Rivalry should’nt hurt

Poonamjot Kaur Sidhu

Competition is essential for innovation and development. It is said to be a stimulating factor for entities to act and achieve as per the best of their abilities. But response to competition varies in accordance to the environment in which it is kindled. If one considers a corporate set up, competition sometimes create unhealthy politics, fear, burn-out, uneven risk taking behaviour, unnecessary conflict, favoritism and high turnover rates among employees. 

In an individual’s perspective, being competitive does enable one to put in an extra effort and push yourself beyond comfort zone, but it also makes one fearful, fastidious and stressful. Hence it is not a bad idea to collaborate with competitors at work as it will ease the pressure both on you and the competitor. When one’s nerves are relaxed, performance levels improve substantially.  You are free of obsessing about the strategy and measures being taken by the competitor and wallow in self-doubt. While collaborating with your competitor, you contribute to each other's work, and this makes the judging hats disappear, which benefits both sides of the street.

It will ignite a positive work relationship enabling a united front for all employees in your unit. When there are two strong competitors pitched against each other for recognition from the people higher up in workplace hierarchy, it tends to create a divide amongst the horizontal strata in the office as people will have their preferences towards one of them.

One will have more resources to their disposal. When you are competing to prove your caliber and ability, knowingly or unknowingly you are bound to hold back information, fight for tangible resources, withhold solution or even undermine efforts of the other party. For that reason collaboration will result in exponentiation of ideas, efforts and constructive energies. Networking is a beneficial activity. It enables you to know and learn from smart people in your area of work. 

It will further undermine unnecessary politics, diminish adverse conflict and make work areas more satisfying for everyone around. Another tricky terrain is how to go about collaborating with your competition. There is always an ounce of doubt in one’s mind that what if it backfires, therefore, whenever you anticipate to act on such intentions consider

However, choose the collaborator wisely. You should be confident that he/she will respond positively to your efforts. Being around each other for a while will definitely give you an idea about the personality of your competitor.  Be very open in your communication efforts and try to put forward the gain aspects for both involved. Try and illustrate how collaboration will benefit to achieve better results and how efforts can be more effectively reaped. 

Give it only one shot, if it backfires, have your guard up again as they rightly say once bitten twice shy. 

When you enter into such mutual understanding with someone, be ethical in your conduct and expect the same from them. It has been  proven that collaboration wins over competition over a period of time. 

Recent researches in the area also support the idea of people working together rather than being pitched against each other to get better results. Hence let that guard down a little and go collaborate and compete together for better outcome.