Many of us spent a glorious evening last weekend watching the Lionesses (England Woman’s Football team) finally ‘bring football home’ by winning the European Championship. If you don’t watch or have no interest in football this is significant as it’s the first Championship win for any English football squad in my lifetime and something that the male side failed to replicate last year. Listening to some of the commentary made me reflect on the power of winning to support change and why outside of sport sometimes winning can make some of us feel so uncomfortable.

I’m going to put this out there. I get called competitive A LOT. If I’m in, I’m all in. Not for the winning but for the being part of the process. For me it’s all about the learning and the growth. I’m not therefore so competitive with other people but I have a tendancy to, perhaps, push myself a little hard. I come from a family of super competitive siblings, my brother cannot stand to lose and my sister was a superwoman,  she was going to start a PhD with a newborn afterall. So I suppose I grade on a curve and when compared to them I was always the one who was happy to lose at cards/games. Still, I was raised in an environment where every dinner discussion was basically debate club and so I carry that with me.

Growing up in this environment means that being competitive is a trait in myself that I’m not particularly comfortable with. Frankly I don’t think it’s a very attractive part of my personality. It does mean that I can single mindedly focus on task though, which has advantages for exams etc. It was interesting therefore for me to see the winning of something being talked about as a really positive thing, not just for the winners, but to enable and support change. Change not just in attitudes but in the way things actually work. I’ve always told myself it’s the taking part that counts (and I stand by this) but is winning something that does enables us to achieve change beyond ourselves? If it does, is this something we should think differently about and actively use more if we are fortunate enough to have it happen to us?

Winning can be seen as superficial achievement, but is it?

Winning something, especially on a large scale, has the capacity to change us. I’ve been thinking about the difference that change makes in us that might enable us to then support the wider change we want to see elsewhere.

There are some people who have an innate confidence that they are where they need to be, there are others who are over confident and come off as arrogant. For the vast majority of people I speak to however, we spend a lot of time striving and reaching to feel like we deserve to be where we are and to belong. It struck me whilst I was watching how much these girls are likely to be the same as me. There’s been a lot of ‘well they are only girls’ and ‘when it comes to it they’ll crumble’. When you’ve spent year after year hearing words like that, I’m not sure that winning is superficial.  I know that for me having concrete markers of achievement, especially when given by or measured against my peers, really helps me feel like im doing something right and increases my sense of purpose and belonging. We shouldn’t need external reinforcement but when you have worked so hard having that acknowledged by those you benchmark against matters. It can change the way you feel about yourself and quieten some of those inner voices of doubt, at least for a while. That change in ourselves can embolden us to action,  to feel more able to make the change for others, to feel worthy enough to enter the fight. So maybe winning isn’t as superficial for some of us than I had previously thought.

Why does visibility matter?

‘You can’t be what you can’t see’ (or become aware of to be less ableist)…….for me one of the amazing bi-products of this game is that I am writing this blog or more widely that people are talking about it. I’m a Aston Villa fan so I am used to supporting teams that win little and I am certainly not the kind of girl who switches her loyalties in order to follow success. I do get however that winning draws people in. There will be a lot of people who have never watched women’s football who watched that game. There will be a lot of people who don’t normally watch football, or maybe sport at all, who watched that game. Those people who aren’t normally reached, who aren’t normally impacted are now part of a conversation that might have happened anyway but with much smaller numbers. Winning may not just have changed the conversation but also changed the reach of that conversation. Girls who may not have thought that sport was a career option for them will now know that it is something that could be on the list. Wider than that though, girls who have heard that they will never be able to compete on the same stage as men in general will now have evidence that is just not true. The change that can be born out of that one moment in history has the capacity to impact beyond sport and that really matters.

Why am I sometimes ashamed of winning?

Worse than being seen as superficial, winning can actually be seen as an act of selfishness. I’m sure that this is true for a lot of men too but growing up in a competitive household it was still not seen as a particularly gracious trait to talk about winning, you won and you moved on to the next thing. I think on a wider level there has always been that thing that good girls are seen and not heard, you don’t rock the boat, talking too much about success is seen as rubbing others nose in if rather than a way to inspire others. This hit home for me as last week when the Lionesses won I was in a bit of a quandary about whether to share my own success. I was lucky enough to be on The Pathologist magazines 2022 Power List. This is really nice but also as there aren’t that many Clinical Scientists on it I wanted to share it so that more people are aware of it, so next year when nominations open we can work to get more of us nominated.

It came up on my LinkedIn and I stared at it for ages trying to decide whether resharing it was an act of indulgent arrogance or not. Then I went on the twitter and I saw the joy with which other were sharing their listings.  So I decided the right route was to share and congratulate everyone I saw who was posting as well as my own. That felt right to me as it was about joining in the celebration of others and working together to try and raise awareness of the wonderful scope of our profession and the list itself.

Like all things the why is important

The why, therefore, to me is as important as the winning. Why was I involved to begin with? What were my motivations? Why am I choosing to share or not what the result was? I think one of the things I often challenge myself to do is share as many of those things I fail at as I succeed at. To remind myself that failure is not shameful as it is often where I get my best learning. I have to challenge myself that if failure is not shameful than succeeding should also not be shameful. As long as I’m being equally visible with both then I’m not doing it for the wrong reasons. My reasons for sharing winning and success should never be to stand on a pedestal and go ‘didn’t I do well’ but to stand where I can be seen in order to offer a hand up to others. Sharing success is not an intrinsically selfish act or an act of arrogance that should elicit eye rolling.

The other way that I reflect on whether success is something to be shared is to challenge myself about how I would respond to it if that post was coming from someone else. I love seeing and resharing the success of others on Twitter and other platforms. I get joy from seeing others succeed. If I get to the point where I am not amplifying others, hopefully more than myself, then I would need to really start questioning why I am putting info out into the world. At that point I feel I would have slipped into self congratulation rather than doing it for the right reasons and I hope I would stop and give myself a talking to.

Haters gonna hate

Having said all of the above let’s just get a reality check. Someone is going to hate whatever you do. That’s just the way of the world, especially as you work to raise the visibility of yourselves and others. The Lionesses are already getting grief and are being told that their success is worth less as they are women. In my opinion this is just more reason to celebrate and push for change. I have been told that my success makes others feel uncomfortable and that I’m only a Lead Healthcare Scientist in order to laud my success over others, that I’m all about winning. The thing is that all of that only matters if its true. If it is true then it gives you the opportunity to reflect, to change and grow. If it’s not true then no one else knows your motivations and so they don’t know your why, they therefore can’t really judge the results.

So my thoughts are that winning can be just as important to others as it is for you. Sometimes the winning itself can empower you to make a change happen far more widely than you would have been able to do otherwise, either due to increased visibility or just feeling worthy to have a voice. We will always be judged but that isn’t the reason to not play the game. Just make sure that you take the time to check in with yourself to know that whatever the outcome you’re doing things for the right reason. If you are lucky enough to win, shout about it, celebrate it, just make sure you celebrate others with the same energy and enthusiasm that you use to celebrate yourself.  Winner is not a dirty word.

Anyway, I’m off to the Commonwealth Games this weekend to see more amazing individuals push themselves, break records and win. I may reflect a little more as I admire everything they’ve given to get to this point and you can be sure I will be celebrating them, win or lose, with every step they take.

All opinions on this blog are my own