The Zero-Sum Game That Sabotages Your Culture’s Performance
Nov 09, 2025
Have you ever posted your top performers on a leaderboard and wondered why team collaboration decreased?
Were you confused when your "healthy competition" created silos instead of synergy?
You have a win-lose mentality poisoning your culture, and it's preventing everyone from achieving peak performance.
The Parasite of Win-Lose Thinking
Think about how deeply win-lose thinking infiltrates organizations:
- You rank employees against each other instead of celebrating collective success.
- You create internal competition that makes colleagues into competitors.
- You measure individual achievement while ignoring team interdependence.
This competitive obsession comes from scarcity thinking that assumes limited resources and fixed success. Today's high-performing cultures understand that when you serve others for mutual benefit, everyone can Win @ Work.
Shift from Competition to Collaboration
The traditional approach to motivation said, "Make people compete against each other for recognition and rewards."
Service leadership says, "When you care about people's success, you guarantee your organization's success."
Organizations with highly engaged teams see 23% higher profitability, 18% higher productivity, and 12% better customer metrics. As Tenia Davis shared on the Work Positive Podcast about her CEO, "He came in and asked, 'When are you taking a vacation?' He demonstrated this counterintuitive truth: people leaders who serve others most effectively create the highest-performing teams."
Accurate Feedback Transforms Performance
What does an everyone-can-win culture look like in practice? Instead of listing top producers, you host development conversations. You say, "Shamia, last month was your most successful to date. What did you do differently that we can all learn from?"
The win-lose paradigm transforms to win-win. Everyone learns. Everyone grows. Everyone can Win @ Work.
The challenge is that most managers were promoted for technical skills rather than people development abilities. Tenia's insight highlights this: "Sometimes leaders just need the conversation or even how to approach it, especially new managers who are technically brilliant and then suddenly they're given 10 people to manage."
Today's Workforce Demands Different
Tenia told me, "The workforce today is different. They want to connect, feel heard, feel respected, feel valued, be mentored." This isn't about entitlement. It's about watching previous generations sacrifice everything for companies that didn't care. Current research shows 72% of employees consider wellness key to staying with employers, and 35% of millennials prioritize positive culture fit above everything else.
When you serve others with genuine care for their growth and wellbeing, they don't get soft. They strive harder. You get more engagement, more innovation, and more sustainable results.
Your Everyone Can Win Challenge
Try these three actions this week:
Self-Reflect on Leadership Style: Ask yourself, "In my last three team interactions, did I focus more on how they could serve organizational needs, or how I could serve their development?" Be brutally honest.
Practice Active Listening: Use the active listening loop: communicate clearly what you heard, take visible action based on input, and follow up on results. Remember Tenia's insight: "No feedback does not mean things are well."
Transform Competition to Learning: Convert one competitive ranking into a learning opportunity. Instead of announcing who won, facilitate a conversation where top performers share what worked so everyone can improve.
The Work Positive Bottom Line
The best leaders today create cultures where everyone can win through mutual benefit and service to others.
Stop creating internal competition. Start serving others so everyone can Win @ Work.
Taken from Dr. Joey's newest book, Win @ Work: Maximize Your Culture for Peak Performance.
Keywords: #ServiceLeadership #Collaboration #MutualBenefit #WorkCulture #WorkPositive #WinAtWork #PEAKSSFramework #CultureEatsStrategyforBreakfast
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