The Surprising Why Some Leaders Outlast the Rest
- Heather Lyon
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Hello,
When I was a kid, my older sister Brooke and I sometimes got into physical fights. If I picked a fight with her, she almost never hit me back. Instead, she would say, "I'm going to go tell." That sentence terrified me more than anything else. I would immediately beg her, "Hit me! Hit me!" because that felt safer. If she hit me, we were even. Balanced. Settled. At peace.
What mattered to me was the sense of matching her response to my action. One offense, one consequence. Tit for tat.
Brooke wasn’t interested in playing the physical version of the game, but she still balanced the equation. Her choice to tell our mom restored the symmetry I was desperate to control. We both engaged in our own form of tit for tat, just with different tools.
Of course, I didn’t understand then that treating every conflict as something that must be “evened out” is the exact trap that keeps many adults, teams, and organizations stuck.
I was reminded of this recently during a presentation by my friend Dean Ramirez, Assistant Superintendent in Orchard Park, who took us from childhood logic straight into game theory and the prisoner’s dilemma.
Understanding the Prisoner’s Dilemma
Before discussing Dean’s research, it helps to understand the basic structure of the prisoner’s dilemma. Two individuals must choose, independently, whether to cooperate or "defect," meaning they act in ways that prioritize their own immediate advantage over the shared good. Their outcomes depend entirely on the combination of their choices. Mutual cooperation benefits both. Mutual defection harms both. If one cooperates while the other defects, the defector gains and the cooperator loses.
The dilemma exposes a fundamental tension. Cooperation creates the best outcomes in the long run, yet the fear of being taken advantage of often pushes people toward retaliation. It is a short-term mindset that erodes trust over time.
To see this in action, Dean showed a clip from The Bachelor Pad, where two finalists had to decide whether to share or keep the prize money. Remember, for them both to win, they both had to say, "share." If one person said "share" and the other said "keep," the person who said "keep" would keep the money. If they both said, "keep," neither would get any money. Those were the three options. Want to see how it played out in real time? Watch the video below from 1:07:43 to 1:11:56.
Spoiler Alert: One chose to share. The other chose to keep. The one who chose "share" walked away empty-handed, while the one who said "keep" won the money. A perfect example of cooperation punished in a single round.
But Dean’s presentation wasn’t about a single round. It was about what happens across repeated interactions, which is where things become much more interesting.
The Bird Continuum: Six Ways of Responding in Repeated Games
Before modeling repeated interactions, Dean pointed out that most of us already understand the symbolism of doves representing peace and hawks representing war. Those two birds sit at opposite ends of a familiar continuum. Wanting to expand the metaphor, Dean researched birds that demonstrated behaviors falling between those extremes, creating a richer and more nuanced spectrum. Eventually, he developed a continuum of six birds, each representing a different pattern of cooperation and defection.
In this framework:
Tat = cooperation (also known as choosing not to defect)
Tit = defection, meaning prioritizing one’s own immediate advantage over the shared good
The birds fall into six types:
Doves always cooperate, no matter what.
Robins cooperate twice before retaliating once.
Blue jays follow classic tit for tat, matching cooperation or retaliation one for one.
Swans retaliate twice for each cooperation they receive.
Roosters retaliate three or more times for each cooperation.
Hawks retaliate regardless of how cooperatively they are treated.
These strategies represent real tendencies found in workplaces. Some people always try to be kind. Some match behavior exactly. Some escalate. Some retreat. Some attack.
Given these six different approaches, Dean asked the audience, "Which strategy (species) will win (survive) through an infinite number of competed rounds?" and "Which of the six strategies will become extinct (lose) first?" The answer is below, but before I reveal it to you, what are your predictions and why?
The Outcomes: Which Strategy Endures?
If I were to guess your prediction, I'd assume you picked one of the defecting strategy birds. That seems logical. We often hear phrases like, "Nice guys finish last." Nobody wants to be seen as a pushover, which is how the cooperative strategy birds might be viewed.
Dean ran a simulation in which all the birds competed in repeated rounds and here's where things get interesting.
After 1 round, the robin takes a narrow lead.
After 45 rounds, the hawk died out. The robin maintains the lead.
After 48 rounds, the rooster died out. The robin maintains the lead.
After 63 rounds, the swan died out. The robin maintains the lead.
After 2250 rounds, the blue jay died out. The robin maintains the lead.
