The Will To Win

Marhdi Dastmard

One of the greatest challenges in life is how we, as unique individuals, relate to our environment. How we find our place in an often difficult and toxic working world. This struggle is particularly acute for those defined as Other in discriminatory systems and workplaces. And it’s not easy to simply escape them. These discriminatory systems impact you, one way or the other, whether you work in a large corporate or small business and whether you’re the boss or the intern.

So, how can you thrive when the game is rigged against you?

By cultivating four critical skill sets.

The first of these is Self-Knowledge. If you don’t know who you are, you can’t direct your destiny. Yet, most of us stumble and sleepwalk through our work lives, retiring full of regret, looking back on a journey where things happened to us rather than for us. However, when you know your core motivational drivers – not how you’ve been taught to behave or what you’ve been told you should want but the things that really fill you with joy; when you know your personality type and aptitude – your intrinsic characteristics and the things you’re naturally good at; and when you know the values and principles that you truly live by; you are far better able to identify the kind of environments that will set you up for success.

Yet, to do this, you also need to be really good at sussing out how different environments actually operate under the hood. This is the second core skill set, being Savvy. How many times have you taken up a new job, excited to join the organisation because you believed what was on the label, only to find that the way it actually operates is totally different? Or boldly launched a small business, convinced all the fundamentals were right, only to find that you didn’t take into account key ecosystem dynamics? Savviness means learning to do your homework.

Firstly, you need to understand the history of the organisation or ecosystem you want to operate in and how it grew to be what it is today. Believe me – it will be instructive. Second, you need to analyse the system driving that organisation or sector. By that, I mean the interrelationships between different elements within the environment that reproduce particular outcomes. The key word here is ‘reproduce’. Systems are purposeful which means the outcomes they produce are by design – not due to ignorance, unconscious bias or any other thing. Third, look at the key stakeholders within the environment, their world views and the power relationships between them to get a sense of the type of politics at play. And, lastly and most importantly, you need to seek to understand what it takes to succeed in that type of environment for a person like you. Then, now knowing who you are, you can make informed choices about whether a particular environment will be just useful for a season, worthy of a lifetime commitment or better avoided altogether.

The third critical skill set is the ability to build Social Capital. As you know, networks are vital to facilitating your career or entrepreneurial growth. Yet, if connections are currency, how much time do most of us spend topping up our bank accounts? Not enough, huh? Building social capital means consciously surrounding yourself with the right peers, taking the right steps to attract the mentors and sponsors you need as well as cultivating key relationships in the right spaces and stages. Once you’ve picked the environment you want to be in and understood what it takes to succeed within it, you need to develop and execute a plan to create the social capital that will help you win the game.

The fourth and last skill set is Self-Mastery. All of us have been shaped by our life experiences and, for many of us, those experiences have included trauma. Yet, most of us have no clue exactly how deeply these experiences have affected how we see the world, our conscious and sub-conscious thoughts as well as our behavioural impulses. Hence, rather than consciously choosing our responses to external stimuli, too many of us become hostage to external events, constantly reflexively responding to triggers. Without self-mastery, therefore, you can never fully leverage your strengths, navigate whatever environment you’re in or attract the people you need to enhance your social capital. Developing self-mastery means surfacing and acknowledging what has happened to you and how it has shaped you. Only then can you begin to heal, unlearning limiting beliefs and managing your emotional state as you slowly embed new thoughts, behaviours, and habits.

Four critical skill sets for thriving at work: Self-Knowledge, Savvy, Social Capital, and Self-Mastery.

Yet, none of these four skill sets can be achieved without a fifth, central element. It is the cog of the wheel without which all the other spokes are useless. It’s the determination not to settle for second-best in your work life, keeping your ambitions small because you convince yourself that growing your business any bigger is beyond your reach or becoming a walking work zombie, telling yourself that you have no choice and that, my personal favourite, “at least the job pays the bills”.

I call this fifth element, the Will to Win. It’s not just the belief that you deserve to be happy at work but that you can be. It’s also the willingness to do the hard work of turning belief into reality.

Everyone who’s happy and successful - however they choose to define it - has it and you’ll need it too if you truly want to thrive at work.

So, tell me.

Are you ready to begin?

And do you have the will to win?