
During our recent family vacation, we enjoyed our family’s favorite summer activity: mini-golf! It was there that I came up with a distinction: there are 2 “types of people” in the world: those who keep score in mini-golf…and those who don’t! Well if you know us, oh, we’re keeping score! How else will we know who wins? I don’t think we’re overly competitive, and we’re not nasty about it. We just want to know how we’re doing and who wins.
John Ortberg, in his book, When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, states, “We are, by nature, scorekeepers. We crave feedback. We want to know how we are doing. Is my life on track? Am I doing what matters?...To talk about how we keep score is really to talk about how we define success. Most commonly we tend to keep score with the three C’s: Comparing, Competing, and Climbing.” Consider these as faulty scorecards.
The comparison scorecard can focus in any of three directions: upward (comparing with those better off), lateral (comparing with those at the same level), and downward (comparing to those worse off). The byproduct of these respectively is envy, competition, and arrogance, according to Ortberg.
The competing scorecard makes everything a race or competition. Now there’s nothing wrong with some family vacation fun that has a competitive element. Competition can make us try harder or have deeper focus. But we do know competing can quickly lead to envy and jealousy. You can’t compete everywhere in life, you’ll eventually be either disappointed or end up playing alone.
The climbing scorecard centers on a life built through promotion and sacrifice. While hard work should be rewarded, this takes climbing to a whole new level where advancement can only be made by climbing over people. Often the climb to the top of the ladder leads to a lonely view from the top.
We were just having some family fun by doing our tradition of mini-golfing using the scorecard. Memories were made, but the experience is over, and the scorecard is tossed. My question is not whether you’re a minigolf score keeper, but rather, how are you keeping score in your life and leadership? I’d love to explore this with you.
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