The struggle for the plan: Why not turn your office in "Game of Thrones"

Cunning maneuvers and betrayal of working well in the world of Westeros, but in real life, such behavior is rarely helps to achieve success. CEOs often create and encourage competition among its employees to increase their involvement and encourage motivation. However, as assistant professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School Xu Chi Huang businesses cruel rivalry eventually interfere to achieve the goals and reduces the productivity of the company. Heroine understood as competition harms the individual employees and the entire team.

is lost, and mutual support of team spirit

In 2015, Huang and her colleagues published a paper in the Journal of Consumer Research (Journal of Consumer Research). It describes the results of the observation of the participants Weight Watchers - a technique for weight loss. Usually, at the beginning of people united by a common problem, come together and support each other. But as you get closer to the goal they began to move away, and rarely come to the meeting. Although in this case the participants nobody faced foreheads, over time they began to treat each other as competitors. People find it difficult not to compare yourself with others, and this inevitably leads to competition.

An important negative effect of domestic competition - the loss of mutual support and assistance. Instead of working towards a common goal, the employee spends energy and effort on something to keep track of the results of its competitors, look for their mistakes, and to compare with his.

In the case of participants in Weight Watchers researchers have suggested that they could affect not only the sense of competition, but also the fact that they lost weight, partly to cope with problems and have not needed support. To understand the competitive pressures affecting the behavior of people, Xu Chi Huang and co-workers of the Singapore Management University and Peking University conducted a few experiments. On the results will be discussed in the next paragraph.

Workers lose sight of the original purpose of the

Scientists have come up with an experiment in which subjects performed various creative activities and playing games to earn Amazon gift cards. People have said that anyone who attains certain number of points will receive a prize. Participants were in pairs and can make moves that will affect the assessment of their partners.

It was found that as the subjects approached the prize, they attempted to prevent his partner. Moreover, they tend to choose jobs that they thought might perform better partner, even if this choice generally lead to lower scores for both.

As people approach the target, they can change their mind - explains Juan. - They ultimately focused on the distance between them and their partners, and not on its own distance to the target.

According to the researcher, this approach makes sense in the real competition, where success is determined by a person of his position in relation to the opponent: you can neither receive the Amazon card, but if you have more points than your partner, you have already won.

But the people who create psevdosostyazanie without objective necessity, come illogical. They forget that the real goal - to come first, and to achieve a certain result. Their work becomes an imaginary personal competition.

Competition can lead to loss of efficiency of employees

Ultimately unhealthy competition in the office will affect the company's overall productivity and may lead to loss of valuable employees. Work under pressure not Team team psychologically difficult. In addition, during the competition the person may begin to feel that his estimate is unfair, he deserves more and decides to leave the company. Such opaque games violate corporate ethics and culture.

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How to create a healthy competition

That competition has become productive, it must first be managed.

The company's management should develop these competitions and rating system, which attempts to prevent individual employees sabotage their colleagues. Otherwise, these saboteurs will hinder and their, and others' productivity.

In the domestic competition must not lose a sense of common purpose. Otherwise, departments and employees begin to work on the principle of "every man for himself", do our part and without having to worry about any result in general it will lead.

According to researchers, the best kind of competition - competition with oneself when comparing two employees did not progress, and past and present the result of one and the same person. This encourages people to professional growth and at the same time does not cause personal dislike.

Do you think that the efficiency: competition or cooperation?