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Day 8 - Not a 'Zero-Sum Game'

I was hard wired to try to win. Maybe it was the way I was brought up (I had some pretty competitive siblings).

The concept of a ‘zero-sum game’ is that you can only win if someone else loses.

Schools don’t have to be like that; they should be places where all students can make progress in a range of meaningful skills (this of course doesn’t mean that everyone makes the same progress or that you get a certificate for finishing in sixth place), not just be a tool for socially-acceptable ranking of students in a narrow range of quite arbitrary measures.

I used to think leadership was a zero-sum game. I could only get ahead at someone else’s expense. It was a competition with winners and losers.

But actually, leadership should be about making things better for everyone, through a long-term commitment to develop people, not taking short-term opportunistic ‘wins’ to further your own career. There is no shortage of demand for high quality leaders, and there is no need to win at someone else’s expense.

‘The best leaders don’t climb to the top; they are carried to the top.’

 

 

Day 7 - Optimism

Day 9 - Accountability vs Responsibility

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