Competition or Collaboration

Tuesday night I attended a Festive Holiday evening made up of two women's groups. One of the activities, in addition to raffling off a huge number of door prizes, was a reverse count down on 40 bottles of wine. Forty bottles of wine is a lot of wine it seems to me, so I found it interesting when many losers later there were 4 women at the front of the room each of whom could potentially walk away with 40 bottles OR they could opt to cooperate and walk home with 10 each...still a good take.

Interestingly, they chose to compete. Down to two possible winner, the option to split the booty was presented again and this time they went for it so each left with 20 bottles each.

It left me wondering when is enough enough? When does the choice to cooperate over ride the need to win. Women pride themselves on being relationship oriented and certainly no one went home grumpy because things turned out the way they did. Yet subconsciously, it does beg the question: have we become so oriented to competition in the workplace that it now shows up in the social space as well?

When facilitating leadership learning programs in the mid-90s, my colleague inserted a simulation game from Thiagi into the program. It involved cash-real cash. Not a lot of it but enough that it revealed some deep truths.

The results were eye-popping! These were managers and supervisors who were pretty good at espousing values and principles that warmed your heart. But when the cash got short and the scarcity mentality grabbed hold, a whole different animal came out. One that was quite prepared to cheat and out manipulate to get the booty.

The good news, in an odd way, is that everyone in the room knew that the word was not to be trusted. Actions said it all. It is really unlikely that anyone in the room was aware of what drove those actions. It is certain that they knew what it meant in terms of their relationship...subject to change when the money, power (or anything in short supply) is at stake.

Since research shows that 86% of fraud is commited by male managers, perhaps playing cash games is not a bad routine test to see how what really motivates action.