Competition in an Office may not be as good as you think it is
Organisations are very interesting places. You see a myriad of events taking place every single day, no matter how big or small they are. It’s such a great opportunity for leaders to learn from these events. A critical skill to learning is to keep an open mind. Having an unbiased outlook allows people to see more clearly. Suddenly you will be exposed to so much more that you would’ve missed otherwise. I want to touch upon a critical issue within organisations today — competition.
We celebrate the best performer and often overlook how they got there
Leaders are under the belief that the best teams are made when you get people to compete with one another. We celebrate the best performer and often overlook how they got there. It is clouded by images of more throughput, more creativity, greater ideas and what not! Not that you should not compete, it’s just that you risk going into negative competition. People are in a slugfest to make themselves look good by making others look bad. They start to wish that the other person fails, his/her project fails and everything bad happens to him/her just so that they look good. The organisation’s interest is completely sacrificed. There’s so much negativity that people who have a genuine interest in learning quit because they don’t want to get caught in all this.
If you think about why we are where we are, we have to look back upon the evolution of individuals. Let’s take our education system — all your life you’ve been told that you need to get ahead no matter what. It’s all idealistic. MY GRADES, MY WORK, MY _____. People need to learn to work as teams. It’s quite critical for organisations, people have to realise that they’re all in this together and they have to deliver as a unit for everyone to be successful. I don’t want to give away any idea that we should be OK with underperformance. It’s a completely different topic and we’ll talk about that some other time. We have to realise we make each other successful.
Leaders need to help people rely on each other. Creating that environment is the leaders’ responsibility. When everybody competes, the organisation is dead. This specific reliance on one another allows people to be more open and accepting. People will start to credit one another for the help, they will be able to give feedback with candor, they can take over when someone is unwell, and so many other countless things happen not just between good friends within the org but with almost everyone in the team. It just cuts the negativity.
As leaders, parents, teachers, we need to make sure that there is increased focus on working and delivering as a unit. This change in individual behaviour is critical to building, scaling and delivering as a high performance team.
As leaders, parents, teachers, we need to make sure that there is increased focus on working and delivering as a unit.
I’ve been procrastinating writing articles. I hope I write more articles at-least from now on. It helps me get my thoughts out and learn from the community. With all your support, I’m confident there will be more content I will produce. I want to thank everyone who pushed me to write this article. Big thank you to Bipasha for the illustrations!
