Competition vs Cooperation
In one of
my children school function, the chief guest while addressing the gathering,
said, “All great achievements that the ever been accomplished by man is owing
to one of the 2 things – Competition or Co-operation”. This line caught my
attention and forced me to probe a little further. These two words, Competition
and Co-operation do not sound like complementary words, but sound like contrary
words. How then can one say that all great achievements are achieved by two
contrary things? But if we look at the way our lives have evolved, we would
find it is true.
Let us
say, you play one of your favourite sport with someone, where you are an ace
player and the other is an amateur. You will be winning all the time, but you
will lose interest in the game. You know why? Because, there will be no sense
of accomplishment. There is no spirit of challenge. In due course you will find
yourself playing like an amateur, because the amateur by the way he plays, has brought
you down to his level. On the other hand, when you play the game with an
equally tough opponent, you will face the risk of losing, but the spirit of
challenge will make you put your level best to win the game. In the process
your game technics and tactics will improve. When you win this game, the amount
of happiness and satisfaction, you experience, would be beyond words. Therefore
the purpose of playing a match is not only to decide who is better than the
other, but to bring out the best in us. The essence of competition is therefore
to bring out our hidden potential.
We are
all proud to be Indians. This pride is a result of our past achievements. We
cannot afford to continue basking in this glory for long. We need to constantly
improve our performance in order to be ahead from the rest of the world. For
this to happen, we need competition. Competition therefore, should not be
something to be feared about, but something we look forward to as an
opportunity for our growth. We compete to excel and winning is just a topping
in the cake.
Now let
us talk about Cooperation. Cooperation strives for team work, team
coordination, team building and works on the principle of give and take. It
believes in Synergy. Each one of us, have a different strength. As a team, when
your strength adds to the strength of the group, there is a great synergy. It
defies the mathematics logic and says 1+1 is not 2, but 3.
In most
of the inaugural and closing ceremony of grand occasions like the Olympics, we
see a number of team events performed with great level of synchronization
accuracy, which is a treat to our eyes. It could be a group dance, a musical
orchestra, a parade, a mass drill or whatsoever. We are awestruck by the
magnanimity of such fete.
Competence
is therefore a blend of Competition and Co-operation. While you need to have a
competitive spirit to succeed, we also need to have a co-operative spirit to be
a good team player. The most important quality of a good leader is that he
should be a good team player. As an individual we compete with each other in
our school, our career, our chosen game to come to the top and gain a
leadership position. But as a leader our major role is to make sure there is
co-operative effort.
Team work
is therefore nothing but collective competence. This collective competence in
full bloom is the ultimate flowering of human accomplishment. Let us learn to
compete and cooperate in our effort to achieve our goals.
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