Whether in sport or business, most people consider winning as success and losing as failure, which has some truth to it. However, as we discussed earlier, failure can be a path to success, as long as we keep a positive perspective on negative outcomes. So some losing situations can lead to long-term wins.

I have experienced both winning and losing in sports and in life. It took me a period of time early in my professional career to figure out that those loses were pathways to future success. Through my reflections and analysis, I have determined certain traits that stand out to define winners and losers. I have also found that in today's society, people are uncomfortable with the term “loser.” The softer way to discuss it is “successes” versus “setbacks.”

Well, sorry folks, I won't sugarcoat it. Many people are afraid to hurt feelings and would rather use a hug than a kick in the butt. I believe that a true leader will teach in many ways; sometimes that takes a hug, and sometimes a push. What follows is how I help my teams replicate their wins and deal with their losses.

Team versus Program

Winning programs and organizations—stable, consistent ones—have people who consistently demonstrate a “winning mentality.”

Let me explain the difference between a “team” and a “program.” Teams are built for the short term. Coaches at the professional and college levels recruit or sign players with talent, but they are not concerned with building a foundation of long-term success. Businesses bring in the dictator CEO we spoke of earlier to use tactics to show short-term gains.

Programs are built to sustain a level of success that is consistent year after year. It is quite difficult to “win” every year, in both sports and business. However, winning programs create a stable environment and culture that enables them to be in position to compete for wins, championships, and success each year.

Think of sports teams like the New England Patriots or the UCLA Bruins under Coach John Wooden. It is evident they have a formula of program success. They consistently speak of team-oriented goals and processes and have an uncanny ability to find players whom no one else wants and make them into not only useful participants, but high-level contributors. There is a clear winning culture that their leaders work extremely hard to maintain.

A common denominator is consistency. They stay consistent to their core values, and no one person is greater than the sum of the organization. They clearly have respect and serve each component of the organization in a way they feel part of the success. No superstar is brought in to change this. In fact, quite the contrary. Many times they take a superstar who was a culture wrecker in one organization and infuse them into their culture. Prior to their arrival that player is informed that, if they join them, there will be no accessions to their previous behavior. It doesn't always work, but they have proven more times than not that it has. They are consistent with their values to all.

If you observe the many successful businesses that also demonstrate a winning program mentality, you will see a clear parallel. All of their players, employees, and the entire organization engage in a winning, competitive environment.

True Toughness

We spoke earlier about competing every day and how valuable that can be for an organization. Winners know the importance of competition. They embrace it. They certainly hate to lose, but they also know that losses will inevitably happen and can be done with grace. Losses are also a path to future success, because the true winner knows how to learn from these losses. They adapt. Adjust. Our compete level can define us as winners or losers.

These traits are not values—don't get that confused. Values are a set of beliefs, both written and unwritten, that you and your organization invest in each day. They define who we are as a group and what we strive for. Traits are tendencies we look for to see if an individual has the capacity to share in these values.

In my final few years at UMaine, Bob Walsh was hired as the men's basketball coach. I had been with the Black Bears as the baseball coach the previous eight years and was at the stage of my career where I was absorbing everything I could in terms of leadership. Bob had tremendous success at the NCAA Division 3 level of coaching, with many championship seasons under his belt. He was excited to get his first go at a DI program, and had tons of energy and passion for coaching.

As with any organization, there are little ways you learn to navigate daily life in order to make things easier. Since I was a veteran there, I surely wanted to help Bob out in the first months with day-to-day issues I had experience with, from filling out the proper paperwork for purchasing equipment, to how we shared weight room facilities between teams.

Our relationship began to grow, and we started to share coaching theories and teaching moments. I couldn't tell you the first thing about running a basketball play or a certain defense to teach, but Bob was a lifelong baseball fan. We began to share our ideas about strong programs, and how culture is key to any organization. The winning teams he had at his previous school had that ingredient, and he did a great job fostering a positive yet competitive environment. He built a winning "program."

One thing we constantly discussed was the ever-changing world of recruiting players. We often spoke of recruiting the “tough” kid, labeled as a “blue-collar” worker. These types, along with those known as “culture kids,” are the ones we believed to be the most coachable. These are the recruits, or the employees, who have a positive impact on the culture that we, as leaders, strive to create. They are willing to follow the core values that are established and advocate for others to do the same.

