Life in the business world at times feels like a zero-sum game. As you move up the ladder of success the number of positions decreases and the pressure to succeed increases. The situation can leave you feeling like the only way you can succeed is if someone else fails. While this sentiment may be common, it is wrong.
WHAT IS ZERO-SUM THINKING?
Zero-sum thinking is a cognitive bias used to describe when a person believes that a situation is a matter of win-lose or loss-gain. There are countless examples of this way of thinking: When negotiating, when we are in a love relationship when a student believes they’re being graded on a curve….
However, this understanding has a more detrimental side effect: you could become combative even when it’s not necessary. The “Prisoners’ Dilemma” scenario is highly applicable, as illustrates the complex trade-off between decisions beautifully.
This bias can be caused by various underlying mechanisms, such as survival instincts and scarcity beliefs (e.g., thinking that a certain resource is more limited than it actually is due to past experiences), belief in trade-off consistency (e.g., that advantages of a product in one domain must be balanced by disadvantages in another), and difficulty in understanding other people’s perspective (e.g., to realize that different people may value things differently in a trade).
How can We overcome such zero-sum thinking?
To reduce the zero-sum bias that you and others experience you can increase general awareness of this bias, identify specific instances of it, address the situation with explicit reasoning (e.g., to show that it’s not actually zero-sum), address specific causes of this bias (e.g., by visualizing other people’s perspectives), and use general debiasing techniques (e.g., slowing down your reasoning process, or focus on positive-sum interactions).
In fact, most successful leaders freely admit they achieved their success with the help of others. The following resources substantiate my claim that success is not a zero-sum game:
According to Steve Farber —give it away, while Stephen MR Covey invites to trusting others, and Art Petty recommends teamwork in problem-solving to overcome selfishness.
Get rid of the thought of competition. You are to create, not to compete for what is already created. You do not have to take anything away from anyone.” “Adopt a possibilist mindset, and create, create, and create!”
