Competition is thought to be one method to drive people to perform at their best, but when it comes to the rat race, corporations and managers that pressure their women employees to compete may be squelching their creative output, a recent study from Washington University in St. Louis found.
The study, led by Associate Professor Markus Baer of the university’s Olin Business School, pitted teams of same-sex and mixed gender teams against each other in a lab setting, promising cash to the teams that were the top performers. Baer found that while recent research has suggested women work best in small working groups and adding women to a team is a good way to boost collaboration and creativity, that’s only true when women work on teams that aren’t competing.
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“Groups composed of all women or majority women tend to do better when there’s an absence of competition,” he said. “When you introduce competition, those teams tend to fare worse.”Baer, who studies ways to make the workplace more conducive to creativity, says while the reasons why are unclear, women disengaged in the competition and any kind of behavior that supports it and become less collaborative. “If teams work side by side, women tend to perform better and even outperform men – they’re more creative,” he added. “The opposite happens for men. Once you introduce competition for them, they get excited, start to gel together.”
That doesn’t mean that women aren’t good at competition or can’t handle the pressure, the professor emphasizes. “I don’t want to suggest women are inherently less competitive,” he says. “I think a lot of it is either social roles that we adopt to in education or interactions. They guide the way we think about ourselves and others.” He hopes to experiment with methods that combine collaboration and competition in the future.
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So what’s a girl to do when competition isn’t your thing and you’re in a work environment that supports and rewards it amongst coworkers? One of my favorite career books, “The Little Black Book of Success: Laws Of Leadership For Black Women,” says that “to refuse to play the game would be a big mistake and automatically disqualify you from participation in the leadership arena.” In the chapter titled “Acknowledge That There Is a Game and Accept That You Must Play,” authors Elaine Meryl Brown (VP, special markets and Cinemax Group at HBO), Marsha Haygood (president and founder of StepWise Associates, LLC) and Rhonda Joy McLean (deputy general counsel of Time Inc.) insist that you must learn and understand your company’s culture and decide if you want to be a part of it. The book notes: “Maybe you’re in a culture that’s highly competitive or extremely hierarchical or conservative, or a culture where you’re expected to be vocal and assertive. If you’re in a culture that makes you feel uncomfortable, you need to adjust and get over it. The other option is to leave on your own or expect that if others feel you’re not fitting in, you may get pushed out.”
If you find yourself stuck at a job where you’re pressured to compete when that’s not your style, don’t check out! Another option given amongst the gems in the 136-page book: use conflict as an opportunity to solve problems. “Because conflict can make you feel uncomfortable you may want to avoid it. However, good leaders aren’t afraid of conflict…The key to resolving conflict is to look at the issues involved rather than the personalities.”
Does competition make you feel less productive or does it energize you? What do you do to manage if competition is not your style and you’re forced to engage it at work? Tell us about it in the comment section.
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