It's tough to lose.
After losing the Super Bowl last January, Carolina
Panthers quarterback, Cam Newton, was widely criticized for appearing to be a
sore loser during his post-game press conference. Granted, I've never played
football at the level at which Cam Newton plays so I've no idea the emotional
havoc that Newton's 24 to 10 loss to the Denver Broncos wreaked on him.
Most of us like to win. While the saying didn't originate
with him, legendary Green Bay Packers coach is widely quoted for his
"Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing." Later in life, after
receiving criticism for the sentiment being too harsh, Lombardi offered a
corrective by observing that what he actually said was that winning "is
not everything, but making the effort to win is." (A terrifically researched origins story for Lombardi's famous quote was written by Steven J. Overman for Football Studies.)
Is there a right way to lose?
It's a challenge to lose, particularly to lose
gracefully. But most of us have faced losing at some contest in our lives.
I'm taken each time I see my grandsons play in a high
school soccer match, not just with pride in seeing them play well and together
with their classmates, but particularly after each game they lose when they
line up and shake the hands of each player on the opposing team, as well as the
two referees before they return to huddle with their coach. Sure, occasionally
a player mutters an obscenity under his breath so an opponent who was
particularly rough or unsportsmanlike during the game can hear, but out of
earshot of the officials. The tradition of shaking hands after a loss or a win
tries to send a message to the players that there is grace both in winning and
losing.
A copy of a letter from President George H.W. Bush toPresident Bill Clinton that greeted Clinton on his desk in the Oval office his
first day on the job in the White House after he had defeated Bush in a U.S.
presidential election went viral a couple of weeks ago. "Your success is
now our country's success," Bush wrote. "I am rooting for you."
It's hard to find a stronger example of gracious losing.
Learning how to lose well is an ethical act. "Ethics
is how we behave when we decide we belong together," wrote Margaret
Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers in A Simpler Way. "Daily we
see this interplay of ethics and belonging in our own lives. We want to be part
of an organization. We observe what is accepted or rewarded, and we adapt. But
these ethics are not always good. We may agree to behaviors that go against
personal or societal values. Months or years later, we dislike the person we
have become. Did we sacrifice some essential aspect of ourselves in order to
stay with an organization? What was the price of belonging?"
The right thing is to enjoy winning, but to learn to lose
gracefully.
In "Deacon Blues" Steely Dan sang: "They
got a name for the winners in the world. I want a name when I lose." The
goal should be to work to avoid being named "sore" when we lose.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
(c) 2015 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
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