Competitive Personality

Weekly Report CW8

Are you competitive or cooperative? You can uncover a competitive person by its trait to “compete” whenever possible. It’s almost always a win-or-lose situation for them. Let’s say you want to get some pizza for dinner, and you tell it to your competitive partner. Even if they think it’s a good idea, in the process, until you eat pizza, there will be a win-or-lose fight. A fight about what restaurant or delivery service is best, which pizza to choose, a fight about if it’s not better to order something else, a fight about whatever. In the end, a competitive person must feel that they have won, that it was their idea, that it was them. But not only that they’ve won is essential, but they also want to know that the other party did lose.

This costs a cooperative personality a ton of energy.

On the other side, a cooperative personality wants harmony. A win-win situation. They will almost always give in when they discuss with a competitive character, even if it costs their integrity.

Selling as a cooperative person to a competitive person.

You have to make them feel they’ve won and you’ve lost at least something. Even if you know, they didn’t. A classic is to anker a bit higher in price. You think it’s a win-win deal to sell something for 240k, sell it to them higher. Make yourself feel the new price is the must-have for you. They will attack the price, make you sell it for less. You end up with 250k, you are unhappy. You are not really unhappy, but you have to be slightly unhappy in their face because you haven’t won. Of course, for a cooperative person, it feels “bad” to do it. Because they want a win-win, and with this approach, they know the other party actually lost. But hey! It’s a win-win! Because look it from the other side: The competitive person thinks they’ve won and you get paid what you need to be paid. That’s a win-win.

Coaching a competitive person

What you read now is more an assumption and I’m not sure if this is right or not. I want to read about this topic to find out to be certain.

In a conversation with a cooperative friend, we realized that cooperative people don’t like to be coached by demotivational speak. They want someone who says “you are going to make it!” someone who pushes them positively. Who asks them about ways they have tried and then they help them to choose the next way to try.

A competitive person, on the other hand, must work better with demotivational speak. Let’s say you tell them:

“When you go about it as you do, you will never make it” — they’ll think:

”Hey F*cker! I’m going to prove you are wrong!”

For me personally and as a cooperative person, it’s way easier to work with cooperative folks. The extra-awareness and mind games with a cooperative person cost energy. Spend this energy for the tasks to achieve, rather than in the discussions to get there.

The Five Monday Questions (CW8)

I start every week with a report and five questions, as we implemented it at OnSaPa GmbH to keep a consistent feedback relation.

What was good?

• Twitter Space about NFT was exciting
• I followed up at the right moment about a publication
• Received great feedback from strategists at corporate
• Published the ACT Job advertisement
• The OnSaPa Business OnePager is ready
• Three great artists downloaded the boringtextures ProPack
• Achieved 0.76 on the weekly highlights

What to look at in the future?

• Make clear and remind partners about collab-structure
• Currently, paid freelance comes a bit too short.

What was shitty?

• Losing time through competitive discussions that aren’t necessary

What should stay as it is?

• The small iterations on my systems are good. Keep these cycles.

What was neglected?

• Update for people in the association

I will be back next week with new updates.

Enjoy a fantastic start to this week!
Otto