Podcast – Misadventures in mistaking hard work as the goal

Kara Lawson, the head Women’s Basketball coach at Duke University, posted an interesting video recently that differentiated the concepts of hard work and competing. Her premise was that billions of people work hard, but competing brings a different level of performance.

Competing brings an aspect of reaching further within yourself to win. Your competition may be another person, team, or company. However, many times, the competition is yourself and your perceptions on your capabilities.

A critical component of quality, aligned leaders is the ability to ferret out the competitor in each of their charges. They find ways to stoke the fire in people so they look to compete.

Competition brings new ideas, new ways of thinking or doing. It challenges us to build new best practices. We work together towards a common goal. Competition helps stretch the possible.

This podcast gets into how just getting your teams to work hard is not enough.