Posted January 5, 2012  /  as seen on forbes.com

Growing Up When 'Everyone Wins,' How Do Kids Learn to Win?

The original article on forbes.com is found here.

Recently a friend of mine told me he planned to take his two boys to play in a soccer tournament over the weekend. When I wished them luck, he said, thanks, but luck wasn't a factor. No team really loses, he noted. Everyone gets to play. In fact, everyone gets a trophy.

Now, I don't have kids, but this conversation made me think about the idea that everyone wins. Really, what's up with that? When these kids grow up many are going to join companies like mine that are all about winning. We'll need them to help us beat our competitors to market with new products and services. They'll need to help us innovate and boost our share prices. Already I'm seeing young adults come through our doors who grew up believing that everyone wins. Well, it's not true. And that expectation is bad news for companies that need hungry, battle-tested teams that know it's unacceptable to come in second or third. As a manager, I don't want to hire people who feel comfortable losing. I want winners who yearn to pop and spray champagne when their teams score.

The young professionals I see are smart, great at multitasking, and whizzes when it comes to technology. But there's something missing: Many lack interest in working hard and investing time in a career or an organization that doesn't consider their needs before all others. The Facebook generation has its priorities well-established: These folks care about themselves first, and after that friends and family. Period.

A new word I have started to hear in the workplace is "deserve," and I am beginning to hate it. "I think I deserve an opportunity to work on that account." "I feel I deserve the opportunity for an interview with your company." "I deserve more money." When my executive team and I hear such remarks our response is, "Why?"  There is rarely a persuasive, rational answer that touches on the employee's performance at the company. To me this usually suggests that someone may not be a good fit for a collaborative culture, one that works as a team and wins as a team.

I see too many kids who enter the workforce and expect to win just by showing up.  In an effort to broaden horizons, parents have introduced a generation of young people to as many activities and opportunities as possible-soccer, fencing, dance, Mandarin. The kids are then allowed to quit when they become challenged or bored and want to move on to the next thing. Of course, parents want them to to have all the things we didn't enjoy when we were growing up-yes, I'm a boomer-and that explains the esteem-boosting idea that everybody plays, everybody wins, and everybody gets a trophy. But is it possible we've made life too easy for our kids? Heck, have we loved them too much?

We practice tough love at my ad agency, where we are ramping up efforts to coach individuals personally and professionally by offering fair, honest appraisals of their performance and then rewarding them accordingly. We tell them the truth. Yes, the hard, raw, unvarnished truth. Sometimes that means criticizing them and-gasp!-telling them they aren't so special.

Sure, it's easier to tell employees they are doing a good job and give them a raise, but that's not the way to build a winning organization. In fact, sometimes when our people hear the truth-particularly younger employees whose parents and schools protected them from losing and, yes, failing-it's a hard pill for them to swallow. Occasionally people who could learn to be great contributors to our business drift away in search of the praise they "deserve," after candid feedback that's a little tough. And that's okay. I want fighters with a desire to win and the drive to motivate other people.

Our world has changed a lot. If we are to thrive in business, we'll need team players who are driven to score. We can't afford to have people who believe they win just by coming to the game.

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About Brunner

Brunner is a $220 million independent advertising agency with more than 200 employees in offices in Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. The agency provides a broad range of services, including brand strategy, research and planning, advertising, digital, one-to-one, public relations, social media, mobile marketing, and Shopper Marketing, to clients such as Bob Evans Restaurants and Food Products, the Cub Cadet brand of outdoor power equipment, CONSOL Energy, Eaton Vehicle Group, Food Lion, multiple GlaxoSmithKline brands, GNC, Heinz, Huffy, Philips Healthcare, PPG Industries, and Wise Foods. In addition to being ranked among the Top 75 U.S. ad agencies, Brunner is recognized as one of the Top 75 digital marketing firms in the country.