Fuel your competitive fire

Do you worry that internal competition will could be detrimental to building a culture of teamwork?

Research suggests that healthy competition can have a positive impact on your team.

Many companies use competition to increase performance.  It could be a sales contest between sales reps or tracking customer satisfaction ratings between departments.  Healthy competition benefits both the individuals and the team.  It can motivate employees to raise their performance.  For teams it can promote better communication and collaboration.  Competition can also result in finding new ideas and better ways of doing things.

Associating competition with a business issue or problem is a great way to get started.  A Tractura client that was struggling with efficiency in a couple departments within his company began tracking each departments’ weekly performance and charting it on the a  bulletin board for every employee to see.  Immediately those departments saw the opportunity to compete and began working together, focused on improving their numbers with the goal of gaining bragging rights over the other department.

If you have an issue or an area in which you feel you are underperforming, consider creating a game around it to create a little healthy rivalry that could have innovative outcomes.  Identify your goals for the team, keep score, and reward and celebrate success.  It’s a great way to energize your team, have some fun and make improvements within your organization.