Are you cooperative or competitive?
Mukhlesur Rahman
Corporate Affairs @Banglalink (VEON)I Executive Coach I C-Suite I Board Member I Trainer I
Other day I was attending a early childhood development short course. We were around 30 participants and sharing our views on childhood development. At one point, the facilitator mentioned that from education perspective, she prefers children to learn how to be cooperative rather than to be competitive. One of our fellow participant parent raised his concern as he thinks children must learn to be competitive since they will have to compete in the real and cruel world throughout their life. Then I was pondering whether we, as adult, are conscious enough whether to be competitive or cooperative.
Are you cooperative? And are you cooperative enough?
Are you competitive? And are you competitive enough?
Have you ever thought of the effectiveness of your level of cooperativeness or competitiveness in respect to your situation or role or the people you interact with?
You are likely to answer that both being cooperative and being competitive are essential based on the situation if you are asked whether being cooperative or being competitive is useful. Yes, you are right - we all need to both cooperative and competitive. The question is how to make sure you are at right balance of your competitiveness and cooperation instead of being too competitive that you start over-negotiating or being too cooperative that you start giving in unnecessary thing whatever is asked.
What I experience is both competition and cooperation are often integrated with each other. You can compete with someone while being cooperative. And you can cooperate with someone while being competitive. You need to have right balance. And to sense your right balance, you need to continuously plan your action and take feedback from relevant persons or groups and act accordingly for your next action. There is no short cut here. Based on context, culture and the very person you are interacting or working with, you need to try things consciously and have a mentality to fail and improve next time.
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Another way of seeing the competitiveness and cooperation is - no matter what you will cooperate so that you can have all the joy of being helpful to others. There is some short term difficulty of not achieving something immediately or some people will take your actions or favors granted if you are very cooperative all the time. However, you will have greater satisfaction of being positive and helpful and people from all spheres will trust you. And trust is great currency to have to be happy in life and successful in career. You may have to wait medium term to long term for reaping the benefits. I feel it's still worth!
Would love to hear your view.
Operations Specialist at Likee
3 年Bhaia loved the article, very interesting topic
Expert-Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning & Knowledge Management, Social Research, Gender, Project Management
3 年This is unfortunate that our ancestors tought us being competitive. And, after ages when we became professional we had to practice cooperation. Interestingly, we had to balance both in our practical life. Sometimes, too much cooperation gives the opportunity to others to treat you as for granted, which is true and this is candid that it gives you satisfaction too. On the other hand, being competitive makes someone irrational, selfish, brutal. Your mind things from a to z of winning each and tiny things which is not necessary for being satisfied. So, it depends on person what does s/he desires. Anyway, I am in favour of cooperation at this stage.
Senior Key Account Manager, Telenor GKAD at Huawei Business Development | Regulatory & Policy Analyst | Data Center & Energy | Coaching
3 年... enjoying your series of write ups, #MMR
Management Generalist | Project Management Specialist
3 年Perhaps, a heuristic approach to help children, and adults as well, get exposure to the benefits of both is to offer opportunities for team-based competitive activities, e.g sports and management simulations. I consider it to be a fact that Allah has encoded both of these behaviours in our DNA. Therefore, I think not teaching children about the importance of competition is akin to teaching them to suppress a natural human talent. That would be just as unhealthy for society as not teaching them the benefits of cooperation and collaboration.
Business Analysis|Project Management|Business Development
3 年You have hit it right on spot. Cooperation is the key to win the game when you are in same team and competitiveness is essential to win it from the opposition. And it is fair to leave the bigger bread for others, by which you may not be the winner but that doesn't matter if you are content with what you have done. Good notes, thanks. Also, love to know that you have done the childhood development course.