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cooperation is the new black
Tuesday. 4.8.14 12:14 am

"Everyone loves a little competition, right?" she says, not really asking, and they laugh together, like something built straight from one of my worst nightmares. This is the beginning of the legacy I'm going to build, in the next year, and it is, indeed, a bad beginning.

Everyone doesn't love competition, in fact.

I wasn't always like this. As a kid, I thought that my main drive was competition, but it turned out that competition got me about as far as my front door, and that was it. I needed something else to motivate me, but never knew what it was, so I kept trying at competition, even though it just left a space inside me filled with cobwebs and half-finished ideas.

It took me until this year--almost to age 22--to realize that I hate competition. I hate everything about it--the fact that it pits people against one another, the fact that it is typically cruel in nature, the fact that it defines success by besting someone else, the fact that it finds its motivation in an externalized source... I think we could be so much better than that, as humans: much kinder, much more internally-driven, much more collaborative.

It's as if they're chuckling in slow motion as I try to remember how to smile without feeling it. I've gotten so used to letting the disagreement flow (to turn off men who don't like women with "attitudes" or women who are "contrary," to remind people that I mean what I say, to stand up against tasteless jokes that hurt me) that this smiling politely business is once again foreign.

As it should be. They shouldn't be assuming that my leadership style and techniques will be the same as what they've done, in the past. The word for this coming year is "progress." Not "new," because sometimes old works, but progress. Moving both forward and up.

I'm so passionate about what this next year is going to be like, and to hear that they expect me to bring competitiveness into my board room makes me want to stomp my feet like a child and wait for them to get my meaning. Competition is not going to happen, sorry. Cooperation. Cooperation will have people thinking and believing in ideas, again. Cooperation takes a good idea and makes it great, without any malice. Cooperation is the word of the year, the breakfast of champions, the new black.

Writing that e-mail, today, felt great. I was polite, and sensitive to the amount of work they put into these plans, but also firm that I have my own plans, and that I welcome suggestions on these plans. Were I coming out of nowhere, I would understand any concern on their parts, but I've been with this organization for two years, now. I've seen what I need to see, and I'm ready for this.

This is going to be my year to help everyone reach their potential. While I still welcome comments and suggestions, your chance has come and gone.

It's time to pass it on to someone new.
1 Comments.


AS IT SHOULD BE.
Yeah! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!1!1!!!

re:comment
Aha! Satire! I see.
(I tend to take folks pretty literally by default. It's not until I get to know them better do I get when they're joking. Internet relations are harder because plain text doesn't give as many clues as normal communication.)

ho-ho! anyways...
» invisible on 2014-04-17 01:13:26

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