After 10,000 rounds, both the dove and the robin are still alive, but the robin maintains an impressive 4:1 lead.
This surprised almost everyone in the room, because the robin is not the strongest bird, nor the most protective, nor the most retaliatory. The robin’s pattern is steady: cooperate twice, then retaliate once if necessary. It is generous, but not naïve. It is patient, but not endlessly permissive. If the robin could talk, it might say, "Don't mistake my kindness for weakness."
Only after presenting the results did Dean share his original prediction. He had expected blue jays to last the longest. Blue jays deliver a clean, immediate consequence for misbehavior. One slip, one response. To him, that seemed fair and effective. He said that he wanted to show those who retaliated that their retaliation would not be tolerated because he wanted cooperation. Ironically, his retaliation behavior contradicted the cooperative culture he said he wanted.
Why Tit for Tat Fails in the Long Run
This is where the lesson becomes powerful. Tit for tat feels intuitive. It feels just. It feels like the responsible thing to do. But in repeated relationships, it creates a brittle system. One misstep triggers immediate retaliation. Mistrust grows quickly. Cooperation collapses. No one has room to recover from a mistake.
In contrast, the robin approach gives people a chance to self-correct. It values the long-term relationship over the short-term scorecard. It is the only strategy that sustains cooperation far beyond isolated moments.
Connecting Adam Grant and Simon Sinek
Adam Grant’s research in his book Give and Take adds another dimension to this. He found that the worst performers in organizations are often extreme givers who never protect themselves. Yet the best performers are also givers, just not self-sacrificing ones. They are generous, but they set boundaries. They extend trust, but they are not oblivious.
Grant describes them as “otherish givers,” which looks remarkably similar to the robin pattern: cooperative, but with limits.
Simon Sinek’s concept of the infinite game, from the book with the same name, deepens this further. Sinek argues that in leadership, the goal is not to win a single exchange. It is to keep playing, to build cultures of trust, and to create environments where people feel safe enough to collaborate. Finite players obsess over being right in the moment. Infinite players invest in relationships that endure. This parallels the robin approach, which prioritizes ensuring that the relationship of cooperation emerges as the winner even if the issue of the moment takes a temporary hit.
Viewed together, Grant and Sinek point to the same truth the robin embodies. Winning is not about defeating others. Winning is about sustaining trust. Winning is about extending grace without abandoning responsibility. Winning is about building relationships that outlast conflict.
Back to Brooke
With this in mind, I now see that both Brooke and I were using a basic tit for tat framework as kids. Whether through physical retaliation or by telling an authority figure, each of us relied on a form of balancing mechanism to even the score. Whether she hit me back or told our mom, the point was the same: restore balance. But if either of us had behaved more like a robin, the dynamic would have looked very different. For example, if Brooke had overlooked my first two annoyances or provocations and only responded with a consequence if I kept pushing, I would have clearly experienced both her generosity and her boundary. That simple, predictable pattern could have softened the immediate conflict while strengthening the relationship over time. The immediate issue might still have resulted in someone taking a hit, literally or figuratively, but the long-term relationship would have benefited because the focus would have been on preserving cooperation rather than evening the score.
The tit for tat mindset, common in childhood conflicts where the goal is to settle the score, does not translate well into adult environments. Childhood instincts do not scale into professional settings that depend on trust, collaboration, and psychological safety. Adults do not thrive in workplaces that treat every misstep as something that must be retaliated against. Tit for tat cultures breed defensiveness, fear, and constant scorekeeping. They keep people focused on fairness in the moment rather than success over time.
The Real Takeaway
In life and leadership, the goal is not to win a single exchange. It is to create conditions where healthy collaboration can continue far into the future. The research is clear. Over an infinite series of interactions, the individuals who succeed are the ones who give a tit for every two tats. They extend trust more than once. They offer grace. They set boundaries without abandoning kindness.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal." His words remind us that strength is often found in choosing peace over retaliation and in prioritizing what keeps us moving forward together.
~Heather
P.S. This week’s Catch of the Week lines up perfectly with the themes in my post about tit for tat, robins, and what actually sustains cooperation over time. If you want to see how you tend to show up in relationships, take Adam Grant’s “Give and Take” quiz. It quickly identifies whether you’re a giver, taker, or matcher—three roles that echo the bird strategies I wrote about. It’s fast, revealing, and a great companion to this week’s reflection on generosity, boundaries, and long-game leadership.
P.P.S. Please remember to...
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