How to manage relations with more competitive colleagues

How to deal with friction between colleagues who want to gain the upper hand?  Here is a series of useful tips on how to improve working relationships:  practical suggestions to follow day by day in the professional setting!

1. Analyse the context

Before deciding how to behave with the rest of the team, it’s important to analyse the context in order to understand if it is competitive by nature (as in the case of sales staff) or if it is the employees themselves who are making it this way.

2. Self analysis

If relations between colleagues are tense due to an exaggerated competitive spirit, re-consider your own approach towards others:  both those who find any form of competitiveness irritating and those who are over competitive must find the right balance in order to be able to work together.

3. Show our friendly side

When competitiveness between colleagues reaches the limit, do everything possible to show good will, thus obtaining the twofold advantage of not giving in to provocation and avoiding further escalation.

4. Seek collaboration

Regardless of whether the subject with whom we are dealing feels the need to always be the best or always  be ‘top of the class’, in such circumstances it is better to seek collaboration rather than start a war.

5. Defend against covert discrimination

In the case of colleagues who behave in a covert manner, keep your distance, while letting them know that their strategies have been un-covered but also protecting your own work from possible interference.

6. Reduce contact

Reducing interaction with colleagues who are too competitive to a minimum can be useful, especially when these people display excessively hostile behaviour.  In such cases, by avoidingthe person in question, we can eliminate the problem as soon as it arises.

Having done all this, if friction between colleagues persists, it is important to try and improve the situation by adopting a constructive approach and showing flexibility.  In this way we can be sure to be on the side of whoever is in the right!

Translated by Joanne Beckwith