No culture raises its children to be sore losers: someone who cannot admit defeat, makes excuses, challenges the final results.
Americans certainly do not like a sore loser. Instead, they respect a losing political candidate, sports team, work colleague who admits defeat, neither blames others, nor complains about the election, game or job being „unfair.“
In fact, in America many a (temporary) loser has come back to become a winner, primarily because they blamed themselves, looked at their own errors, and then corrected them. And they remained persistent.
The converse is the gracious winner: the person, team or organization which does not boast, brag or celebrate in an exaggerated way. Most importantly, gracious winners go out of their way to compliment, even praise, their opponent. Gracious winners stay small, don‘t puff themselves up. Modesty.
Sore: causing pain or distress; painfully sensitive; tender, hurt or inflamed so as to be or seem painful; attended by difficulties, hardship, or exertion; angry, irked. From Middle English sor, from Old English sār; akin to Old High German sēr sore and probably to Old Irish saeth distress.
Gracious: marked by kindness and courtesy, tact and delicacy; characterized by charm, good taste, generosity of spirit, and the tasteful leisure of wealth and good breeding. Latin gratiosus, enjoying favor, agreeable, from gratia.
The right to a speedy trial, the American expectation that conflicts within teams are resolved quickly, can indeed lead to judgements passed which are not ideal, optimal, right or even just.
Americans make decisions quickly, often hastily. But, if the decisions are narrow in scope – have been isolated – then they can be revised. There is time for reconsidering and revision. The parties involved in the decision can be brought back in.
This same logic applies to the American judicial system. It allows anyone sentenced in a court to appeal that sentence. An appeal is when the accused (and sentenced) can take their case from a lower to a higher court for review.
In the American business context, a team member who believes that the judgement is wrong, or the conflict resolution process was unfair, can ask to have that decision reviewed by next-level management or by a neutral third party within the company, typically the human resources department.
Not many people know of the great friendship between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, at their time the world’s greatest boxers.
June 19, 1936. In famed Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. The American Joe Louis versus the German Max Schmeling. Their first of two fights. Louis undefeated 24-0 and never knocked down, hits the canvas in the twelfth round. The fight is over.
Round 12 starts at 27:27. At 29:27 Louis is defenseless. He goes down. The referee ends the fight. Schmeling rushes over to help Joe Louis. Schmeling stays with Louis all the way over to his corner of the ring. Schmeling’s people have to literally pull him away from Joe Louis.
Among the attendees of the fight was Langston Hughes, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance and a noted literary figure. Hughes described the national reaction to Louis’ defeat in these terms:
“I walked down Seventh Avenue and saw grown men weeping like children, and women sitting in the curbs with their head in their hands. All across the country that night when the news came that Joe was knocked out, people cried.”
Poet and author Maya Angelou, recounted her recollection. A young Angelou had listened to the fight over the radio in her uncle’s country store in rural Arkansas. While Louis was on the ropes,
“My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another black man hanging on a tree …. this might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than the apes.”
June 22, 1938 – two years from the day Louis had won the world heavyweight title – the fighters meet once again in a sold-out Yankee Stadium in New York City.
Louis defeats Schmeling in the very first round. Knowing what a true and loyal friend Schmeling was to become to Joe Louis at the end of Louis’ life, it breaks your heart to see how helpless Max Schmeling was in the final seconds of this first round.
After retiring from the ring, Schmeling purchased a Coca- Cola bottling and distribution franchise in Hamburg in 1948, the first in Germany after World War II.
Schmeling reached out and developed a friendship with Louis after their boxing careers ended and provided financial assistance to his former foe in the 1950s. He also paid for part of the funeral arrangements when Louis died in 1981. Max Schmeling was one of the pallbearers.
“It wasn’t until after World War II that I saw him again,” Louis said in his autobiography. “We hugged each other and we’re real friendly and kept in touch by phone.”
The battles between Louis, a black man, and Schmeling came to symbolize for some the coming struggle between Hitler’s Third Reich and the Allies in World War II. Although Hitler had praised Schmeling after the first fight, Schmeling was not an admirer of the German leader and refused to join the Nazi party.
Schmeling, who served as a German paratrooper in World War II, later received an award from the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation for risking his life to hide two Jewish brothers during the Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, when Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were attacked and destroyed by Nazis.
The boys, Henri and Werner Lewin, made their way to the U.S., where Henri became a hotel owner. Schmeling kept his act of courage secret. Henri Lewin revealed it at a dinner honoring the former champion in 1989:
“He risked his life for us. Our lives weren’t worth a penny,” Lewin said in a 2002 interview with the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California. “I said, ‘If this is a Nazi, he’s a good Nazi. But I want you to know one thing: I wouldn’t be sitting here today if it wasn’t for this Nazi.'”
Max Schmeling never joined the Nazi Party.
August 9, 1973. Legendary boxers and great friends, Max Schmeling and Joe Louis meet in New York, as Schmeling arrives for visit.
