I enjoy a good battle, bringing together all my friends to compete against one another or as a team. Whether its a baseball, football or even a simple board game, a healthy debate enhances our physical or mental prowess and is always healthy and entertaining. The only things that ruins a game is being cheap and out of touch with your teammates or enemies, thats then someone starts attacking and losing the proper understanding of competition.

This competition rings true for the workplace and college as well. While studying for many years in student groups throughout college I realized it was never the painstaking activity of working with my teammates that was frustrating, but instead was the out of touch feeling and problems with intercommunication that made groups lousy and unproductive. Once I started raising my voice to get us all continually on the same page, success began to develop effortlessly.

So how has this competition brewed a painful society in which many people are selfish and unseeingly out of touch? One word: individuality. We are raised to believe this world is an all out fight, neither should we care about others problems, but we don’t even want to hear about them. If your having a child, feeling sick, or just need a day to yourself thats too bad for you, we need to be productive and working to accomplish anything. That is because we think when someone isn’t working, they aren’t being helpful. Our understanding of personal health is all backwards. When we are at our best, everyone benefits. Worst of all we degrade our own lives to this standard. We don’t think it is possible to spend one day on personal health because we will get behind. We think people will see us as weak. We can’t be downgraded by this false sense of merit.

When did this get so out of hand. We are most productive when competition breeds a culture of high workplace standards. If companies compete to keep a talented worker, then there should be equal expectations for flexibility and satisfaction. While it is continually harder to sell ourselves in a competitive market, companies should remember this: longevity, productiveness, representation and happiness all benefit from understanding your workers needs. If you don’t know your employees, or are out of touch with them as people, then only your company will wilt under the heat-lamp of production goals. The goal of every company should be to treat people as they would their teammate, in touch and fairly with cooperation.