Unhealthy Professional Competition

 This month’s Inspiring Innovations LEARNING MOMENTS podcast is all about progressively dealing with Unhealthy Professional Competition. As the title suggests, motivation and encouragement brought on by competition in the workplace may bring about good results… however, there are often “unhealthy” outcomes too. 

Decline in creativity, reduction in production, and less project collaboration are all examples of Unhealthy Professional Competition outcomes. They may occur in a subtle fashion or be hidden behind/within other regular organizational functions. 

I tried to do my best to cover this topic in a concise way… but addressing Unhealthy Professional Competition requires more than a few minutes. 

Enjoy the listen! 

Transcript

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Hello again, and welcome to the May of 2025 Inspiring Innovations Learning Moments podcast. As always, this is your discussionist host, Marv Pickla. And this time, before we launch into the month's topic, I want to report that I just completed my 18th semester teaching American government and politics at one of the local community colleges. What does that mean? That means that I have been in front of over 25 classes that ranged in size from eight students to 30, and with ages from 15 to 65. And then one more thing that when you add in that virtual remote option, there have been classes when I was in three places at once. And let me say I've had a great time teaching each and every one of these classes with learning moments in that American government politics area. And I wish I could thank every student in person, but somehow I think they know. All right, all right. Back to our topic for this month's Inspiring Innovations Learning Moments podcast. This month I want to discuss a challenging topic that I'll call unhealthy professional competition. Let me say it again. And let me start by explaining that unhealthy professional competition when it happens almost totally as an internal personal thing. Think about when a coworker does well on a project, and then you spend the rest of the week mad and or frustrated, you know, because they get more attention than yourself. And maybe you're mad at yourself for not showing enough initiative to be recognized, and maybe that more developed worker. And you know what, even more important in the workplace, as you personalize this area of what else I'll call natural competition, you most likely will stop and hesitate working with that, you know, special co-worker because of what? Your frustration. Not because they did anything wrong, in fact, they did everything right, but you're frustrated. And that is a sign of unhealthy professional competition. Another example of that personalized impact may occur in the area of stifling creativity and innovation. If you go through that kind of experience where you're maybe a little jealous of a coworker, you aren't as creative and innovative as you should be. Think again about the unhealthy competition reaction that takes place, whether it lasts days or weeks, and it can really hinder your performance on the job. You know, you can think about that. If you finally end up getting stuck in that winner versus loser mentality, this kind of personalized, unhealthy, professional competition state of mind puts you only in the loser column. Do you understand what I said? That if you get stuck professionally feeling that unhealthy professional competition in the workplace, the only place that you'll end up is in the loser category. Let me go on and explain a few external examples of unhealthy professional competition. Let me start this discussion in an area by asking a question. Does anyone listening to this Inspiring Innovations Learning Moments podcast ever take part in company gossip? Negative rumors? Or backstabbing of a coworker? I'm sure no one on this podcast falls for that. But when it does happen, consider the negative impact on organizational morale, professional relationships, poor collaboration with partners, and overall just a reduced productivity in your workplace. And there's some more examples of personalized and company-wide unhealthy professional competition that include things like secretly holding information to prevent someone else from succeeding in their job. Or maybe cutting corners and thereby negatively impacting product or service quality, or criticizing and belittling somebody in front of the colleagues. You know what I'm saying? So enough negative stuff. What progress things could we do to address, to professionally address that unhealthy competition factor? Well, for everybody's consideration, I'll just toss out three or four learning moments recommendations. Number one, it sounds so simple, but encouraging quality, authentic communication. D'ye hear me? Quality, authentic communication across all areas in your business or organization, it would be a tremendous initiative. I used to tell the gang I worked with that the rumor mill will always be smarter than me and more interesting than the truth, but never more accurate. Think about it. So for number one, work hard to have everyone get timely, accurate, complete, authentic messages out there, communicate good messages on a regular basis. Second, recognize as a leader example-based professionalism. Be the example of professionalism. Too often it is bad behavior that gets the greatest level of leadership attention, right? Try to reverse this trend with special acknowledgement of cool example-based professionalism. If you strike that chord, I think you'll get a great return. Number three, reinforce creativity and innovation. Imagine that. Reinforce creativity and innovation as the team motivation versus self-competition, operational priority. Let me say it again. Reinforce creativity and innovation as the team motivation thing versus self-competition as an operational priority. In other words, professional growth would be measured on how well the team is doing rather than just one individual as a time, at a time. And the priorities like creativity and innovation as principal motivators would make the whole operational culture improve. Give it a try. And finally, number four, be active, proactive instead of reactive to unhealthy professional competition issues. Establishing new progressive, non-traditional methods to deal with unhealthy professional competition problems as standard business growth priorities early can prove priceless as a continuous improvement operational tool. Okay? It is worth the time and money that you would invest. All right, we are way past our time, one more time, but it has been helpful for me and hopefully for you to discuss self-progressive motivation versus unhealthy professional competitiveness. It's been helpful. And number two, the I'm better than they are versus no one goes it alone is a true statement. That that if you take that stance of I'm better than they are, you realize that nobody really goes it alone, and so you're gonna be alone in your progress push. Don't do it, because nobody goes progressively alone. And healthy professional competition means personal growth and improvement versus beating others no matter the professional costs. In a way, I believe we have all crossed into that unhealthy professional competition zone from one time or another in our careers. So take a discussionist step back and put a progressive light on this inspiring innovation learning moments podcast, and hopefully it will help you too. Again, I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Thanks so much for listening, and yeah, we'll talk a lot more next month.