The Resilient Entrepreneur, Edition #75
Hi there
I hope you had a great week!
Here are the topics in today's edition:
- Choose Your Battles: A Smarter Way to Handle Conflict
- What Roger Federer Teaches Us About Losing And Winning
Please reach out if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for articles!
Talk soon 👋
Tom
LEADERSHIP FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
Choose Your Battles: A Smarter Way to Handle Conflict
Choosing your battles helps reduce conflict, save energy, and build stronger relationships in leadership, business, and team collaboration.
“When two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary.”
Legend attributes this citation to Winston Churchill. What isn’t a legend, however, is the fact that Churchill championed debate, dissent, and independent thought.
A healthy debate is not just necessary for finding good solutions, but an outright condition. And it’s quite normal for people to get into conflict when trying to find good solutions.
However, some people overdo it. They are in constant conflict in everything they do. That’s exhausting for everybody who needs to collaborate with them.
Let’s look into some patterns and a better approach to conflict management.
Bad Behavior 1: Constant Disagreement
As an active reserve officer in the Swiss Armed Forces, I am also the president of the General Staff Officers’ Association. In that function, I am involved in coordinating with other officers’ associations.
Naturally, each officer’s association cherishes the same purpose, but pursues slightly different interests: Tank guys have different interests from intelligence guys. Logistics people are different than signals people. Yet they are all officers, and they fight for a common cause.
In this context, I have met a guy who constantly disagrees with whatever you say. You could switch your point of view by 180 degrees from one sentence to the next, and he would still contradict.
Super strenuous.
But more than that, valuable counter-arguments are getting lost when somebody constantly disagrees with whatever you say.
Bad Behavior 2: Constant Criticism
As the Founder & CEO at Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, we run a ticket system for our customers to report problems, bugs, and requests.
Pretty normal, you will probably say.
The vast majority of our customers use our ticket system in a pretty normal way. If there is a bug or a problem, they file a ticket. If not, they just use our software and that’s it.
And then there are very few people who are responsible for the majority of the tickets in our system. They report every misalignment of a text field in an admin screen. They send us screen recordings for absolute edge cases. And they create tickets that aren’t bugs, but logical consequences of their overly complex organizational setup.
So far, so good. We often close tickets that are edge cases, only to have those people complain that we shouldn’t close tickets that aren’t done yet. So we leave the ticket open, only for them to complain that the resolution takes too long.
Bad Behavior 3: Multiple Conflicts
Change of scene: Office politics. Everybody who has worked in large organizations knows them.
Recently, I collaborated with somebody who cherished office politics in a special way. In every possible situation, that person started frontal attacks on other people. It seems to be a special form of leadership theory to open as many conflicts as possible at the same time.
The problem with this behavior is that you create unnecessary enemies. And it will be hard to ask those people for a favor or help in the future if you started an unnecessary conflict earlier on.
The Solution: Choose Your Battles
As an entrepreneur, I am used to scarce resources. We never have enough manpower, money, and time to get everything done within the required time.
Conflicts usually take a lot of time and energy. That’s why I live by the mantra of choosing my battles. Even if I don’t always agree 100%, I strive to start as few conflicts as possible.
That makes you more cooperative and likable, which directly translates into more business, more future opportunities, and lower costs.
LIFE HACKS FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
What Roger Federer Teaches Us About Losing And Winning
Losing and winning belong together, says Roger Federer. The secret to turning a loss into a win is to bounce back and push forward.
“I won almost 80% of the 1,526 singles matches I played, but I only won 54% of the points in those matches.”
These were some of the powerful words of Roger Federer in his commencement address at Dartmouth College, where he spoke about his tennis lessons.
Even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half the points they play. And that’s when he learned not to dwell on every shot but think,
“OK, I screwed up, it’s only a point, let’s move on.”
The best are not the best because they win every point, but because they know they will lose over and over again — and have learned to deal with it.
Knowing how to lose is one thing a champion needs to master, but being a champion also requires focus: When you play a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world — but when it’s behind you, it’s behind you. Get over it and move on, even if you have self-doubts. And always remember that your opponents have self-doubts, too.
Let’s leave the world of tennis behind and enter the world of entrepreneurship.
A Deal Is A Point
“The truth is, whatever game you play in life, sometimes you are going to lose a point, a match, or a season.”
As the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, Roger Federer’s words best translate to the sales process.
We have won deals, and we have lost deals. That’s normal in entrepreneurship, just as it’s normal in tennis to lose a point.
Now and then, we have also lost a customer. That hurts more than losing a deal in sales. In tennis speak, losing a customer is more like losing a match.
And to make things worse, you can lose entire verticals or geographical markets. In tennis terms, that’s like losing a season.
I’ve experienced all those situations in my entrepreneurial career. None of those situations was pleasant. But when they were behind me, they were behind me. After every one of those unpleasant situations, I stood up again and focused on winning the next point. Even if I lost that one too, I kept going.
Accept Your Doubts
It’s easy to forget the shadows and doubts when you’re on a winning streak. However, just as no champion is made without losing and having doubts, entrepreneurs go through lengthy valleys of doubt before they can land large deals and other successes.
Social media doesn’t help when you’re lingering in the valley of doubt. One of your competitors will always trumpet their latest achievements on LinkedIn, casting even longer shadows in your pitiful valley of doubt.
There are two things to remember.
First, social media is not life. Being successful on social media is measured in reach, likes, and reposts. Being successful as an entrepreneur is measured in providing value to customers, being able to build and pay a great team, and still turning a profit at the end of the year.
Second, as Roger Federer says, your competitors will have self-doubts from time to time, too. Irrespective of what they post on social media.
Grit Your Teeth
Because there aren’t any fast tracks to becoming a tennis champion or a successful entrepreneur, you’ll have to grit your teeth over extended periods to become successful.
Sports are an excellent way to learn to grit your teeth. What is the tennis court for Roger Federer, are the mountains for me.
I have to grit my teeth on every mountaineering tour at some point. It’s either in a difficult passage in windy conditions or during the descent, when I am getting tired. My knees hurt, my eyes have already had enough sunlight, I feel that backpack on my back, and I’m thirsty.
But gritting your teeth pays off. The beer never tastes better than after returning to your base, sitting on the patio, and looking at the mountain you just climbed.
In entrepreneurship, the beer never tastes better when celebrating a win together with your team after a strenuous period of hard work.
About Me
Growing a company 📈 in uncertain times 🔥🧨 is like running a marathon — it demands grit, strategy, and resilience.
As a tech entrepreneur 💻, active reserve officer 🪖, and father of three 👩👦👦, I share practical insights and write about my experience in entrepreneurship, leadership, and crisis management.
When I’m not solving problems, I recharge and find inspiration in the breathtaking mountains 🏔️ around Zermatt 🇨🇭.
Like what I write? Here are your options:
📌 Share my newsletter with your friends if you like it!
📌 Buy me a coffee if you want to support me!
📌 Check out my eBooks if you want deeper insights!
📌 Check out my blog for all my writing!
