Being Too Competitive

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Photo courtesy of NST

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 taking 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?
In business, we are all playing an infinite game; it is not something that can be won. Understanding the difference between infinite games and finite games can help reshape the mindset of leaders and team members about how they define success. Aiming to achieve 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. 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 they could just withhold information from others because they feel it gives them an advantage. 
The concept of being overly competitive and the realization that you are holding yourself and your team back is real and steps have to be taken to combat them. An excellent idea shared can be applied in any business environment to help ensure that the competition is not inside you or within your own company.
There can be tremendous value in being competitive, or at least have 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 team leader, regional leader, or above, the competition should not be inside your own company. We all strive to be the best but that only matters if everyone within the company is finding success, and the company as a whole is reaching the objectives that have been defined as most important.
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