If I think about “Winning is not everything; it is the only thing” as a life-guiding phrase I would definitely not agree with it, but the standpoint for this article is winning as an experience and as a mental space – winning as a unique experience as a consequence of an optimal performance. During that enrapturing moment in a flow of winning it really feels that “winning is the only thing”.

During the time I wrote the book  “The Winning Helix – the art of learning and manifesting your true potential” I had a mentor with whom I could discuss everything the writing process brought into existence. We had very interesting discussions about my choices for terminology. Especially the words “winning” and “fighting spirit” irritated my mentor tremendously. She said that those words lead into bulldozing and harming other people. Though I explained my point of view and she hers, we never found an accord.

My mentor was absolutely of the opinion that the word “winning” could and should be replaced with “success”. I did not agree then and don’t agree now. In a race there can be many who succeed, but only one winner.

As a part of the research for the book I made an email inquiry which revealed that many people say they are not interested in winning and that they hate competition. It is hard to say whether this is true for everybody – someone might for fear of disappointment avoid situations where winning is an option.

The email inquiry revealed, however, that there are people who love to win and take part in events where they have a chance to win. The pursuit, the preparation and excitement culminating in a winning feeling, the “YES”, were the main reasons why these people wanted to experience winning. These people were also disappointed if they didn’t win, but many of them had learned how to deal with losing – better luck next time!

Some answers to the question “what is winning”:

• To be the first
• To be the best
• To reach a measurable goal
• To achieve a goal, be it state of mind, battle, competition
• To win oneself
• To win others
• To make things click
• To see connections between different things
• To learn
• To confront courageously a conflict and sort it out
• To negotiate a good deal
• To succeed with a challenge
• To exceed the own limits
• To conquer something that is difficult
• To grow as a human being

Many of these can be signs of success too, but I believe that the winning feeling is more than success, it is the feeling when a person can for a moment feel like a king and let the vanishing thought: “I am the only one in the world who did this” hover in his/her mind.

Winning is confronting ones own uniqueness and power and, for a moment, to feel really special. Those moments are the rosebuds of life which sweeten our memories with overpowering scent.

Vincent Lombardi also said:

“The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel, are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.”

I believe he did not  regret this statement. I believe that we all have the capacity to win and feel the uniqueness of our true beings.

One of the many topics in the Globeforum in Stockholm two years ago was the question of Female Leadership in the Emerging Markets. In the roundtable seminars the topic was widely discussed with Nordic women as facilitators. One of my comments was “What do we Finnish and Swedish women really have to give to the women in the emerging markets when we are quite accustomed to hold leading positions and when many of us have become ‘one of the guys’ abandoning our natural female way of making things click. How can we help if we have alienated from the problem?”

Law of attraction is a very popular term nowadays when the movie “The Secret” has conquered the world with it’s message of hope and positive thinking. Attraction is, to my understanding, a female force. Women are not by nature used to push things forward but rather to use different means to attract things to happen. For example when we communicate we don’t go straight forward saying: “I want a cup of coffee” but rather “Oh, how tired I am, I could really use a cup of coffee” or “what a nice coffee shop there is….”. In order to achieve higher positions in the organization women are taught to become more straightforward in their communication, they are taught to say “bring me a cup of coffee, please”.  This kind of communication is of course timesaving and efficient, that by the way everyone must be able to use in situations of emergency, but the price is that the woman loses her natural female attractiveness and gains the attraction of power instead, and eventually become one of the guys.

Law of gravity might be used as a metaphor for male leadership. Men tend to send things forward with such kick and force that the one selected target is reached without deviations and attuning operations. The people around are seen more as pawns that can be ordered and moved in the “name of the task” than individuals that could be attracted to participate an inspirational challenge. Offering a big sum of money and bonuses is a male way to gain commitment when on the other hand offering initial participation, inspiration, growth and learning is a female way to attain commitment.

Unfortunately when the number of female leaders increases in the companies the systems are not developed to support, empower and promote female leadership. The systems remain “male” and women have learned that the true appreciation and acceptance comes from reconciling oneself into the “male” system. Therefore the real change for female values, we might call those values here as “soft human values” do not take place in the companies. I worked as a business consultant for a decade and saw many ‘womanly women’ give up their womanliness and become one of the guys, for the sake of survival and success in the company. The question is: “does this kind of mental castration bring true happiness and fullness of life and does it really create better workplaces and more successful companies?”

