Good-to-Know Soft Skills: Healthy Competitiveness

We appreciate and demand competitiveness from our athletes, but competitiveness at work is often shunned. It shouldn’t be. The key is to be competitive in healthy ways. Competitiveness can help you achieve more, stay excited about your job, move quickly on opportunities, and win for your employer. To stay healthily competitive, avoid pairing your desire to achieve with the need to outdo coworkers for whatever acknowledgment, prize, or profit may result. Resist the reflex to engage in this sort of rivalry. Rather than seeking to challenge others, challenge yourself to top your personal best. Competitiveness is a tool. Use its energy to reach your goal, not as an unbridled personality trait that rubs others the wrong way. The secret to healthy competitiveness is being open to feedback, cheering others on, and sharing the glory. If you demonstrate this mastery of empathy, you will win more support from peers. They will cheer you on, and they will demonstrate more patience and understanding at those times when your competitive spirit gets a bit pushy or too “go-getting.” Here is your competitive spirit health check: Do you mentally turn opportunities for success into contests that pit you against another person? Reject the urge to respond with competitiveness in this way. Practice asking, “Is this a team opportunity, rather than a solo opportunity?” With these few rules, you will win more gold for yourself and your employer.

Tracy Bussey | 9/25/2016