Thursday, November 15, 2012
Collaboration or Competition
I can tell you right of the bat that competitive conflicts never end well for me or the other party. For instance I every year my brothers, sister and I are stressed with the Christmas tradition of getting my mother and father elaborate gifts. We always have two choices; go in on a group gift that is bigger or get separate gifts that we essentially use to compete for who comes up with the best gift. We always start out trying to work together but we don't always agree on prices and ideas. This is when we often try to pull my younger sister in three different directions in an effort to win the battle of best idea. If that does not work we all go our separate ways. When we work together our gifts are always better and more thoughtful. When we work in competition to get the gifts done we end up spending more money on things that are just not as good and get put in a closet by the next year. Our best collaborative gift so far was going into sears portrait studio and getting my mom a huge picture of us kids. We were able to give that to my Dad also and my grandparents. It was really cheap and it ended up being really fun.
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I enjoyed your example of either collaborating on a gift for your parents or competing to try to be the one who gives the best gift. This was a great practical example that demonstrated the win-win orientation of collaboration and the win-lose orientation of competition. In this case, your competition with each other was somewhat destructive because it didn’t take any relational concerns into consideration. I’m sure your parents appreciated the gift you all collaborated on much more than the individual gifts.
ReplyDeleteThe authors of our book write that a competitive strategy can work for a group even if some of the members end up winning and some end up losing, if “the larger goals of the group are served.” I suppose your siblings and you could have competed to try to be the one to spend the least amount of money on the most meaningful gift. There would be winners and losers, but everyone would have had fun being creative and your parents would end up with several meaningful gifts that didn’t cost an arm and a leg.
Wow Lee you guys are so creative in gifting your parents. I understand exactly how you must be feeling when you decide to buy something special for the most extraordinary people in your lives. Sibling rivalry is everywhere, but I did not know it is so provoking for matters like Christmas gifts. Actually there is story in Hindu mythology, which is inline with your story. Two sons of god Shiva namely Ganesh and Kartik contend against each other over who is their parent’s favorite. And when Kartik loses, he just leaves Himalayas forever and settles in South India. So even today temples of Kartik only found in South India.
ReplyDeleteThis was a great example of collaboration or competition. I used to do this with my sister all the time. We would try to out compete each other.. but as we got bigger along with our expenses, we decided to team up for the past couple of years. I think competition can work in a positive way too because it inspires people to apply their creativity in order to bring out the best in their product. This was definitely a great christmas idea too, maybe its time that my sister and I do that since we can afford too much this year as well! haha
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI really liked your post and totally understand the story you wrote about. Christmas time is mostly about thanks and love but some of it is really competition. When I first saw your story I immediately thought about as a kid I would always compare my gift to my siblings and see who got the most or better items. Back to your story and I see the issue with you all decided whether to stay together or go separate ways as an issue that comes up in groups often. When people all have different ideas and are unable to accept or understand other people’s ideas then it causes a riff in the relationship. Many people think that working apart is easier in that case but sometimes working together can create something that no one person could have thought of alone. I think parents especially would rather have the thoughtful family gifts then the flashy pricy gifts because many times the ones that are built on thought are from the heart.