The loser of a close game and the winner may have performed almost identically.

In a close match the two performances may be nearly identical, and the outcome divides them into categories that are treated as though they described very different people. Winner and loser is a binary applied to a near-continuum, and everything that follows, the confidence, the reputation, the funding, flows from a very small gap.

So hold outcomes loosely as evidence about quality, both when they go your way and when they do not. Ask how much of the result would survive running the same day again. This is not a way of avoiding accountability; it is a way of learning the right lesson, which is often about process rather than about who you turned out to be.