Time to read: 2 minutes 

A few weeks ago our founder, Tim Morris, shared some of the leadership advice which he received while working in one of the Perot companies. The last edition was all about feeding the troops first. If you hoard all of the riches for only the highest members of your company, your “troops” or employees will be much less likely to respect you, have lower morale, and generally perform poorer. This week Tim has some words regarding the people you interact with and befriend:

"Surround yourself with winners. When you can’t find any more winners, find people that hate to lose."

It’s simple. We see it throughout our lives in sports as well as business. People that are accustomed to winning usually know how to win. They have the skills, the know-how and the desire. A great way to build a winning team is to find people that are winners. Mr. Perot used to laugh and say if you can’t find winners anymore, find people that hate to lose. I was always ok with seeing someone extremely disappointed when they lost. Certainly those kinds of people don’t want to come in second.

Not only will these teams inherently perform better due to their knowledge and skills but they will also begin to sharpen you individually. It’s been studied over and over, when you surround yourself with people who are actively pushing themselves and improving their skills, you are far more likely to follow suit in some form by pursuing your passions or furthering your worth. Imagine sitting in a room with people who just wanted to play video games all day with no external purpose other than to pass the time as opposed to a group of med school students. The first group will certainly not motivate you themselves to do any work beyond what they are doing and they may even ridicule you for trying too hard. The latter group, while probably very busy, will naturally motivate you simply by doing their own work and furthering themselves.

So, look around you, are you surrounded by winners and go-getters?