In today’s modern society, we are all trained to compete against each other and do our best to get to the top. In the school, college, post-graduation, workplace, reality shows, Bollywood, literally everywhere we see and hear about competitions. The one who wins them is glorified. There are award ceremonies, certificates and trophies, and glamour attached to winning. Hence our subconscious mind is unknowingly programmed to be competitive.
So what’s the problem with competing!?
The problem with competing is it takes people to a zero-sum
game mindset. If one wins, the other loses. This concept is popularised by the name
of 'scarcity mindset'.
In one of the schools, a student had received 45/50 marks.
That by her own standards was amazing! 90%! Then she asked her friends how many
marks they had received. They had got 46, 48, 48, 50, 46 ,45.
Her exuberance dropped. The same marks which made her ecstatic
no more seemed appealing. The problem is the competition mindset. Your worth becomes
relative to those around you. You by default start judging yourself with a
yardstick of those around you. Sometimes you start feeling good because you are
better at a few things and sometimes you feel sad. Because there are always
going to be people and traits where someone is better than you.
Let’s look deeply at the problems that this mindset leads
to.
Stress
In a competition mindset, you are constantly judging
yourself. Being in competition mode for long can be psychologically tiring.
This doesn’t bode well for your health, happiness, productivity or creativity
in the long run.
Complacency
In a competition mindset, the one at the top may develop a tendency
of becoming complacent (unless he starts competing with himself)
Productivity & Creativity
Studies have shown that while a minor level of stress can
help improve productivity, once the stress goes higher productivity and
creativity start shooting down. Haven’t we seen that in cricket too!? The ones
who are able to handle the situation best are those who don’t get stressed.
Happiness
In an atmosphere of competition, happiness comes only when
there has been a breakthrough. When you have beaten your competitors. The
constant feeling of competition develops negative feelings for the competitor.
The more you think about competing, the less your happiness will be.
Pride
If you are good at what you do, you will develop a sense of
pride. You may ask what’s wrong with pride!?
Pride affects humility levels. People start becoming egoistic. The more
egoistic people get, the more clashes there will be within the organization
which will affect harmony, happiness, and eventually the performance.
Politics
Many times a competing culture leads to tactics where competitors
try to pull the competitor down. And it is a two-way street. The competitor then
tries to pull you down which ends up in rivalries. Check out Pepsi and Coke,
Rin and Tide, Times of India and The Hindu, etc. The thing is, the energies
which could have been used for productive uses end up getting wasted on leg-pulling and then firefighting.
Traits are all-pervasive
One cannot be short-tempered at the office and not at home. The same goes for all other traits. It’s difficult to create an iron curtain of that
sort. By default, your personality in one sphere affects your other sphere. When
competitiveness becomes a trait, you start comparing yourself to everyone even
in personal life. You innately want to be better than even those at your home
or your friends and relatives. You sadly get happier when the one you have
competing feelings with goes down in life. It’s a terrible trait. People with
such traits start emitting ‘negative vibes’. Soon no one wants to hang
around with you. And you may eventually end up being toxic.
Do you mean to say competition is all bad!?
Not really. Competition does have its benefits too.
Stops one from becoming complacent
Those who are challengers benefit from constantly trying to
be better than the leader. It is a constant motivation for them to get better.
Promotes meritocracy
In a culture of competition, those who work hard get
rewarded. Rewards and recognitions enthuse those who have worked hard to work
harder. This also becomes a motivation for co-workers to do better. Such
motivation helps to bring out the best in the employees.
Improves organizational performance in the short run
An organization where everyone is working hard while competing
with each other ends up performing well in the short run. The problems
mentioned above start playing out in the longer run.
Collaborate and Cooperate – The Solution
The best way to work, in our opinion, is with a co-operation
mindset. This has many benefits attached.
Love thy neighbour
At the root of the collaborate and co-operate mindset is
Love and respect for all. In this mindset, you wish the best for everyone
including your competitors. The one who is loving by default feels happy and
satisfied. This starts a virtuous cycle.
Happiness
When you love more people – yourself, your family, your
friends, your co-workers, your competitors, etc you tend to start getting happy
in all of their happy moments. By default, you are a happier person. Happiness
is infectious. You will tend to spread happiness around. So all the people
around you will start being happier. The resonance of happiness will then start
increasing and self-sustaining.
Productivity and Creativity
Happy people are more creative. They have better confidence
levels, trust themselves better, and feel comfortable in voicing their ideas.
They also tend to grow faster.
With the stress levels much lower, there is space for
focusing on the task at hand. A different sort of complementing virtues need to
be added for the best impact. This will help one get more done in less time.
Performance and Growth
While in the competition mindset companies grow by trying to get
ahead of each other, in a collaboration and competition mindset, organizations
grow by learning from each other and by collectively working on something
together.
From the view of clients, they will be greeted by employees
who emit positive vibes and are genuinely looking to help them rather than
themselves. They will feel more at comfort with such people. Who doesn’t like
loving people!
Humility
People don’t feel the need to snatch credit or praise themselves
repeatedly when they are happy. Gradually people start being appreciative of
each other, respect co-workers and this leads to humility. Humility attacks the
ego. Low ego means lesser fights, more peace, better work environment.
Loyalty
Organizations with such a work atmosphere have higher employee
retention rates. Since the work culture is good, employees don’t feel like leaving.
They would rather grow with the organization. This converts into relatively lower
training costs, higher job security, better client retention, etc. At
Finwisor, we work as a family. Our past interns continue to be in our hearts
and Finwisor stays in theirs. #FinwisorFamilyForever
Summing Up
Readers and encouraged to align themselves to the given
philosophy wholeheartedly. This will be better for everyone. You, your
organization, your clients, your family & friends, your co-workers… the
whole universe! We will delve into ways you can do bring this transformation in
you in a separate article.
We love you and wish you all the best dear reader.
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