One more question: “If we are to learn tolerance and true appreciation of diversity, are we really doing it by making everybody to fit the system? Are we really incapable of creating systems that allow people be themselves and give their best talent, true self-expression and natural creative force to serve the common good?”

It is all about attention. Everyday there are more and more competent people who continuously create more and better products, contents and services. We simply cannot compete with mere skills and degrees any longer. We need to learn how to attract people’s attention towards us. Michael Goldhaber says:

“In the attention economy, you obtain wealth, that is attention by expressing yourself, putting your real self forward as much as possible. Your property, what is proper to you, is what you can get attention for, and that you must put out in public. The more you gain attention for what you do, the more witnesses you have that what you want to say comes from you, that you have priority, and so by getting attention at the earliest possible moment for what you want to express, you retain attention and ownership of that attention. Any one who copies you is turning their audience over to you, and thereby doing you a favor. Even anyone who tries to malign you or distort what you are saying calls attention to you in the process.”

The Law of the attraction guru’s say that the power to attract is a capability you create for you and inside you. Like attract like! Do you want to attract winning results into your career and life. Here is a list from Thomas J. Leonard in The Portable Coach: 28 Sure Fire Strategies For Business And Personal Success . Thomas gives us 28 great tips how to become more attractive:

1. Become Incredibly Selfish.  Without You, there is nothing and attraction isn’t possible.
2. Unhook Yourself from the Future.  Attraction works in the present, not in the future.
3. Overrespond to Every Event.  By overresponding rather than overreacting, you evolve, which is very attractive.
4. Build a Superreserve in Every Area.  Having enough is not nearly enough for You to be irresistibly attractive.
5. Add Value Just for the Joy of It.  When you add value because you enjoy it, people are naturally attracted to You.
6. Affect Others Profoundly.  The more you touch others, the more attractive you’ll become.
7. Market Your Talents Shamelessly.  If you’re embarrassed about what you do, you won’t be very attractive.
8. Become Irresistibly Attractive to Yourself.  How can you attract others if you don’t feel irresistibly attracted to yourself?
9. Get a Fulfilling Life, not just an Impressive Lifestyle.  A great life is attractive;  a lifestyle is usually seductive.
10. Promise Little, Deliver Everything.  When you consistently deliver more than was expected, new customers are drawn to you.
11. Create a Vacuum that Pulls You Forward.  Being pulled forward is attractive;  pushing yourself forward isn’t.
12. Eliminate Delay.  Time is expensive;  using too much is very unattractive.
13. Get Your Personal Needs Met, Once and for All.  If you have unmet needs, you’ll attract others in the same position.
14. Thrive on the Details.  Subtleties, details, and nuances are more attractive than the obvious.
15. Tolerate Nothing.  When you put up with something, it costs you;  unnecessary costs are unattractive.
16. Show Others How to Please You.  Don’t make them guess.
17. Endorse Your Worst Weakness.  When you can accept and honor the worst part of yourself, you’re more accepting of others.
18. Sensitize Yourself.  The more you feel, the more you’ll notice and respond to the many opportunities in the present.
19. Perfect Your Environment.  The Attraction operating system is a sophisticated system and it requires a first-class environment.
20. Develop More Character than You Need.  Integrity is not enough to become irresistibly attractive.
21. See How Perfect the Present Really Is.  Especially when clearly it is not.
22. Become an Unconditionally Constructive Person.  High levels of respect are very attractive.
23. Orient Yourself Around Your Values.  When you spend your days doing what fulfills you, You are attractive.
24. Simplify Everything.  Abandoning nonessentials leaves more room for Attraction.
25. Master Your Craft.  The easiest way to become successful?  Become the best at what you do.
26. Recognize and Tell the Truth.  The truth is the most attractive thing of all, but it requires skills and awareness.
27. Have a Vision.  When you can see what’s coming, you don’t need to create a future.
28. Be Real, Be Human.  When you are human, You are attractive

Cristina’s additions:

• Learn and win and help others to win too, progress is attractive!
• Care and be interested of other people, listening and caring is attractive!
• Mobilize your energy, enthusiasm and power is attractive!

