BlogHop

One alternative to Win/Win is Win/Lose, the paradigm of the race to Bermuda. It says “If I Win, You Lose.” In leadership style, Win/Lose is the authoritarian approach: “I get my way; you don’t get yours.” Win/Lose people are prone to use position, power, credentials, possessions, or personality to get their way. Most people have been deeply scripted in the Win/Lose mentality since birth. First and most important of the powerful forces at work is the family. When one child is compared with another-when patience, understanding or love is given or withdrawn on the basis of such comparisons-people are into Win/Lose  thinking. Whenever love is given on a conditional basis, when someone has to earn love, what’s being communicated to them is that they are not intrinsically valuable or lovable. Value does not lie inside them, it lies outside. It’s in comparison with somebody else or against some expectation. And what happened to a young mind and heart, highly vulnerable, highly dependent upon the support and emotional affirmation of the parents, in the face of conditional love? The child is molded, shaped, and programmed in the Win/Lose mentality. “If I’m better than my brother, my parents will love me more.” Certainly there is a place for Win/Lose thinking in truly competitive and low-trust situations.