Competitive Spirit

​Competitive spirit is good but if the competition causes one of the competitors to lose morals, the competition becomes unhealthy. It becomes unhealthy for the organization, for the team and the environment. 

Story of Mani and Andy is the similar to what you can see in the above photograph. Mani and Andy worked in the same team. Designation wise Andy was senior and Mani was indirectly reporting to Andy but the formal reporting was to Tom.

​Tom wanted the team to grow and both the team members to show their potentials. For this reason he maintained the reporting authority with him.

Mani would often require Andy’s help but Andy did not let Tom know of this. Before Tom he always maintained that Mani was doing well. Andy believed in team work. Andy believed in Unity. He believed that even if the team comprises two members but if they are united, no external power of any strength could cause damage. Mani thought the other way.

Mani wanted all the credit to go to him. He was so ambitious that he wanted to be at Andy’s spot. He did not like Tom’s interaction with Andy. Because Andy was good he would hate Andy despite all the help that he was getting. He would not miss any chance to snatch the opportunity for credit.

Andy, on the other hand would not care but sometimes he did not like Mani’s shrewd behavior. After all, he was the one who was working as a team. Team work means both the members should contribute. But Mani wanted all the attention and this lead to increase in differences between both the team members.

Yet, Mani was clever enough. He knew he could not manage things on his own. He would require help. Even in email writing. Sometimes due to his poor email writing skills he would get scolded by the client. At such times he would not hesitate approaching Andy and poor Andy would help Mani without letting Tom know and this is why both Mani and Andy received equal ratings at the time of appraisals.  

Andy could not believe sometimes how Mani managed to survive for 4 years in the previous company without even the basic knowledge. And now he was working in the same organization that Andy is working. Moreover he was drawing almost the same package (salary) with half of the experience. This was an insult to his hard work and skills. May be this is what luck is!  

There are people in the corporate world who want to hide everything they do. On the other hand, there are some organizations that do not provide a private space i.e. all the files are stored on common drive. When this happens, employees like Mani save the work in password protected folders and prevent any information from going to even the one who has been helping out all the time.

In the story of Mani and Andy, Andy was senior so Mani could not do any professional harm to Andy despite several efforts. However, in cases where people like Mani are the senior fellows they cause lot of frustrations amongst the subordinates and I have seen people with such managers who won’t disclose until it’s an emergency.
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Fortunately I have been getting all the good managers wherever I worked! 

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