Whether you’re competing for a dream role or promotion, in a team that’s competitive with other teams within the company or internally competitive, or with an employer fighting for business in a competitive sector, it can be hard to succeed in a competitive environment if you’re more of an “it’s the taking part that counts” kind of person. If you’re not a natural competitor yet you find yourself in a professional situation where you have to compete, don’t panic.
By following the tips below you can learn to succeed in a competitive environment without having to turn yourself into something you’re not.
- Be a Team Player
Even if you’re not the main competitor in your team at work, you can still help the team to compete with your employer’s other teams or with other companies within the employer’s sector by doing your share of the workload. Ask those colleagues who are going for glory what you can do today to help them achieve it.
- Offer Your Skills
You may not have as much desire to compete as, say, someone in the sales department does but you can use your skills to help your colleagues in that department to be the best at what they do. If you’ve ever used your organisational skills to manage someone else’s diary, for example, you’ve contributed to making that person’s working environment conducive to success.
- Win People Over
Being competitive doesn’t have to mean pushing others out of the way or taking them down. On the contrary, being civil to others will take you a long way in your career. For instance, the senior management at your company are more likely to promote someone who’s actually pleasant to work with than someone who’s very blatantly trying to take their job – and being rude while doing so.
- Talk Tactics
Some of the best sports coaches didn’t have great playing careers. Just because they didn’t excel at competition as sportspeople doesn’t mean they don’t have the tactical knowhow to help others find the winning formula. You can apply this reality to your own professional life. Even if you’re not the face of your organisation’s tender or pitch, you can still contribute to the strategic and tactical planning that goes into the business case the proposal is based on.
- Be the Strong, Silent Type
It’s okay for you to be the quiet one in a competitive team, department or company because there needs to be someone present who can keep their mouth shut long enough to listen. By being the listener of the group, you’re providing a space for colleagues who need to sometimes vent in order to stay sane in a competitive professional environment.
- Affirm, Don’t Affront
If you have an issue with how far some of the more competitive people around you at work will go, support codes of behaviour you agree with instead of attacking the ones you oppose. By affirming your own moral and ethical standards rather than attacking others’ beliefs you’re exuding the kind of positivity that’s characteristic of the winners in life. Another example of choosing affirmation over affrontation is helping your company to win new customers by promoting the positive aspects of the organisation’s products or services instead of putting down those of its competitors.
- Don’t Force Competition
If you’re not naturally competitive, don’t try to prove that you can be competitive by trying to outdo your colleagues for no purpose. Instead of creating artificial competition within your team, learn how to pick your fights. Working together with your colleagues instead of working against them gives you a better chance of succeeding, both as a team and as individuals. After all, as the saying goes, “together we stand; divided we fall”.
- Narrow Down the Field
You have a better chance of successfully competing if you have less people to compete against. To get to the top of your field, choose to specialise in a field where there are few other specialists. If you apply for a job that are a lot of people are qualified to do and are interested in doing, it’s going to be harder to get than if you apply for a job in a niche field with few other candidates.