Why Underdogs Win (More Often Than They Should)

I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city known throughout the world for two things:

1. Throwing snowballs at Santa Claus, and
2. Its embrace of underdogs.

The Ultimate Underdog Story

When you think about Philadelphians, you should start with this simple fact: our most celebrated sports hero is a fictional character who loses a boxing match to the world’s heavyweight champion. 

That’s right, I’m talking about Rocky Balboa. 

I’m talking about the Italian Stallion. Rocky is the story of a bum fighter who gets picked by sheer luck (and his name is from Italian heritage) and matched against the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world in a fight no one thinks he can win. 

Midway through the movie, however, we see the real motivation behind Rocky’s training to fight Apollo Creed.

Rocky tells Adrian he doesn’t want to win. Rocky tells Adrian he wants to go the distance. He wants to prove to the world that he’s not a bum. 

If he wins, that’d be great. If he loses, he’ll live with it. 

But if he goes the distance, that’s what he believes will prove all the critics wrong. That will prove to himself and others that he is not a bum.

I don’t know if Sylvester Stallone knew something about the human psyche, but it turns out that psychologists are finding out a lot about the power of the underdog narrative. It matches Stallone’s script quite nicely.

Why Does the Underdog Effect Work?

Hope, perseverance, and resilience are all human emotions that go in line with the underdog narrative.  When people think they are underestimated or disadvantaged, they often put in more effort to succeed.

Individuals who adopt the underdog mindset work harder, take more risks, and are likely to face all challenges.

Organizations that understand and relate to it can easily overcome gaps and negativities in the workplace. The goals become opportunities, which can help motivate the team.

So, while setbacks are unavoidable and more like a part of life, they are also the stepping stones for growth and innovation. It all depends on how optimistically you view the situation.

However, by remembering that failure is not a failure, you can set yourself up for success and create an environment that encourages people to take risks and practice resilience without fear of failure.

Psychology and the Underdog Narrative

Recently, there’s been a wealth of attempts to study that underdog narrative and its motivating effect on individuals and teams. Most of the studies have been led by psychologist Samir Nurmohamed at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Nurmohamed devised several scenarios where people were encouraged to adopt an underdog narrative and compared various tasks against a control group. He’s also found that the underdogs are consistently more motivated to perform and often arrive at drastically better outcomes.

One study, for example, recruited people who had been unexpectedly forced to look for new work. Nurmohamed encouraged one group of participants to see themselves as underdogs, as underrated, as if the companies that rejected them didn’t understand the true value they could provide to the organization. That made their future job-seeking a Rocky attempt to prove the doubters wrong. 

He asked the other control group about their work history and followed up with everyone a few weeks later. 

The underdog group was likelier to get interviews and job offers than the control group. Something about that desire to prove past rejections wrong motivated and inspired this group far more than the control group, and they experienced the results to prove it.

In another study, Nurmohamed led participants through a paired negotiation process. Before he did that, he divided them into three groups and gave them some prework. 

One group was told that, based on their education levels and past performance on the pretests, they were expected to do really well in the negotiation even before meeting their partner. 

Another group was told they got a pretty good shot, but they only had even chances of winning against their partner. The last group was told that they were the underdogs, that the researchers weren’t expecting much from them, and that they were probably going lose in the negotiation they were heading into.

When everyone had finished their rounds of negotiations, Nurmohamed and his team found that the underdog group came up with winning solutions much more often. 

The group that was told it wouldn’t win won far more often than expected (or attributable to chance). Moreover, the underdog group won so much because they could think of more creative solutions than participants from the other two groups.

Impact of the Underdog Effect

The underdog effect isn’t just something we find in the lab. Other researchers have found that the underdog narrative powerfully impacts how we see ourselves and our organizations and whether or not we are satisfied and engaged in our work.

One study by researcher Thomas Roulet examined 3,000 full-time French employees who said they were satisfied or dissatisfied with their jobs in a national survey of work and life statistics run by the French government. 

Roulet examined the survey results and found that one big factor in whether or not people were satisfied with their jobs was whether or not the general public had a positive opinion of the company they worked for.

If the public had a positive opinion of the company they worked for, they were more likely to be satisfied. That part is kind of obvious. However, it was interesting that if the public had a negative opinion of their company, it didn’t automatically mean they were dissatisfied. 

Whether or not they were satisfied in their job depended on one crucial factor: whether or not they agreed with the criticism.

If they worked for a company that was seen by the public as less than admirable, and they felt like the public was wrong—bad media coverage, not understanding the industry, or any of a variety of reasons—then they were more likely to be satisfied with the job and proud of the company. Just like underdogs, when workers believe they have received unjustified criticism, they want to prove the haters wrong. 

That’s the core driving force for underdogs. 

Something about unjustified criticism leads to greater motivation, innovation, and satisfaction with the organization you are working for.

I’ve spent over a decade examining the motivating power that organizations can have over individuals. I’ve found that people don’t want just to join a company; they want to join a crusade. 

Perhaps better said, the way to motivate people is to give them a clear and concise answer to the question, “What are we fighting for?”

