In today's modern office, workplace culture has become an important consideration for business owners, investors, and employees alike. Studies have increasingly shown that a positive workplace culture results in lower turnover and increased productivity. However, with this shift in mindset has also come a fear of encouraging competition in the workplace. Many have come to believe that competition is the opposite of teamwork, and when improperly executed it can result in high levels of stress, crushed confidences and even lasting feelings of resentment. However, when executed and encouraged correctly - teamwork and competition can work hand in hand. When positive competition is inspiring and motivating, it can improve innovation and help push your team towards bigger and better ideas.
Competition can be a good thing. Together, employees can push each other to exceed their normal performance levels. It can also encourage self-improvement, as employees may start to work towards bettering themselves in the process of winning the competition. Growing research also suggests that people who are happier tend to work harder and creating new challenges consistently helps employees find purpose in their work.
For Ragnar Horn, he credits his professional and personal successes to a life lived in a competitive nature. A Norwegian national, he was a Division I Nordic cross-country skier during his time in university in the United States and still competes in ski marathons for which he is currently ranked number six in his age group. Ragnar attended Harvard Business School where he earned his MBA and worked for five years in New York City in finance before returning to Norway to run his family-owned investment company Taconic AS. In addition to acting as chairman of Taconic AS for over 25 years, he has also held numerous board director positions for corporations and nonprofits. Horn draws inspiration from his desire to be the best in every endeavor he attempts, exemplifying the benefits of a competitive spirit. Below are a few of the ways in which he believes you can foster a healthy level of competition in the workplace.
BE SUPPORTIVE OF TEAMWORK
Competition can bring employees closer together if they are able to realize that each person's success is actually a win for the entire team. Pitting employees against one another can turn things ugly quite quickly, and competition among individuals has the most potential to go wrong. It can lead to a dog-eat-dog environment where everybody is only looking out for number one, which is why group competition is so effective. Bonds deepen when people work together to achieve a common goal, and team competitions are not only healthier, they also encourage collaboration -- a vital aspect of a productive workplace. Balancing the teams as evenly as possible by choosing team members with different strengths can provide those members with the opportunity to learn from each other while competing. You can also promote unity by making competitions company-wide, such as working towards a certain revenue goal. Additionally, when one person has a victory use it as an opportunity to celebrate the group as a whole. By honoring the work of the individual while also explaining to the team why their win is good for everyone, you promote teamwork while also encouraging healthy competition.
BUT ALSO ENCOURAGE THE BEST PERFORMERS
While promoting teamwork is an important aspect of healthy competition, it is still important to encourage those who stand out. Failing to do so can make your best employees suddenly feel like their efforts aren't worthwhile if their hard work is receiving the same rewards as everybody else. Without providing individuals recognition for their achievements, you potentially create an environment where employees are tempted to simply do the minimum of what is required of them, negating any competitive spirit they may have previously held. Why would they bother to go the extra mile when they can get the same level of recognition for being mediocre? While it may seem counterintuitive, giving rewards to your top performers can actually help to foster teamwork. It gives recognition to those who are the best and an aspirational goal for those who aren't. Additionally, publically rewarding your top performers can also be an opportunity to encourage others to learn from what they are doing right.
MONITOR AND DISCOURAGE UNHEALTHY COMPETITIVE BEHAVIOR
If you are making the effort to encourage competition, you must also make sure that you are the one monitoring it. Pay close attention to how your workplace competition unfolds -- not only in terms of how the business operates, but also in how your employees are reacting to it. Are tempers flaring? Are people snapping at each other or becoming uncooperative? Taking credit for others' work, sabotaging coworkers, fudging results, and other unscrupulous techniques are not what you want to encourage. Make sure that in order to receive the rewards you are promising them, your employees have to win fair and square and that unethical competition will not be tolerated.
If your employees step out of line and start acting in an unethical way in their desire to win the competition, there needs to be clear and fairly enforced consequences. If a competition starts to go off the rails, call a halt to discuss the problems and, if you have to, end the competition.
PROMOTE COMPETING WITH YOURSELF
One way to get around any sort of unhealthy competitive atmospheres in the workplace is to create competitions that focus on achieving a "personal best" instead of beating others. These types of competition work double-duty in that they can be highly motivating while also avoiding the downsides of one-on-one competition. You can encourage individuals to complete with themselves by setting personal goals such as asking each team member to raise their sales numbers by a certain percentage each month. Teams can also compete with themselves, such as seeing if your shipping department's average time per package can get faster every month. Better yet, having your employees self-evaluate on a periodic basis and create their own individual competitions for themselves encourages autonomy and a sense of personal drive that necessitates being able to see how they can best help the company.
KEEP EMPLOYEES FOCUSED ON THE END GOAL
It is important when developing a competition to keep the big picture of your goals in mind. Rather than simply creating a contest for the sake of having one, take a look at where you think your business could truly be improved and build around that. In addition to this, while encouraging your employees' competitive spirit is one of the goals of a competition, oftentimes they can get so caught up in the sport of it all that they forget about the ultimate goal. For example, if you wish to increase the quantity of sales calls and create a contest that rewards those who make it to a certain number in a day, they may get so focused on speed that they start rushing through the calls, resulting in a decrease in successful transactions. To combat this, constantly remind them of the greater good their hard work will achieve -- not just what you would like them to do, but why you want them to do it.
There is little room to doubt that as competition grows throughout the workplace, so do results. While this ability to produce results has caused many businesses to abuse such tactics and create high-stress environments and a demoralized workforce, when executed correctly a little friendly competition can go a long way to fuel productivity, increase engagement, and energize your employees. By creating competitions that foster a shared sense of community and common goals, you ensure that your employees will work together to problem-solve while also challenging themselves to bring their best version of themselves to work each day.