• by Matt Weiss , November 4, 2014

It’s the end of the year, and you’ve just been invited to pitch for the Finder-Spyder account. Not only would it make your year, but the entire agency would kill to work on the business. As soon as word ripples through, the emails start flowing in.

CEO: “I’m in.”

ECD: “This one is perfect for me—I ran it four years ago in Singapore.” 

AD: “I love tech. I’m passionate—will do anything to help.”

The directive from the client and consultant is clear: Keep the team tight. Make it a mix of management and day-to-day. Don’t overload with chief this and chief that. 

So, question number one is this: What mix of people will constitute the perfect team to bring this baby home? Hmmm…

We’ve all been there. We know that selecting the right team—or any team, really—is fraught with politics, pressure, and poor decision-making. The standard requirements apply: engaging presenters, subject-matter experts, day-to-day team members with poise and dynamism. Those with relevant experience. And those who match the client team in terms of seniority, background, and culture. At the end of the day, most pitches are won on great thinking, great work, and great chemistry.

Let’s add one more consideration: Is the team made up of people who love to win or who hate to lose? They may sound like the same thing; in truth, they’re entirely different—and focusing on one over the other might prove to be a deciding factor in the hiring decision.

Research by Columbia University psychology professor E. Tory Higgins places people on a continuum of “regulatory focus.” At its most basic level, the theory asserts that human beings tend either toward being promotion focused (motivated by thoughts of winning) or prevention focused (motivated by fear of losing). You may love to win and hate to lose, but it’s a sure bet that one of those instincts is more pronounced.

A lot has been written about the benefits of developing a culture of winning, but what about creating a culture of people who hate to lose? What about populating pitch teams with colleagues who simply will not accept the idea of defeat?

I see these as the five most important characteristics such people bring to the table:

Hyper-competitiveness: For the people I’m talking about, it’s not enough to win—someone else needs to lose. And ties (whether on the playing field or in terms of shared business) are unacceptable. Being hyper-competitive means these players won’t just be focused on what their own team is doing, but also on what their opponents are likely to be planning. Every contingency will be considered.

Drive: People who hate losing more than they love winning will devote massive energy to the contest. Oracle founder Larry Ellison is famously failure-averse. In his words: “Whenever I feel even remotely close to being at risk of failure, I can’t stop working.” For people at this end of the regulatory-focus spectrum, the notion of having “tried one’s best” isn’t a salve to the sting of losing; it’s just more salt in the wound.

Personal responsibility: People who hate to lose aren’t blinded by high hopes and imagined success; they operate very much in the now, and that means they’re focused on detail and following the rules of the game. They simply will not risk the potential penalties that could come from missing a deadline or skirting a requirement, and they’ll make damned sure you won’t be cut from the pitch on a technicality.

Perfectionism: For people who hate to lose, “settling” is anathema. They’ll keep pushing to make the work — and the presentation of it — the best it can be, and they’ll leave the pitch thinking about what they’re going to change on the next round.

Leadership: People who hate to lose understand that a team is only as strong as its weakest link, so they have every motivation to ensure each player is at the top of his or her game. And, whereas people motivated by the thrill of the win might be inclined to keep the rest of the team in the shadows, individual glory isn’t the focus of those driven by a fear of failure. They win and lose as a team.

Of course, nothing replaces a solid, experienced team that’s pitched together many times and has that “above the rim” quality you only get through a history of shared success. But in our increasingly kinetic industry, we have far fewer dynasties than teams put together on the fly. We all would do well to look beyond the usual criteria and identify those players who will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid handing a competitor the account. As Andrew Carnegie once said, “The first man gets the oyster; the second man gets the shell.”
I know just how he felt.