Collaborative Competition™: The New Approach for Making Risk a Winning Strategy

By Kathryn Mayer

Given today’s challenging economy, why would anyone want to be taking risks at work? According to Joel Deluca’s book Political Savvy, the top 5% of leaders in large multinational organizations do two things differently than everyone else: they constantly take smart risks and have three times the network. They are not smarter, more outgoing or charismatic. It is what you thought all along – success comes from knowing the right people and being smart about what projects you take on versus actually doing a great job.

The challenge with this view is that many women I have seen in my executive coaching practice believe that they are hired to deliver the best possible results and to accomplish this they tend to enthusiastically and aggressively seek perfection. And, what can happen is that they push their agenda directly onto a high executive with whom they haven’t formed a strong alliance, and this executive tends to be less likely to support their initiative even if it is a good idea. The fact is that those who act boldly or seek perfection before they've built the necessary support structure are likely to tumble. Why? The wider the network, the less likely people will make false negative judgments about you. This is especially true for women who are minorities at the management level and above. In fact, women who are seen as closely identified with traditionally masculine leadership traits (directive, authoritative, and aggressive) and don’t use their traditional feminine leadership traits (collaborative, approachable, emotionally expressive) were found to be the weakest of 45 women executives in a recent study by the Hay Group.

What’s a girl to do?

To succeed, you must come across as competent both task-wise and in building relationships with other team members—able to delegate, willing to engage emotionally, capable of going beyond your comfort zone—and laying firm groundwork for your own success while the rest of your team still feels valued and appreciated.

These two seemingly conflicting needs—to build supportive relationships AND to achieve perfection—have to be balanced. If the balance swings too far either in the direction of accommodating or aggressive, you lower your chances for success.

Becoming a Collaborative Competitor means that you are aiming to stretch yourself and strive for excellence which could look like:

• Striving to distinguish yourself in your chosen field


• Building a supportive and strategic network


• Enjoying the challenge of learning from mistakes

I interviewed about 40 women in highly competitive professions in the USA and Canada for my new book: Collaborative Competition™: A Woman’s Guide to Succeeding by Competing. According to my research, women who rate themselves as happy and successful are skilled in Collaborative Competition.™ They understand that striving for perfection or doing “whatever it takes” might not be the best approach. They focus on figuring out the best way to get the tasks done. And the key is that all these women enjoyed the challenges.

With Collaborative Competition™, women can develop the mindset to thrive in and enjoy a competitive environment, to become self-challengers instead of perfectionists, and to work strategically to help build the relationships we need to succeed.

If you want to learn more about how to create an environment that will allow you to take more smart risks, enjoy yourself, and advance your career - sign up for the webinar on December: “Making Risk a Winning Strategy” and/or go to Kathryn Mayer’s website http://www.kcmayer.com/ to learn more about her and to purchase her new book: Collaborative Competition™: A Woman’s Guide to Succeeding by Competing which is available on Amazon.com.