Lance Armstrong, 7-time Tour de France Champion
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CREATING RELENTLESS COMPETITORS Special Report - Part 2: The 12 Characteristics of Competitors
The 12 Characteristics of Competitors
Who are some of sports top competitors? Certainly athletes like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Brett Favre, Derek Jeter, Wayne Gretzky, Martina Navratilova, Jimmy Connors, Michael Johnson, Carl Lewis, Lisa Fernandez, Dawn Staley, and others come to mind as supreme competitors. It's not just the top athletes who are highly competitive but competitiveness is a key to many of the top coaches successes including Pat Summitt, Anson Dorrance, Joe Torre, Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Dan Gable, Bill Cowher, to name just a few.
What defining traits do these athletes and coaches display that distinguish them from their peers and allow them to be the best of the best? In preparing this Special Report, 12 characteristics continually surfaced in the words and description of competitors.
COMPETITORS:
1. Crave challenges and convert everything into a competition. Competitors crave challenges. They love the challenge to compete and continually test themselves, whether it is against others or themselves. They look to convert anything they can into a challenge and a competition - this includes everything from achieving a certain standard on drills, to driving home in a certain amount of time, to guessing which elevator of three will be the first one to come to your floor, to you name it . . . As Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt says, "I'm a competitor. I'm liable to take you on in just about anything, whether cooking, or jogging, or arm wrestling." Competitors love competing and seem to get a certain "high" from it, which is likely why they seek it in almost all endeavors. They feed off of competition because it provides them with an opportunity to focus all their attention toward achieving a particular goal. They love continually raising their goals and trying to better themselves and others.
2. Compelled Competitors are highly driven people. They are very outcome-focused on achieving specific goals, times, and measures. They willingly work hard and invest the time necessary to achieve the outcomes and status they so ardently seek. They are clear about what they want to achieve and pursue it with a single-mindedness of purpose.
3. HATE to Lose Perhaps the greatest hallmark of competitors is that they HATE losing. They absolutely detest and despise it. Competitors unequivocally hate losing more than they enjoy winning. Losing is a constant, gnawing, empty feeling that they did not do enough - or are not enough as a person.
In this way, competitors are often motivated by a fear of failure more so than a drive for success. Their fear of failure drives them to go to great lengths to prepare and persevere to avoid losing at all costs. Because of their disdain for losing, competitors will also closely analyze their losses and defeats in an effort to correct them. Following a loss, competitors yearn for quick rematches or the chance to compete with someone else as soon as possible. They want to quickly rid themselves of the detestable feeling of losing - and prove to themselves and others that they can be victorious.
4. Play with Emotion Because competitors are so invested, they play with a strong sense of emotion and passion. They are often a whirlwind of energy and are willing to dive on the floor or run through a wall to achieve what they want. While they can often channel their emotions effectively, sometimes they spill over and can be a destructive force too. (See Section 7 on the 5 Pitfalls of Competitors for more info.)
5. Take things Personally - and are MOTIVATED By It Competitors take things very personally and tend to be highly sensitive to criticism. They believe even the slightest criticism is a personal attack on them not just as an athlete, but also as a person. It cuts to the core of who they are as a person. However, rather than agreeing with it or getting down by it, competitors transform the perceived criticism into a huge source of fuel to avenge and sometimes humiliate the attacker. "I tend to take things personally," said Michael Jordan. Jordan would often play mind games with himself believing that an opponent's look was a sign of disrespect.
6. Play with Something to Prove
A driving motivational force for competitors is that they often feel like they have something to prove. Most of the time they want to prove themselves to others, especially those who dare to express their doubts about them. Competitors draw energy from the naysayers and turn their perceived and real criticism, slights, and snubs into personal vendettas and grudges that allow them to prove others wrong and make them eat their words. They want the person to deeply regret they ever doubted them in the first place. They harness the anger from the criticism and channel it to their performance to put the doubters in their place. Potential critics are best to heed the phrase "let sleeping dogs lie" when it comes to doubting or taunting competitors. Competitors love to create a "me (or us) against the world" mentality - thinking you are either for me or against me. They make quick, sometimes lifelong, and easy enemies out of those who dare to doubt them. Michael Jordan had people scouring the newspapers to look for the slightest comment from an opponent, coach, or media member that he could warp into a personal slight and use for motivation. "Competitors want to prove everyone else wrong. They want to show the skeptics, 'I am better than this. I am a winner.'" ~ Coach Pat Summitt, Tennessee Women's Basketball On a deeper level, psychologists believe many competitors are ultimately driven by a constant need to prove themselves to themselves. Their successes are short-lived because many feel they are not complete unless they are continually pushing themselves and bettering themselves. It's like a hamster running on a wheel that never stops.
