Fix Your Team

Chapter 10 UNHEALTHY COMPETITION: Winners and losers

SYMPTOMS

• If you asked the team members what their mantra is, they would likely say, ‘Win at all costs.’
• The team members do not collaborate with or contribute to one another’s work. They are reluctant to share clients or leads, and they fiercely guard market intelligence.
• Employees have been known to undermine one another, even at the expense of the team’s achievement of its goals.
• Long work hours are very common.
• They seek out specific projects with recognisable ‘wins’ — projects they believe will get them ahead of their peers — but they are reluctant to volunteer for any other work.
• Team members fawn over the manager, constantly praising their boss’s skills and approach (no one is that good!). They ingratiate themselves with whomever they perceive to have power in the organisation.
• In private conversations with the manager, employees criticise colleagues’ work performance when it is barely relevant.

WHAT’S GOING ON

Healthy competition can be a great motivator, inspiring people to perform at their best, energising them, increasing productivity and creativity, and multiplying the successes of the whole team. Competition that is cooperative sees employees working together to achieve, making the team greater than the sum of its parts.

At its most extreme, however, competition can actually do the opposite. It can give rise to a ‘dog eat dog’ mentality where employees will go to extreme lengths to outdo one another. Unhealthy ...