Recent Posts
Mentorship July 31, 2019
All for one, one for all.
ENTITY highlights the importance of healthy competition.I’m not one to believe that competition is inherently toxic. People can be competitive in toxic ways, yes, and capitalism is, well, capitalism. But there’s a way to succeed in a capitalist society without wishing for the annihilation of thy neighbor: it’s called healthy competition.
Over the summer, I was fortunate enough to attend ENTITY Academy: For Women That Do. I was struck by the fact that, unlike other institutions I have attended, ENTITY understood what healthy competition means.
So what exactly does it mean? And how does ENTITY Academy utilize it? Let’s dive in.
According to Skybound: Coaching & Consulting, “Healthy competitors are less concerned about how they stack up to others, and more interested in stretching into new realms of personal potential.”
ENTITY Academy mentors and mentees understand this. At ENTITY, dozens of brilliant journalism interns work diligently every day on their articles, hoping to use their publications as a means to attract employers. Yet, although the majority of interns are striving for similar things, no one yearns for the failures of their colleagues; instead, they applaud their colleague’s successes, proud of every article they publish.
What’s particularly interesting here is that unhealthy competition, where one not only wants to win but wants their opponent to lose in inglorious fashion, was not needed for each individual’s drive. In fact, the lack of unhealthy competition at ENTITY seemed to make people work not only harder, but smarter.
I attended a film school that was a notable contrast to this. There, the screenwriting faculty publicly debased directing faculty to their students. This then filtered down to their students, who not only loathed the directors but started competing against one another. Screenwriting workshops eventually became irrelevant, for students were giving notes on their colleague’s scripts not to help them with their stories, but so that the writer who was receiving the notes looked worse in the eyes of their teacher. How then could anyone take the notes seriously? It was not constructive criticism, it was counterproductive competition.
As a CAA agent (who wishes to remain anonymous) once told me, “We are skeptical of repping students coming from that school because, in the last few years, these students come into meetings and talk poorly about their own colleagues. We do not want to work with people like that.”
ENTITY Academy does not have this problem. Instead, their interns support each other and, in so doing, support themselves. They write their truths without concern of if their colleagues’ truth is “better.” And, if it is, ENTITY Academy interns congratulate their colleagues and then work harder to make their own stance stronger. For, as these interns understand, supporting the accomplishments of their colleagues allows them to accomplish greater things themselves. “All for one, one for all.”
At the Raptors Versus Golden State Warriors NBA Finals, Warriors player Kevin Durant was wounded and forced to bench. The Toronto fans, knowing this would only aid in the Raptor’s win, cheered. The Raptors then did something extraordinary and told their fans to stop cheering: we want to win, yes, but we also do not want to root for the harm of our competitors.
Like the Raptors, ENTITY Academy exhibits healthy competition. They support their colleagues, appreciate their competition and, in so doing, come out as the clear winners.
