If you’re looking for a source for management and leadership articles, you’ve come to the right place. The most effective to relieve the stress of being a manager is to be able to place trust in your employees. To be able to trust the work they do, is to be satisified that your subordinates are working hard and with focus. The best way to achieve this is to filling your team with energy, and inspiration. In the next week I’ll be writing about a few key strategies to enthuse your teams. Today’s article is on the importance of using the natural competitiveness that is inherent within us all, to create that positive working attitude which will reduce the challenges you face as a manager.

2. How to deal with competitive collegues. Competitiveness is often seen as a negative characteristic; often associated with spite, aggression and dirty handed tactics. However it is also a powerful internal motivator.  Down to our core,  we are very competitive creatures. In life we naturally we have to compete for everything, including jobs, partners and even restaurant tables! We all have a competitive spirit to some extent, although it is more prevalant in certain people than others. Before I divulge the details of this technique, it is important for you to understand that from a managers point of view, there are two types of competitiveness: Positive and Destructive.

‘Positive’ Competitiveness.

This is the element the Team Management technique encourages. This is the competitiveness with remotely distance others or the self. So this includes other companies, ‘society’ as a whole,  and the indivdiual employee. In striving to beat them, employees will positively affect their company. This is because the benefits of succeeding spread to those around you, creating an atosphere of success. This is in contrast with:

‘Destructive’ Competitiveness.

Destructive competitiveness occurs between peers, collegues or friends and family. Where the benefit of beating the opposition is balanced or even outweighed by the serious negative consequences. For instance, heavy competition within a family will alienate those not involved, and generate hatred between those competing. Likewise, a company that promotes heavy internal competitiveness between collegues will see a great increase in inefficiences as collegue begin to withhold infomation from one another or even begin to sabotage each others efforts. In this kind of environment, success is only a selfish gain, and the overall effect is negative. Enron encouraged this level of competitiveness by routinely sacking those who underperformed the benchmark set by their own collegues.

The Technique.

This technique is best learn from an example of its use. And the most effective use of it in my memory was back in sixth form college. After achieving great results in my first business exam, my teach called me over to his room and had a very quick, but memorable chat with me. This is what he had to say:

“These results are outstanding, great work! It reminds me of Lucy. About 3 years ago she was a girl in my class who also did brilliantly in her exams. She wasn’t that nice though – a bit arrogant and up herself y’know, but she ended up getting full marks in her whole qualification. Lucy is the only person to have ever to have done that here, but I really think that you could do it too, while not annoying everyone at the same time! It’d be great to see a well-rounded person like you manage to do it.”

What a perfect thing to say! My teacher had set me a challenge to try and complete. I definately wasn’t going to become complacement and start underacheiving in class now! I was going to try and beat that girl. I badly wanted to get full marks without being ‘arrogant’ about it.

As a direct result of that conversation, I proactively put my effort into my studies for business throughout the rest of my stay at college. What he had said had perfectly done the job my teacher wanted. Simply telling me ‘don’t get complacent’ probably would’ve gone over my head, as I would’ve believed I wasn’t being complacent. Instead of simply directly warning me, he set a touch personal challenge. A challenge that I couldn’t resist accepting due to my inherent competitiveness! It was a perfect combination of challenges that had one great result = dedication on my part.

So if you want to unleash the competitiveness in a positive way within your friends or collegues:

* Give your employees a solid reputation to uphold
* Compare your employees to their external rivals and challenge them to beat them.
* Set your worker a tough goal to meet, and support with praise.

Remembering my warning before about destructive competitiveness;   a ‘rival’ to beat must exist outside of your organisation, or so remote from the individual that there will be no negativity between them. If you successfully set your own friends or team mates challenges such as these, you will fill them with a sense of motivation and enthuasiasm that would only come them taking on a competitive challenge and personally striving to win!

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Tags: Competition, Increasing Focus

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Leadership Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.