our best is at any given moment. Doing our best to achieve our goals is our job as adult responsible professionals. We are responsible not only for our own “selves”, or self-satisfaction when we enter the workforce, we are rendering a service to those who hire us. We should be frank with young people that what they need to cultivate is a resilient mindset and a confident posture that they can learn to do better, but they aim to deliver the best results.