We both agreed that society has changed, and it will always be evolving. The kids of today were finding more excuses for failure, looking to point fingers. I chuckled at times when Bob and I had this discussion; I began to feel like the two old men sitting on the porch of a general store in Maine, sharing coffee and stories of yesteryear. “Back in the day, my coach made me run until I barfed, and I loved it!” And how a coach wouldn't dare to do that today, for fear of losing his or her job.

I found it interesting that Bob and I were talking about toughness, both physical and mental, yet we were also sharing ideas of how to get our message across without offending someone. For instance, we both agreed on the importance of competing, toughness, and an outcome. Whether positive or negative, this outcome will produce a result that you, as a leader, will be able to use to help guide your organization to long-term success. A win in a game needs to be celebrated to foster the addictive nature to want to do it again. A win also needs to be studied in order to see what worked and how to improve, even if the opponent or environment changes.

A win needs to be celebrated to create the addictive nature and want to do it again.

A loss needs to be addressed, corrected, and used to show any weaknesses that can be turned around. A loss can also be hurtful, and one hopes the emotional feeling can motivate the organization to change the outcome in the future.

Winners and Losers

There are still “winners” and “losers” in today's world. Perhaps I should use a bit “softer” term to avoid offending anyone, but the reality is that someone is going to win the account and someone will lose it. People are promoted and fired every day. Yet, remember the simple but powerful message we spoke about earlier, that, used correctly, losing can be a great motivator.

Losing can be the best motivator if the individual—or the organization as a whole—has the correct mindset.

Bob shared a few ideas that led me to create a “winning” and “losing” mentality list of traits I look for and certainly mention whenever I speak to an organization about success. And yes, I use the word “loser” in this context to show the motivational factor of failure.

Compete, Compete, Compete

The winning traits we create from a list allow people to establish one key value that rarely is mentioned: the ability to compete. People must know how to establish grit, to fight, to develop a never-give-up attitude and the power to press on through the muck. That is competing.

This is easy to see in sports, which usually involves an athlete locked in, playing hard with physical and mental effort. Yet it also happens in the workforce every day. You have to compete internally with your group, which is vital to the life or death of an organization. You must compete on your own team, and the competition needs to be real, with outcomes. There will be winners and losers. Someone is getting a promotion over another. Your job as a leader is to make it fair and positive, and any setbacks or failures an individual experiences are not meant to be career ending. You may have lost today, but you still have a chance to change your role tomorrow.

You may have lost today, but you still have a chance to change your role tomorrow.

These failures are great roads to future success. Fostering that idea allows people to move forward, and also encourages them not to want to give up too easily on being on top. Once you smell the roses, you usually want more roses. This internal competition also makes outside competition easier. Your program or organization will grow and contend with your counterparts, competing for the sale, account, or win.

Another key factor to realize as a leader is that the people you surround yourself with must either embrace or inherit these traits when you hire or recruit. It is your job to foster the winning mentality.

Most look for the easier path and believe that talent alone can get you to the promised land. We see this both in professional sports and in business all the time. A professional team will “buy up” talent as they head into the playoffs, making trades with players. They give up multiple young, talented kids at the minor league level through a trade to a team that has an older veteran. The veteran can bring value in the short term, but teams have to be careful when bringing new faces into an already successful environment. In business, organizations constantly hire a person to come “shake” things up. The leader and the individual who has succeeded before both hope the infusion of this new employee into the organization can drive others to achieve.

Talent alone does not allow us to create a winning team. You need a strong culture.

As I said earlier, there is great value in hiring people with talent in your field. You do need the horses to pull the cart. But talent alone does not allow us to create a winning team, a winning year, or a winning quarter of earnings. It does not allow us to sustain long-term success. Some of the most talented teams ever assembled could not achieve greatness. We hear it all the time when a group underachieves: “They had all that talent and got beat by a lesser team.” Or “That group we assembled never gelled.” Talent has nothing to do with culture. Highly skilled employees give you the resources to build something great, something long term. However, it is our responsibility as leaders to advance the group of employees and team members, constantly working on a winning mentality. Ultimately, a strong culture within the organization forms.

So seek to create a trait list. What do you look for in your employees in terms of being “winners”? It is vital for you to recognize these winning traits when surrounding yourself with the employees and people you can move forward when forming your team.