Do you have a competitive employee in your team or workplace and do you want to guide these employees in the right way? Every employee can get burnout. Yet one is more susceptible to it than the other. Employees who are perfectionist, have a high work ethic, want to fully commit themselves and have difficulty saying ‘no’, run a greater risk of burnout.
Maybe you prefer to see your employees super motivated, to achieve the best results and to be excellent in their work. But obsessive competitive behaviour can also lead to more stress and even burnout.
Competitive employee and absence
In a competitive environment, an employee always wants to perform slightly more or slightly better than the other. That is while employees at work are constantly dealing with stress because the work is never really finished. When the deadline is met, a new one follows immediately.
An employee who would like to gain more status or is afraid of keeping his job soon becomes competitive. A characteristic of a competitive employee is that he wants to be faster and better than the rest. As a result, he receives more stress stimuli. Not only is the work never finished, but he also has to perform better than his colleagues.
Is it an employee ‘s competitiveness or fear of failure?
Dangers of a competitive environment
A competitive employee has to deal with various pitfalls. It may be that he attaches so much importance to an assignment and the result that he does not take the personal wishes of others into account. He can insist that things are done his way and can expect others to work as hard as he does. This allows him to come into conflict with his colleagues.
Due to his competitive attitude, he can also appear arrogant and superficial. If he is only concerned with achieving success and performing, he can lose himself in work and lose contact with his environment. He will not readily admit his uncertainty and unrest. He does not like to be vulnerable and will not let it be noticed quickly if he feels lonely or unhappy on the inside. For your mental health, competition does more harm than good. For many, this undermines their self-esteem.
Also read: keeping employees motivated
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Successfully deploy competitiveness
For a competitive employee, it is important that the work environment is well organized with clearly defined goals and that the goals are a challenge for him. Allow him to grow and get promoted and reward his successes.
Do not limit him by imposing all kinds of rules, but do slow him down if he tends to work too quickly. Also, set limits on the amount of work he does to prevent stress and burnout.
You will be happy with competitive employees because they focus on success and are hard workers. It is the art for you as a manager to create the right working environment where the positive qualities of a competitive employee come to the forefront and where attention is paid to the dangers.
Have a competitive employee work powerfully? Teach him to recognise his limits
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