It’s bad practice to be snide about your competition or opposition. The worst way I think that you can do this is to point to someone else’s problems or failings to deflect from your own. I take that back – it’s worse if you do that and are actively fabricating as you go. But none of the above makes you look good, let’s be honest...
I have a standing Saturday night date when I’m in DC with a girlfriend of mine, Sarah. We go to the Iron Horse in Chinatown and we barfly for the evening, catching up and generally just laughing at things and meeting interesting people.
This Saturday night, two guys came over to talk to us. One of them started to talk about hockey. Sarah’s main game is hockey and she’s inducting me into the sport. What will be useful to know before I go on:
- The DC team is the Capitals
- The Philadelphia team is the Flyers
- The winning goalie of a game gets to keep the puck from said game
- The Flyers goalie, as far as I understand it, has been stealing pucks when they lose
So Sarah and this guy are talking hockey and the second guy and I are talking about I don’t know what. I chime back in when the hockey guy raises his voice. He’s from Philly and Sarah thinks the Flyers are thugs. Sarah usually has some grounding to the things she says, thus, when the guy says that’s not the case, she points at some of the ways in which they have been thuggish.
What’s both funny and interesting is the way this guys reacts. At no point does he begin to dispute any of the content of what Sarah’s saying, but keeps saying they aren’t thugs and getting a little more tense around the eyes - and his voice is picking up each time he speaks. You can see the cogs going as he tries to think of bad things to say about the Capitals, Sarah’s team.
Not knowing enough about hockey, I watch this go back and forth for a bit, like a game of ping-pong, nodding here and there when I understand things. Sarah, not remotely riled, talks about the puck stealing - it seems this is pretty dirty by the honour system of ice hockey - and the reaction she gets is comical. You have to picture this in the sort of combined tone of Harry Enfield’s Kevin, but if he were a stereotypical 1980s’ American jock.
He leans in and near-shouts, “Well MAYBE if the Caps ever made it ANYWHERE then they’d…”
I don't remember what he finished the sentence with because I was distracted by how ludicrous the start of it was. Clearly I don’t know hockey too well, but I can spot bunk logic and I felt an overwhelming desire at this point to call shenanigans on the conversation.
I suggested that “Maybe you’d be nasty, too” wasn’t a valid argument. I said I didn’t know hockey, but that I was a Liverpool Football Club supporter and if my team did something really stupid, I’m going to want them to be held accountable, as that’s no way to represent my town. I said I hold my team high enough in my regard that they need to behave with some level of honour and I won’t just defend them blindly. If you want to take pots shots at them, you need to have some sort of rooting in facts, but bring it on – I’m not going to say, “That team over there are way worse than we are, so shut up,” or “Well maybe if you guys didn’t suck you’d start spitting in people’s eyes, too.”
I acknowledge that he may have received a slightly more impassioned point of view because it was 11pm in a bar. On he other hand, maybe not...Either way, I'm guessing the guy hated us both by this point and no doubt was sorry he’d come to talk to us at all. But why am I telling you about some aggressive guy from my Saturday night in a bar? Read on…
For anyone who hasn’t known me that long, I cut my teeth, pretty much straight out of university, as a street fundraiser. I could write volumes on what you learn if that is the right job for you and you do it for a little while - and no doubt I will at some point – but most of what you learn is in fact un-learning. You learn not to take a lot of things personally. You learn to say “I’ve no idea what’s going on in that person’s day, so I won’t judge.” You learn the art of reframing a situation that looks initially terrible and using it to try and get the best out of both it and the people around you. And, a more specific example, you learn that saying bad things about someone else in your field or industry doesn’t create genuine gains for your team.
Street fundraisers get asked things regularly like Why is Concern Worldwide better than Oxfam? Why should I give to Save the Children when I give to the Red Cross? It’s an art (really, I’m not kidding) answering these questions and showing the differences, or the complexities of how two organizations might compliment each other when they work together on the ground, whilst still demonstrating how important it is to give to THIS organization – and without taking the shortcut.
The shortcut is, of course, everyone else sucks. But there is no longevity in that position – and, double blow, it’s just not true, so at some point you’re going to show up as a liar. Bummer.
Any fundraiser worth their salt has unlearnt this shortcut and is pretty familiar with the art form so doesn’t dilly-dally with nastiness about other organizations. As soon as you’re doing that, you look like you don’t have enough faith in your own team. If you don’t believe in the charity you work for, then someone else is unlikely to just because you say they should.
I thought this was worth highlighting, because of course there are various routes to learning/unlearning this lesson, but not everybody has done so or has had the right teacher. And it's probably an ongoing lesson, too. Honestly, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for everyone to have to go do a week of street fundraising, but that’s by-the-by. My point is we’re stronger when we’re not snidey or taking short cuts.
People like when other people claim their mistakes. We know where we stand with them if someone's honest about where they've made mistakes. Often we actually like you more for it. So we should be sticking our flag in the stuff we do wrong and learning from it. I’m not saying it’s always going to be pretty, but it’s generally our best bet.
As the guy walked away from us on Saturday, Sarah looked at me and said, “I wouldn’t have even cared if he’d just said, ‘Yeah, we do play dirty’.”
