Being #1 Is The Only Option

When the New York Times’ Karen Crouse penned an article about Tiger Woods, her advice to the golfing superstar dismayed me. “What you need to know is that there’s another course [to success],” she wrote. Other than being number one, that is. She chastised him for being addicted to wanting to win. “Someone—maybe your father, Earl—drilled into your head that winning is what matters, that the only path to joy is through success,” she continued.

I wasn’t perturbed because of her advice to Woods. After all, he won’t read what she wrote. He doesn’t read any of his press clippings – good or bad. What was troubling was that she told the whole world to give up on winning. In her view, playing the game is satisfaction enough. I wonder if Tiger’s fans would agree. In fact, if he wasn’t a winner, would he even have fans?

Well, she’s right in one respect: winning isn’t everything…if you don’t mind being a loser.

To support her point, Crouse refers to the words of Julie Elion, a mental coach who works with players in US-based golfing tournament, the PGA Tour, and spends a good part of her time helping them redefine success. “If first place is the only goal, it’s a setup for misery, because every week produces dozens of losers and only one winner.”

But isn’t the point of competition, winning? Why would anyone ever hire a coach who focuses on changing the dictionary definition of success and helping their client accept defeat?

Woods will never be able to play for fun and the fans as Crouse advises. He’s built to win. He only knows how to pursue the trophy. Tiger Woods, please don’t ever accept losing as a substitute for success.

I prefer the words of famed coach, Vince Lombardi, “Winning isn’t a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”

I’ve spent the past twenty years coaching CEOs and executives and I would never tell a client that second place is ok. I think I would immediately be fired. CEOs never ask me to help them redefine success to include losing.

A coach is supposed to help you be the best possible, not to help you settle for second best. They make you into a better version of you. A great coach pushes you further than you would ever go on your own.

Paraphrasing Lombardi’s words: Running a football team is no different to running any other kind of organization – a government, a business or an NGO. “The objective is to win – to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don’t think it is,” he says.

In 2007, 60 Minutes (CBS’s long-running newsmagazine program) posed the following questions to Sheikh Mohammed on the topic of Dubai: “What are you trying to do here? What do you want this place to be?”

“I want it to be number one,” Sheikh Mohammed calmly said. “Not in the region, but in the world.”

Explaining what he meant by “number one in the world,” he said, “In everything—higher education, health, and housing. Just making my people (have) the highest way of living.”

“And why do you want everything to be the biggest, the tallest?” reporter Steve Kroft asked.

His Highness challenged, “Why not?”

This raises an important question: Why would you ever want to pursue anything other than number one status?

Don’t accept the advice of Crouse, Elion, or anyone spewing guff advice, unless you’re comfortable being average. Winners are obsessed with winning. Once you make this commitment, don’t let anything stop you short of reaching the top.

To achieve success, whatever your job is, you’ll have to pay a price—it won’t come easy. Part of that price will be distancing yourself from people who want to dampen your goal, people who want to remove the pain of failure by avoiding the pursuit of success. Becoming number one requires the will to win, the will to excel.

Hanging prominently on the wall in my study—having been with me since eighth grade— is Vince Lombardi’s, What it Takes to Be Number One. It’s a daily reminder that there is only one place that matters: first. Find a coach who’ll help you become number one.

Printed originally in Gulf News (2 May 17)

A thinker, speaker, and writer to the core, Dr. Tommy holds a doctorate in strategic leadership from Regent University, and is the founder of Emerging Markets Leadership Center (EMLC) where he is the region's leading CEO Coach. In addition to writing a number of books—including the Amazon #1 best-seller, Leadership Dubai Style and 10 Tips for Leading in the Middle East, Dr. Tommy is the editor-in-chief of Emerging Markets Business—The Authoritative Review.

Follow me on twitter @tommyweir or visit www.tommyweir.com for more of my thoughts on leadership.