Is Competition Killing Your Workplace?

Avoid the pitfalls of competitive behavior with these 4 strategies

While competing and comparing are part of everyday life, it isn’t necessarily the right move for you, your company, or employees.

In fact, research shows that while some thrive on competition, for at least half of us, it can be a source of disengagement, anxiety, and can give rise to making unethical business choices just to get ahead.
 

While it’s often debated that there is an upside to being competitive, spending time worrying about what others are doing, constantly judging and measuring yourself against others, and getting stuck in a win/lose mentality are actually the fastest ways to destroy innovation and creativity in business and amongst staff.

Here are 4 ways you can foster a more innovative environment in business and avoid the pitfalls and negative impacts of competition:

Focus on You, Not Others

A major trap of competitive thinking is it focuses you on what others are doing, and then trying to do the same, just better. What is highly effective for one person can actually be limiting or completely ineffective for another. Rather than worrying about what everyone else is doing, put attention on recognizing your individual strengths and talents and exploring how to leverage them to create greater outcomes in your role, team or division. You can ask yourself, “What is different about me and what can I do that no one else can?”

Let Your Own Values Lead You

Some businesses try to incentivize staff performance through rewards, bonuses or the promise of gaining credit amongst peers, but for many, external motivation is an ineffective method of inspiring productivity. Values are highly personal, so it is important to develop self-awareness of them and allow them to lead and inform the actions you take in business. What are your values in business? What kind of differences do you desire to make? Are your current choices congruent with your values and are they making the impact you desire? If not, what would you need to change or do differently? Trying to live by other people’s values and standards aren’t sustainable or enjoyable. It’s much more effective to be true to yours. 

Stop Judging and Comparing

The biggest killer of creativity and innovation is judgment. The more time you spend obsessed over whether you are making the right or wrong decision, or whether you are outperforming your colleagues, the more distracted you are from generative strategies and practices that would inspire you to accomplish greater. Switch off judgment by fuelling curiosity. Ask questions like, “What else is possible or available that I’m not aware of yet?” and “What am I capable of that I’ve never considered before?” to flip into a creative mindset. Questions will ignite innovation. Judgment will destroy it.

Trust Yourself

Competitive behavior can not only kill your business spirit, it can affect you on a deeper personal level, creating stress, inner conflict, and undermining confidence in your own choices.  Looking to others for the answers and solutions to your own success will never work as well as trusting your own instincts and doing what you know will work best for you. Ask questions, listen to experts and mentors, gain information about what works for others, but always trust yourself to choose what creates the most. After all, no one else knows you as well as you do!

Lastly, it’s important to recognize that competition is ultimately a myth. Every business and every individual is essentially on their own playing field – no two people are the same, so trying to compete with another is quite a futile activity, and it detracts from the differences, advantages, and opportunities that each person has available only to them.

Everybody has a unique set of experiences, expertise, perspectives, and insights that can be accessed and enhanced with the right approach. Encourage non-judgment, curiosity, implement strategic questions to develop the innovative mindsets, and you will more easily gain the “competitive” edge you’ve been seeking.

Author Bio

 

Kazuhiro Hosoya is a business and speaking coach, counselor and hypnotherapist. Growing up in a small town in Tochigi, Japan, he became fascinated with self-expression, communication, and the human mind. For the last 11 years, Kazuhiro has been a certified trainer for the American NLP Association, coaching people in business and communication. He is also a certified Being You facilitator, a special program from Access Consciousness, helping open his clients up to endless possibilities in business, careers and relationships. Visit www.kazuhiro-hosoya.com