The Winning Helix says about attraction:

“To survive the jungle of attention demanding attractions the winner needs to focus, to choose the mental magnets that are beneficial and contribute the most to his process.”

Some years ago I had a chance to develop the fan activities for a professional sports team, the ice-hockey team Jokerit in Helsinki. The experience was very educating and gave me many ideas how the companies can enhance their customer operations in the era of attention economy.

Loyal customers are loyal — to some extent. When better service, product or lower price is offered the loyal customer transports his loyalty to the competitor. A fan doesn’t act like this — the fan tries to find solutions so that the company can do better. The fan is devoted – a fan doesn’t leave the company when the times are bad. Loyal customers require detailed information (which they don’t read after all) – the fans are ready to see the trouble to find out for themselves.

Co-operation with fans provide true opportunities to make business fun and to flourish with innovation and new ideas. The fans want the company to succeed. The loyal customer takes what is offered without giving so much back nor intelligence – or emotion-wise.

The fan dynamics are fascinating and interesting. People do things for the benefit of the team and enjoy doing it. Why wouldn’t this be true to any company? After all a professional hockey-team is a company like any other company.

I developed the fan-activities at the time I was writing my book “The Winning Helix – the art of learning and manifesting your true potential”. The hockey players and coaches provided me valuable information about preparing to win. I had the great chance to follow both the team and their fans and understand how the interaction works and what makes the fan tick.

We are already wittnessing the development where the fans form the core-customer group of the companies that aim to win. A Winning Company needs individuals, ideas and actions that can attract the attention of the customers and that enables to cultivate the relationship from loyal customers to devoted fans.

(The article was first published in the Nostringsattached magazine in 2007)

Action-learning is a concept that many of us are familiar with. When we bestow our action-learning loop with a virtue of winning we will create a process that not only helps us to achieve results that we want but also to turn the stages of transition to procreative periods of growth.

The Winning Helix – the thriving confluence of action and learning

During my years working as a business consultant I often cerebrated the question why the learning processes did not result in necessary organizational change, although they did bring about the desired learning results and people felt good about the process. The real change required eventually an intervention from the management. What was learned did not seem to be adequate with the real strategic and operational needs of the company.

Among several other reasons that I found hindering the effective unison between action and learning I discovered one that caught my interest enough to embark upon a study:

”People and companies are not prepared to win – they don’t want to win, they rather focus on surviving.”

What I thought was that the people would benefit from a system for learning that would help them to turn the random steps of development into a purposeful movement towards the direction of their goals.

My research that included, apart from the traditional methods, an introspective study of my own development as a singer, a co-operation with a coach and the activities with a hockey-team and its fan-club resulted in a process model that combines the winning attitude with an intensive action-learning process. As a metaphor for the process I found the Dna-doublehelix that appeared to be genius and illustrating exactly all those different aspects of learning that I had in mind.

The action-learning doublehelix is intended to serve two main purposes of learning and growth:

• To reach the peak-performance and develop it qualitatively
• To make shifts to higher levels of skill through transition

The study also helped me to understand the varying emotional frequencies during the process. The recognition of these frequencies helps the learner to get attuned into the mood that is most beneficial in order to accomplish a learning task or a performance task.

Five elements that turn the action-learning loop to a Winning Doublehelix

1. Willpower furnished with the power of volition and the authority of intention
2. Mental Virtues that invest the action-learning process with winning, optimal experience and fighting spirit – the powers of vision, trust and mental demand.
3. Coachability Skills that enhance learning making it effective, courageous and intense – and fun too.
4. The Learning Wheel – a theory combining the different aspects of learning that focuses on developing and improving the performance.
5. The Mobilization of Energy to create a match between the mood of the learner/performer and the task at hand.

The key result of the study is “you will get what you order”. If in the very beginning of the learning endeavor you start to encode your process with winning learngrams. If you continuously strive for excellence in everything that you learn and do; that is exactly what you will get – great victories!

Adopting the action-learning doublehelix as a personal learning environment you will gain understanding how everything is related, and which learning steps and moves benefit the most to the development of your skill as well as to your personal growth.