Key takeaways:
- Great organizations are built by leaders who ask: What does my counterpart need to win?
- Clients don’t stay loyal because you extracted the maximum value from a transaction. They stay because you helped ensure they had enough to succeed.
- When leaders look into others’ cups to ensure their peers and teams have enough - collaboration, trust and confidence grows.
In this post:
Share this post:
Subscribe:
“I looked in your cup to see if you have enough, and you looked in mine to see if I had more than you.”
It’s a simple phrase, but it exposes a dynamic that quietly undermines teams, cultures, and client relationships more than any lack of talent or strategy ever could. At its core, the phrase contrasts care with comparison.
One posture asks: Are you okay? Do you have what you need to succeed? The other asks: Why do you have more than me? Why do you have more resources allocated?
That distinction matters deeply in business.
Inside the organization
In internal relationships, this mindset shows up when teams stop rooting for outcomes and start tracking scorecards that were never meant to be zero-sum. When leaders look into others’ cups to ensure their peers and teams have enough (clarity, resources, recognition, air cover) collaboration accelerates. Trust compounds. People operate with confidence instead of caution.
But when the focus shifts to monitoring who has more headcount, more visibility, more budget, or more credit, the work narrows. Energy moves away from problem-solving and toward self-protection. Silos harden not because people don’t want to work together, but because scarcity thinking quietly takes hold.
Great organizations are built by leaders who ask, What does my counterpart need to win? Average ones are slowed by leaders asking, Why do they seem to be ahead of me?
With clients
The same principle applies, perhaps even more starkly, in client relationships. Clients can tell immediately whether you’re looking into their cup or watching your own. Are you focused on whether they are getting enough value, insight, confidence, and progress? Or are you fixated on scope, margin, and making sure the exchange feels “even”?
The strongest partnerships are created when clients feel seen, supported, and genuinely prioritized – when they know you’re measuring success by their outcomes, not your upside. And that posture is what creates durable growth and long-term opportunity.
Clients don’t stay loyal because you extracted the maximum value from a transaction. They stay because you helped ensure they had enough to succeed.
Scaling greatness
Scaling greatness – whether in a team, a firm, or a client relationship – requires an abundance mindset that is active, not naïve. It doesn’t ignore accountability or performance; it elevates them by aligning people around shared wins instead of relative positioning.
The question worth asking is simple: Am I spending more time checking whether others have what they need, or whether they have more than I do?
Webinar: Proving Marketing Value
Budgets are tighter. Expectations are higher. And AI is changing how work gets done. In this webinar, we were joined by senior leaders from AllianceBernstein, Franklin Templeton and Citi for a panel discussion on how they are navigating this shift.
Watch the webinar for the full conversation.
Watch now
