Balance your desire to excel with the ability to zoom out and see your progress from a different perspective.

Like the job markets graduates enter, universities and higher education institutions are competitive environments. Students are encouraged to get high grades by the glamour of awards and recognitions, such as cum laude (distinctions). High grades can also assist job prospects. A performance culture follows where students (and teachers) increasingly compete with each other. In these environments, it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters – deeper-level learning about one’s own purpose and identity enabled by designerly knowledge and practice (See principles 1 to 4).

In workshops and observations, we find that many students are often fixated on their performance relative to peers and grades. Students work hard to please – instead of standing boldly for their own design processes and outcomes. These students are also reluctant to share their work (see Principle 5) for fear of giving away some small competitive advantage leading to an erosion of deeper-level learnings in favor of grades or merit.

Principle 6 challenges designers to remain resilient to the performance culture by establishing a healthy relationship and benefiting from a desire to excel, yet keeping enough distance to know when to disconnect.

A good activity to establish this reflexivity is to map out why a performance culture exists using systems mapping. Start by mapping out key actors and structures. Draw lines to show how these actors connect. Think in terms of soft structures such as power, pressure, and expectations, as well as financial relationships. Also, consider pressures at an institutional level. What pressures are on higher education institutions to perform? Eventually, you should be able to see how a performance culture is a function of many relationships. Knowing more about how this environment works will help you step back and disconnect when you need to support your own authenticity or lean in and embrace a competitive edge to drive excellence in your work.