Colleague Turning to Contender You may as well admit it. When your co-worker gets praised by supervisors, you feel a little bit jealous. Perhaps it even pushes you to work a little longer and harder, in hope of capturing the interest of those managers yourself. Some say competition among employees is helpful because it keeps workers working and interested in their jobs. Others believe competition has reached dangerously high levels. Jobs are the question now, and people are worried somebody else might get promoted while they get the boot. Competition has got to the point that some people are looking for ways to destroy their perceived rivals. A group of 150 American executives were surveyed recently. More than half of them said that competition among employees was more prevalent now than 10 years ago. But competition, good and bad, is really a result of company culture. Do managers push their employees to compete against one another? Or do they encourage teamwork in an atmosphere in which employees challenge themselves rather than try to beat out fellow workers? “Some competition among co-workers is a good thing. It provides us all with a feeling of self- worth,” said Bruce Pomerantz, an American psychologist who has been counseling many worried workers.“It drives us to get things done. It is something that makes us want to excel.” Competition within a company is often referred to as internal competition. There are two kind s of internal competition: competition between teams, and competition between individual employees. For example, a company can be organized around different brands, with each brand allocated resources, including a dedicated group of employees willing to champion the brand. Each brand manager is given responsibility for the success or failure of the brand and is compensated accordingly. This form of competition thus pits one brand against another. Most businesses also encourage competition among individual employees. An example of this is a contest among sales representatives. The sales representative with the highest sales or the best improvement in sales over a period of time would gain benefits from the employer. When employees are competing solely on an individual basis, they concentrate only on themselves. People become so internally focused that they wind up taking their eyes off the clients and the results are obvious. There will be higher turnover, less productivity and too much conflict. That’s because the employees have a personal agenda that does not incorporate the values, culture and goals of the company. In those companies that have a strong team sense, the competitive push works differently. When the staff have shared goals, they will work towards company success and not just personal success. When team members celebrate team success, they are collaborating as a dynamic team rather than as individuals. And this is a positive approach to workplace competitiveness.