4 Traits of Winners Anyone Can Adopt
In this blog we want to examine some of the most common traits of winners and how you can use these to help you achieve more. Those at the top have one thing common – the desire to win. They all want to be successful for the sake of it. They enjoy winning every single time but they also know that sometimes losing is also going to be a part of life. They often take business as a game that has to be played to win. The secret is to understand the rules that must be followed in order to reach the place of a winner. Winners are self-motivated and know how to motivate others as well. The question here is what does it take to be a winner? What are the traits of a winner? What do you need to be a winner? Is the drive for success just a matter of focusing on rewards, or there is more to it?
There are a couple of things to be noted here. First of all, not all leaders are excellent at everything, but they know what they are good at. Second, all successful people focus on their success. Small wins in workplace give you confidence and changes your attitude to a positive side. Choosing what you love as a job will help you win challenges and to make it big. So what is the recipe for acquiring that winner’s mindset? What is the secret sauce or the recipe? Read along to see what the real traits of a winner are:
1. They love what they do
To love what you do, you should understand what you do and why you do it. You should have an understanding of what drives you? You need to find the source of your energy to do a certain task. Researchers have already pointed out different factors for motivation.
Achievement, recognition, interesting work, responsibility and advancement are all reasons for motivation. But motivation alone can’t make you love your job. It has been observed that most successful business leaders tried a lot of things to find out what do they really enjoy doing.
They tried a lot of things, from sports to different career paths. Most of them enjoyed almost everything, but eventually they settled for one thing which they liked doing most. Therefore, one should find out what they love to do and will continue to love the same thing even after years.
2. Driven towards their career
The most important question to ask is what drives you? What makes you feel energetic and win? Most of the leaders are driven by work they are doing. Most of them are passionate about what they do, and it drives them.
The reasons might change over time i.e you might want to excel at your job so that you can earn big bucks to pay off loans. In spite of several reasons of you doing your current job, there will be one true driver which drives you towards your career. Some leaders want to create a difference in the world. Some want to earn a lot of money.
In a research, it has been found that there are nine major career drivers namely Power, Meaning (Purpose), Expertise, Creativity, Affiliation, Autonomy, Security, Status. Whatever comes under your top two drivers are your career drivers. It’s important that you identify which factor is more important to you as it is the main driving force behind your career.
3. Helping others to win
There is old idiom – When you want to walk fast, walk alone and when you need to walk farther, you should have a partner. So, if you want to reach the top, you need to motivate people to move with you as well. You just can’t achieve everything by yourself. It’s a team effort out there. As a manager, it is your responsibility to understand what drives other people to give their best.
People who are attracted to power and influence will easily get de-motivated if you can’t meet them in person. People who seek meaning in their work will lose the heat if you fail to appreciate their contribution to the team. However, people who want material rewards can easily be motivated with rewards upon good performance and punishment if it goes down.
So, your job should include the role of being able to appreciate the knowledge of the expert in your team so as to gain a satisfied team person. Similarly, the worst thing you can tell a creative person is to stop implementing new things. That will kill them with boredom and they’d be least bothered with what’s going around them. People who want affiliation should be given a centre stage and some event to organise to boost their esteem, and they are happy employee. Likewise, it is important that you identify the strong areas of your team and motivate them to bring their talent on the table because until the whole team is motivated, you can’t reach the top.
4. Celebrate winning
Life is so hectic that we have barely finished one project and you get the second project. It is important that good performance should be celebrated and key persons should be rewarded on that. Rewards should be tangible and quantified as well.
They can be intermittent, unpredictable and can bring an element of surprise to the receiver. It can be specific as well i.e. is to reward “for” something that you would like to see again. But more importantly, it should be consistent and relevant.
It is a known fact that rewarding improves performance over criticising. Therefore, a leader should reward the team or simply celebrate their performance. Celebration is more inclusive, inculcate close working relations in between team and improve coordination among them.
Winners are born among us. Leaders who lead from the front are those who are passionate and love what they do, are driven to their career and help others to champion their cause and they do celebrate the wins. Thus, traits of winners are not extra-ordinary in true sense, all that is required from your end is the will to be a winner and to acquire all these qualities to make yourself stand apart.
Are you ready to be a winner?
RTC provides leadership programmes that help you and your rising talent fast track to the top. The focus of the course is about enabling people under the age of 30 to rapidly develop their skills in the corporate environment by taking greater responsibility through volunteering and influencing as well as generating and implementing innovative ideas. In a nutshell – We’ll help you invest in the people you really should hold onto.