7. Take Pride in Performance Competitors take immense pride in their effort and performance. They take pride in what they do and how well they do it because they feel it represents who they are as a person. In essence, they often believe they are what they do. Because so much of their self-esteem is tied up in how they compete and perform, they want to make sure it is consistently at a high level. "People think Wayne Gretzky is all skill, but he's a killer. It's a personal thing. He's driven by pride. How else could a guy five feet, 10 inches and 175 pounds survive in this sport, at this speed?" said Gretzky's former coach Glan Sather. "It isn't about the money. It's the hunger, the desire, and it's hard to turn it off. It's all about pride, and it's about ego," said tennis star Chris Evert.
8. AggressiveCompetitors often play aggressively. They look to attack their opponents, their race plan, and their training. They seek to dictate the tempo of the competition whenever possible. They like to force their opponents to react to what they are doing instead of passively trying to respond.
9. Relentless Competitors are relentless. They keep coming back for more, even when they are down and there is little chance of success. They are hard to guard and finish every play until the whistle blows or the final horn sounds. In training, they will meticulously work on their skills and strategies until they get it right. Again, what they do represents them and they do not want to be seen as a quitter or loser - so competitors persist until the end.
10. Highly Demanding of Self and Others Competitors not only hold themselves to high standards but hold their teammates, coaches, and others to high standards as well. They know that to achieve their high goals, there is no room for complacency or distractions. In effect, they try to instill their will on others in an effort to achieve their goals. They demand their teammates' best effort in practices, the weight room, and certainly in competition. While this can be hard on their lackadaisical and less committed teammates, competitors demand a continual standard of excellence from them.
11. Confident and optimistic. Competitors are confident in their competitiveness. They know that it gives them a distinct advantage each time they compete, no matter who the opponent. They know that if they compete on every play, they've got a good chance of eventually breaking down their opponent's will. They optimistically believe that their competitiveness will help them prevail despite virtually any situation or circumstance in which they find themselves.
12. Ruthless While outwardly many competitors can and should be gracious in defeat, inwardly they possess an undeniable ruthlessness when it comes to competition. Competitors are like cold-blooded assassins taking out their targets. They gain a twisted sense of joy in totally dominating an opponent or cutting a more talented competitor down to size. They can and often have a warm and friendly side and can keep their sport in perspective, but they also have their intensely competitive sides. Sprinter Michael Johnson once said, "Every guy I compete against, when I line up and get in the blocks, I hate them all."
Similarly, North Carolina men's basketball coach Roy Williams, a class act and a Hall of Famer, also has an intense competitiveness that, combined with his people skills, is a big part of his success. The competitor in him derives great pleasure from winning the best recruits from his coaching colleagues and going head to head with them on sport's highest stage. Coach Williams loves nothing more than going into an opponent's home court, beating them like a drum, and watching their fans leave early because the game is well at hand. He refers to it as "stealing another team's brownies" out from their own house.Anson Dorrance also revels in the Dynasty he has built with the North Carolina women's soccer program. One championship is simply not enough to satisfy Dorrance's insatiable and competitive appetite. Even though he has 20 national championships now, he desires at least 20 more. He wants his team to completely dominate their opponent each and every time they walk out on the field.
It's these characteristics that clearly distinguish competitors and make them desirable to coaches. Our next challenge is to examine if and how these characteristics might be developed.
HOW TO DEVELOP RELENTLESS COMPETITORS: SPECIAL REPORT This article is part of a 7-part Special Report on How to Develop Relentless Competitors. Championship Coaches Network members can access the entire report logging in and clicking on the links below. If you are not yet a member but would like to join and receive access to the Special Report including 15 Proven Ways to Develop Relentless Competitors - and hundreds of other resources on coaching, motivation, team building, developing leaders, etc., you can click on the link below to become a member. http://www.championshipcoachesnetwork.com/public/10.cfm
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