How To Cultivate Team Building, Not Competition
Everyone loves a little bit of office competition. It’s not only fun, but it’s always a great motivator. Unfortunately, high stakes can create competition naturally. And sometimes you end up with employees competing against each other, instead of trying to contribute to the company’s success overall. How do you motivate employees without evoking too much competition? Here are few tips:
Always encourage team success overall
While you should surely give individual feedback frequently, it is vital to bring it back to team feedback. Why? Because one person’s success is always a wonderful contribution, but no company can run on the backs of just one person. When providing incentives, create team building opportunities that reward groups as a whole.
Avoid frequent favoritism
Now, individuals who truly go above and beyond deserve credit, so give it where it’s due. However, your goal in the end is to have every single member of your team go above and beyond, right? So encourage that, instead of comparing employees to each other. Instead of saying, “You should work as hard as Bill,” you should ask, “How do you work the best?”
One-on-one feedback
Many employees get competitive simply to get their manager’s attention. If you’re only speaking with your employees during staff meetings, surely they’ll feel as if you’re favoring certain employees over others. Instead, carve out time out of the week to have open office hours incase employees need to communicate. Better yet, make sure you have frequent one-on-one’s.
Don’t make competitiveness okay
If anything, just make it clear that your office environment doesn’t condone unnecessary competitiveness. A lot of competitive actions can turn into office bullying, dishonesty, discrimination, and more. Make it clear that teamwork is an important tool to battle these things.
12
Jan
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