This History Channel documentary is well worth watching.
Lex Fridman interviews Jeff Bezos about making decisions:
YouTube comments:
“I think this is very liberating for perfectionists, most decisions are not permanent and you can pick another door if necessary, if they are one way door decisions then you can allow for some perfectionism.”
“I’m the same age as Bezos. Also studied engineering and moved into management. What he’s talking about is, basically, exactly what we were taught in our control systems engineering classes back at university. Almost all engineer managers of our age group say the same thing.”
“I think everyone fails to understand the message of this discussion. It’s not about decision-making mechanisms, it’s about truth-seeking and the idea that no matter what the debate is about the objective should always be to try to get as close as possible to the truth to make the decision that resembles closest to the truth. That’s the whole point of this conversation, to leave the ego aside and search for truth.”
Revanchism, from French revanche or revenge, is a term used since the 1870s to describe the desire to reverse territorial losses by a country after losing a war. Revanchist politics rely on the identification of a nation, of a people, with a nation-state. This mobilizes ethnic nationalism, claiming territories outside of the state where members of the ethnic group live.
See the strong desire during the French Third Republic to regain Alsace-Lorraine from Germany after defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. French Emperor Napoleon III had declared and lost the war. In the Treaty of Frankfurt, France lost Alsace-Lorraine, which France under King Louis XIV had previously annexed from Germany in the 17th century.
French revanchism was one of the forces behind the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I. Alsace-Lorraine went back to France. Blame for the outbreak of the the Great War was pinned solely on Germany. Huge reparations were extracted from the Germans.
The United States Congress rejected the Versailles Treaty, citing its harsh, unfair and one-sided punishment of Germany, and warning against the inevitable development of German revanchism.
Alsace-Lorraine. Just one piece of territory in dispute between two neighbors. One of many examples in European history. Their experience as a people, their historical consciousness, has taught the Germans to seek lasting resolutions to conflicts. Acceptance, freely chosen, is the foundation.
The Germans believe that moderation can succeed only if it makes clear to all parties involved that there will be no naming a winner and a loser.
Naming one side the loser is a guaranty that the conflict resolution will not hold, that the „losing party“ will seek to roll back, revise, reject the resolution. True acceptance, real stability, can be achieved only if both parties come away accepting a compromise.
Akzeptieren. Latin acceptare, to accept, take on, allow, approve, recognize; to come to agreement with someone; to accept an apology, a recommendation, an idea.
The Germans believe that moderation can succeed only if it makes clear to all parties involved that there will be no naming a winner and a loser.
Naming one side the loser is a guaranty that the conflict resolution will not hold, that the losing party will seek to roll back, revise, reject the resolution. True acceptance, real stability, can be achieved only if both parties come away accepting a compromise.
Akzeptieren. Latin acceptare, to accept, take on, allow, approve, recognize; to come to agreement with someone; to accept an apology, a recommendation, an idea.
In the U.S. a true and lasting resolution is attainable only when a clear decision is made. Americans don’t have of a problem with one party winning and the other losing. “You win some, you lose some.” Examples
In Germany a conflict resolution is successful when accepted by all parties involved. There is little tolerance for solutions that create winners and losers. Germans aim for mutually beneficial outcomes. Examples
In Germany a conflict resolution is successful when accepted by all parties involved. There is little tolerance for solutions that create winners and losers. Germans aim for mutually beneficial outcomes. Examples
American Approach
In the U.S. a true and lasting resolution is attainable only when a clear decision is made. Americans don’t have of a problem with one party winning and the other losing. “You win some, you lose some.” Examples
American View
German management is easily perceived as unwilling or incapable of making the tough „judgement calls“. A resolution in which all parties are winners, is not a decision. The conflict is not resolved. It festers. The team suffers.
German View
The labeling of one side „the loser“ breeds shame, anger, animosity. The „loser“ will seek to undermine the judgement made. The conflict is not or not fully resolved. It festers. The team suffers.
Advice to Germans
You lead Americans. Make a decision. It may not involve a compromise, but a clear winner and loser. As long as your decision, and the process it was based on, is fair (just), the „loser“ is not lost.
Again, „You win some, you lose some. It‘s not the end of the world.“ You‘re a German with an American boss. If you „win“ the conflict, do not gloat. The next decision could go against you.
When that happens, you have not lost face. Do not fear being labeled a loser for life. Conflicts of interest are commonplace. Accept the decision and move on.
Advice to Americans
You lead Germans. You have arrived at a decision. Even if there is a clear winner and lose, think carefully how you will communicate it. Prevent any kind of triumphalism on the part of the winner.
Soften the blow for the „loser“. The conflict is not resolved by the decision alone. How it is communicated (perceived) influences whether it is accepted and supported.
Your German manager assisted to a resolution in your favor. Fine. Make peace with your opponent. Help him/her save face. No triumphalism.
It didn‘t go in your favor? Make peace with your opponent. Help him/her to help you save face. But, don‘t accept any triumphalism.