Being Too Competitive Can Have a Negative Impact on the Team

Competition can take on many different meanings. Being competitive is equally as challenging to pinpoint from a definition standpoint. In their purest forms, we understand them clearly. We compete with others for business. In today’s world, Amazon is a competitor or competition for nearly everyone. Frequently though, who the competition is can become muddy and even cause confusion.

Having or even creating healthy competition can be a positive thing, but taken too far can actually begin to work against you, especially when your personal competitiveness is the cause.

Something to Consider

To some, this next statement may seem blasphemous: not everyone is hyper-competitive. That may seem hard to believe, but not everyone is driven to beat other people at what they do. People also respond to and recognize competitions differently. As a leader, it is our role to understand how best to connect and influence peers, co-workers, or team members. It is also important to understand what generates the need for competition.

What motivates competition?

If you see yourself or someone else as ultra-competitive, what drives that? Is it truly a feeling of needing to be the best? Is it a personal response to the other person or business that you want to beat them? Competition is often driven by fear. Fear that not being the top performer will result in less status or worse, termination. In most cases, those are not rational drivers when you take a step back, even though they may be very real in the minds of the individuals.

What are you competing against?

“I want to win.” “We need to win this quarter.” Those are common statements you may hear from any retail leader at any level. But what do they mean? What is winning? Is it to achieve a specific goal? Is it to beat the competition? Without a clear definition of what winning is, it is hard to achieve that success. And even then, is it really winning?

Simon Sinek has recently published The Infinite Game. In his book, it speaks to this subject. In business, we are all playing an infinite game; it is not something that can be won. There are several videos available as well, where Sinek describes his thoughts on this subject. Understanding the difference between infinite games and finite games can help reshape the mindset of leaders and team members about how they define success. I believe aiming for achieving success at specific milestones will lead to better long-term results, versus trying to win any particular point in time or beat a competitor. Ultimately we are working to help ourselves reach what is most important to us as individuals or collectively as a team.

Collaboration instead of competition

Working together or collaborating can produce some of the same positive effects, if not more, as ‘beating’ someone seen as a competitor. A Carnegie Mellon study showed that the same ‘reward response’ received from winning can be found in even larger amounts when working together with someone else. Instead of seeing colleagues as the competition, work together towards something bigger. The benefits can be exponential for the individuals involved and your business as a whole.

Are you the problem?

When the leader is the most competitive person on the team, it can lead to conflict, uncertainty, and missed growth opportunities. Most people have experienced situations where the boss needs to be the smartest person in the room. They are always looking at things as a competition. It could be about sales, ideas, or strategy. They may take others’ thoughts and use them as their own. Or it they could just withhold information from others because they feel it gives them an advantage. In a previous article, Innovation is Success. Do You Create an Environment That Motivates Others to Share Their Knowledge?, I wrote about the importance of creating an environment where sharing is the best way to innovate forward. Leaders find ways to connect others together, not pit them against each other.

Not long ago, I came across a Harvard Business Review article that addressed the concept of being overly competitive and the realization that he was holding himself and his team back. In My Competitiveness Was Hurting My Sales Team. Here’s How I Realized It, the author not only shares some of his discoveries of the problem but what steps he took to combat them. The excellent ideas shared can be applied in any environment or business to help ensure that the competition is not inside your own company or store.

There can be tremendous value in being competitive, or at least having the desire to be the best you can be. What we need to avoid is incorrectly defining who the competition is and what we are competing for. Whether you are a store leader, district leader, or above, the competition is not inside your own company. I understand wanting to be the best store or district, but that only matters if everyone is finding success, and the company as a whole is reaching the objectives that have been defined as most important.

How do you manage your levels of competitiveness?

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