One of the ways you can answer that question is the Underdog Fight. The fight to prove doubters and haters wrong and show the world what you’re truly capable of is a powerful force—and a potent way to motivate your team.

Netflix – Embracing the Underdog Status

There are so many examples throughout history of leaders embracing that underdog status.

Even in business history, there are countless examples of leaders saying, “You know what? The establishment and the industry don’t believe that we’re a significant player. Our competitors don’t believe that we’re a threat, and we’re going to show they’re wrong.”

My favorite and relatively recent example is the story of how Netflix bounced back from rejection by Blockbuster and defeated basically the entire movie rental industry.

If you’re older than 30, you probably remember that Netflix started not as an Oscar—and Emmy-winning streaming video service but as a DVD-by-mail service. The company was founded because founder Reed Hastings was tired of paying late fees to established players like Blockbuster for not returning his DVDs on time. 

Because DVDs were so light and flexible, they were easy to ship around the country. Customers were given prepaid mailers to send them back whenever they wanted. 

There were no late fees, but you could not receive a new DVD until you returned the old one.

We look back on it as a genius idea, but the market wasn’t so sure at the time. Netflix had some early investors but couldn’t get customers on board fast enough. 

So it was losing money too fast. 

Hastings and the other senior leaders began courting Blockbuster as a potential savior for the company. The idea was that if they could sell themselves to Blockbuster, they could keep everyone employed. However, it would also allow Blockbuster to offer this new DVD-by-mail service.

Blockbuster, however, ignored their courtship attempts for a long time. Finally, they decided they would entertain Netflix’s offer, but they weren’t welcoming. One random day, the CFO’s office in Dallas told Hastings and the company (based in Silicon Valley) that they could meet tomorrow morning. Despite the offensive nature of a short-notice meeting offer made to a company halfway across the country, Hastings and the senior leadership team took them up on the meeting. They chartered a plane that left from California at five in the morning to get to that meeting in Dallas with Blockbuster on time. They presented their case for why Netflix was a beautiful acquisition in that meeting.

They listened as the CFO of Blockbuster arrogantly explained to them how every dot com company was about to implode, how the internet was overrated, and how brick-and-mortar retail would survive for a very long time. 

But when the time came to discuss purchasing the company, the CFO still asked Hastings for a number.

Turning Rejection into Motivation

Reed Hastings quoted him $50 million. It was a non-starter for the CFO. No deal. Blockbuster, a company that would be bankrupt a decade later at the hand of Netflix, had the opportunity to purchase Netflix for $50 million and turned it down. 

In their arrogance as the established players, they believed that brick-and-mortar would be there forever and that tech companies like Netflix were overrated.

Reed Hastings didn’t get $50 million, but I’m willing to bet on that plane ride back.
From that meeting, he realized he had something far more valuable: A true underdog story.

How Netflix has been led ever since seems to leverage that underdog story in new markets. 

They went after the cable television industry once they had proven themselves against movie rentals. Once they had proven themselves there, they went after Hollywood and established television studios. 

You can bet that once they win there, they’ll find a new industry to target and leverage the underdog story to victory.

The story of Rocky Balboa and the lesson of Netflix is that leaders capture a powerful motivational force when they can tell an underdog story. If you can point out how your team has been discounted or underrated and how those critics are wrong, then you can tap into that same motivational force.

That is how underdogs win, or at least why they win more often than they should.

Underdog Success Story: Tesla

You will find countless underdog stories, from small names to large companies like Amazon and Apple, which struggled in the early years and later became global industry leaders.

In all these stories, you will realize that success has less to do with resources or available assets and is more about strategy and persistence. 

Let’s talk about one of my favorite brands, Tesla. Initially, the company faced a lot of skepticism from other automakers and numerous financial challenges. People didn’t know much about electric vehicles then, so accepting them wasn’t easy.

The debate went around how expensive and impractical they were to how unappealing they looked.

Still, Elon Musk stayed focused on innovation and completely transformed the automotive industry. At a point, the company was nearly bankrupt, and Musk had to borrow money from friends to keep things going. 

He had already risked it all by investing a major chunk of his fortune from PayPal into Tesla.

Despite the odds, Tesla became a global leader in electronic vehicles. The Model S claimed its market for its performance, innovative technology, and features. Tesla began delivering on its promises and even started expanding globally, building its Supercharger network.

Musk’s vision to revolutionize energy consumption via solar power and battery storage further boosted Tesla’s position as a leader in the energy sector.

The Underdog Spirit in Everyday Life

The best part about this underdog mindset is that it’s not limited to organizations or workplaces. You can adopt this in your everyday life and get a grip on challenges and obstacles in your personal life, too.

All it takes is a reframed mindset where you view obstacles and challenges as opportunities to grow.

Set achievable goals, and if you encounter any criticism or doubt, use it as fuel to move forward.

At the same time, it’s even more important to surround yourself with supportive individuals who believe in you and celebrate your small successes.

Wrap Up

The underdog spirit is no longer just a narrative. It’s a mindset that drives growth creativity, and leads to extraordinary success and achievements. 

Whether employed in business, sports, or other aspects of life, when you switch from challenges to opportunities, you will see amazing things happen that will make all the difference.