Competition and Success

I bought a toy for the office on my recent holiday. It’s a whack a mouse electronic game. Besides being a big hit, it quickly became a competitive sport amongst the team.
The need to be good at the game is spurred on because of the flashing electronic scoreboard alerting all involved of their standing. These flashing numbers symbolize a measurable record, to which the players could be compared and found wanting.
One of my coworkers stated that it was just like nursing school where everyone competed over marks. If you weren’t perfect, you were a failure.
So when is competition a good thing and when is it not? Does competition lead to success?
The most common argument I hear in favor of competition is that it spurs people onto excelling. However, whenever we compete against someone there are always winners and losers. Often the loser feels threatened, and the only way to alleviate the threat is to fight back or pretend it doesn’t matter and retreat. So as I see it competing doesn’t always lead to improvements. Sometimes it decreases morale and increases negativity or dissension.
In his recent book "Your Brain at Work" business coach David Rock asks "So where can you get a nice burst of confidence-inducing, intelligence-boosting, performance-raising status around here without harming children, animals, work colleagues or yourself...... by playing against yourself."
There might be some argument for competition in sports. However I have come to understand that I enjoy the game of golf much more when I focus on beating my own score rather than that of my playing partners. In reality I am beating the other guy who just happens to be me and it doesn’t threaten anyone else.
Here is the important question, why would we want anyone at work to feel like a loser? I believe keeping competition away from the work setting would create a healthier environment and create a strength-based strategy, boosting everyone’s sense of status and therefore increasing morale. Simply changing the way we view reward systems and competitions in the workplace could be a powerful tool in altering how all of us feel and perform.
David Rock talks about five different types of social experiences that our brains treat in a similar manner as it does survival issues. There are status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness. He describes these elements as "the interpersonal primary rewards or threats that are important to the brain." And competition that threatens any of these can have negative effects.
Finding ways to increase your own or other’s social experiences, especially several of them together, can create positive outcomes. Just think of how good you feel when you feel good about yourself, when you know what’s expected of you at work, when you have been given the ability to make decisions and you can talk to the people allowing you that autonomy on a human level all while being treated fairly.
Sounds like utopia doesn’t it? It can happen and when it does everyone works harder and more efficiently. At every level in our organizations we can work to create this kind of atmosphere. I did it without even understanding exactly what it was I was doing. Now I have a language that explains why it worked.
When I started in a supervisory role, I intuitively knew that I needed to be connected to the staff. They needed to feel I had their backs, and they needed to trust that I had their best interests at heart. I worked at treating everyone the same, no favorites, no special deals. As well I showed them respect for the work they were doing. Over time as I had worked at improving my behavior by displaying those things, there was hardly anything they would not do if I asked them.
Success for me means experiencing some form of personal growth each day. I am focusing on being better today than I was yesterday in every aspect of my life. When I compete against myself I am creating a stronger human being because I have to know myself in order to improve. This is the only competition that makes sense

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A good soldier is not violent
A good fighter is not angry,
Good winners do not contend.
Good employers serve their workers.
The best leader follows the will of the people.

All of them embody the virtue of noncompetition.
This is called the virtue on noncontending.
This is called employing the powers of others.

This since ancient times has been known
as the ultimate unity with heaven.

Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life
Living the wisdom of the Tao
68^th verse
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

TFTT # 95 © Linda Bridge.