By Ben Gibbs
This recent piece from Korn Ferry interested me as it addresses a relational issue that is rarely acknowledged formally in the workplace, and even more rarely discussed … rivalry.
Of course, healthy competition between co-workers is, in most settings, seen as a catalyst to better performance. But when the thing that’s being competed for becomes scarce or its value increases, then behaviour can become less healthy. Previously positive relationships between individuals can sour, teams can retreat into well-defended silos and much of the energy previously available for productive work can be sapped by stress, conflict, ‘politics’ and positioning. Does any of this sound familiar? Are you noticing the signs? Left unattended, rivalry can cause the culture of a team or organisation to quickly become toxic in ways that are difficult to recover without significant effort.
Korn Ferry’s five tips for containing unhealthy rivalries are a useful guide for averting the worst-case scenarios, but it’s worth delving a little deeper into the root causes of rivalry and looking at what might be done to create organisational practices that make it more difficult for this destructive dynamic to take hold. Doing so might also help you tune your aerial so you’re more likely to pick up on early warning signs.
Firstly, what is it?
The root of the term ‘rivalry’ is ‘one dwelling by or using the same stream as another’, or ‘the fighting for the access to the river’ (The New Century Dictionary). The implication in this is an aggressive struggle against the rival for access to a basic resource (water) required for survival.
Early psychoanalytic thought considered rivalry in the context of sibling relationships which, for Freud, were at the root of much of the psychic trauma he treated in adults. From this perspective, although the object of the rivalry might be a shared toy or game, the basic resource being fought for is the mother and her love. And for psychoanalysts, the attachment behaviours – like clinging and crying – seen in infants become more pronounced and violent in times of stress.
“What’s all this about babies and mothers? I’m a professional and a leader!” I hear you ask. And quite rightly. But you’ve only got to read Shakespeare or watch Bond to recognise that the childhood rivalries of the people you employ will probably be reverberating through your organisation in ways you cannot see and influencing the behaviours you can. They might present in positive ways like curiosity or an ability to resolve differences, or in negative ways like jealousy (resentment of the love received by another) or envy (the urge to possess the potency or superiority of another).
If we were to carry out a relational survey in a team where rivalry is present, we might expect our model to show rivalrous relationships characterised by poor levels of connectedness, belonging and respect, but perhaps high levels of alignment of purpose. After all, rivals want the same thing! However, where close alignment creates synergy in a healthy team, the lack of respect driven by unhealthy motives in this context is likely to create non-cooperation, or maybe even attempts to undermine one another.
But what can one do to try to avoid these issues arising?
As above, Korn Ferry’s tips are fairly sound. Encouraging people to ask one another for help, collaborate and be nice is good advice in any context, let alone a stressful one. But how can you build a culture that makes it more difficult for rivalries to emerge?
The key is to get people talking about their anxieties regularly, and as a matter of routine. It sounds pretty obvious when you see it in black and white, but if you drag these emotional weeds out and into the sunlight, they have a tendency to whither and become less likely to take hold and spread. If you build this process of weeding into your organisational routines and ensure that everyone’s a gardener, then it becomes part of your culture.
There are all sorts of ways to facilitate these sorts of discussions, but – as the subject matter can be highly charged – it is worth investing in an appropriately trained consultant or team coach to do it for you. And it may also be worth investing in the sort of relational analytics that will provide a starting point for these discussions and perhaps serve as a benchmark for future impact studies.
As ever, we’d love to talk with you more about these things, so please do engage.
