When we only focus on “being the best,” we can sometimes sabotage other people’s efforts to succeed (either accidentally or intentionally).
As leaders, we want our company to be professionally competitive within the industry—that’s how it continues to be a company, after all. But make an effort within the firm to develop a company full of collaborative teams, rather than encouraging a Hunger-Games-style cut-throat culture.
For example, policies like “The top salesperson gets a huge prize, and the bottom-ranked person gets fired” incentivizes sabotaging other coworkers and creates an atmosphere of distrust and unhealthy competition. Your teams will perform better if you award bonuses to every individual employee who hits individual performance milestones and team bonuses when the whole team hits team milestones, rather than setting up a competition within the firm. Instead of one top performer, you may end up with five, and it does not hurt any of them to help their coworkers solve problems or develop their skills. You can have tiered bonuses, as well—a bonus for hitting the lower milestone for sales, utilization, etc. and a higher bonus for hitting each higher level, so that competitive-natured team members still have an incentive to keep striving to be more successful.
Make sure that you are measuring and rewarding the behaviors you want to grow within your organization—too often a focus only on the “win” creates unintended consequences, while a focus on giving everyone a chance to thrive will actually generate higher profits, as well as improved morale, retention, and client satisfaction.
(image source: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=865269114959384&set=a.358156382337329)