Competitive joy is the emotional fuel of high-performing teams.
NBA coach and executive Pat Riley, who popularized the concept, describes it as the deep satisfaction that comes from pursuing excellence together as a team.
For Riley, competitive joy is what sustains sports dynasties after success removes the fear of failure.
Competitive joy is not exclusive to sports teams.
Within work teams, competitive joy is the feeling of shared energy, pride, and motivation that comes from striving to win together. Teams with competitive joy blend high performance with positive emotion and become fixated on improvement and progress.
Great results are a by-product but not the reason for the joy.
The pursuit of excellence fuels emotion and brings team members a sense of enjoyment from the effort, mastery, momentum, and purpose they share.
Teams with competitive joy sustain high performance longer, recover more quickly from setbacks, collaborate more openly, and show higher ownership and resilience.
Better yet, on teams with competitive joy, performance and personal well-being stop being tradeoffs. Instead, they reinforce each other.
Competitive joy often shows up when leaders do the opposite of what serious performance culture expects.
Such joy in competition is more likely to arise when leaders lower the emotional stakes while raising the standards. By taking pressure off the outcomes and demanding excellence in the preparation and process, joy can grab a toehold.
Joy is unleashed when leaders celebrate any attempt to advance the standards of quality, even if it results in underperformance or a loss.
Games played “the right way,” projects that incorporate smart risks, unsuccessful initiatives that produce insight and learning, and decisions that followed a great process are common examples.
Leaders who purposely try to create competitive joy also make the preparation for competition fun. Rituals, humor, music, and playful drills and exercises help to activate joy.
Playfulness is a performance multiplier when it is incorporated into hard practice. Emotional energy is renewable when fun is allowed and encouraged.
Good leaders work hard to instill a sense of fun and playfulness in everything but the most serious conversations and tasks.
Competitive joy has the best chance to emerge when leaders take the pressure off outcomes and people and place it on excellence, progress, and learning.
Leaders who insist on a demanding standard every day and encourage the team to meet it together foster pride, regardless of the score or outcome.
Does your team feel energized or drained by the challenges ahead? Perhaps they need a little more competitive joy.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
