Have We Killed Competition?

Once upon a time, being competitive was a compliment. Now it seems to have become a dirty word. We value psychological safety, where teams feel safe to take risks, share ideas, and feel included. But could it be that, with good intentions, we’ve gone a little too far in some areas? Are we confusing safety with comfort or mistaking collaboration for mandated harmony? If you’re a leader who wants to build a truly high-performing team, this is a nuance you can’t afford to ignore.

LEARN something.

We’ve spent years detoxing our workplaces from ego and aggression. Moving away from cut-throat cultures and towards environments built on belonging, collaboration, and emotional safety. But psychological safety, while a necessary part of healthy workplaces, is often mistaken for comfort. We’ve started to confuse competition with conflict, as if wanting to win makes you a bad teammate. The result is teams and leaders who expect harmony, even when it comes at the cost of performance. Meetings full of polite nodding instead of real challenge. People holding themselves back because they don’t want to be seen as too competitive. Energy gets spent managing ourselves to avoid hurting feelings, instead of being channeled into creativity and raising the bar. Cultures where belonging matters more than stretching and growing each other. The intent is good, but safety without stretch quickly breeds apathy. The healthiest teams can hold both trust and tension.

Researchers studying competition within teams distinguish healthy, cooperative competition from its toxic cousin. In the healthy version, there are fair rules, equal chances, and a shared focus on collective success. In other words, you still want to compete and outdo one another, but within the boundaries of a shared purpose. Put simply, toxic competition says, “You being worse makes me better,” while healthy competition says, “You being great makes me better.” Even Amy Edmondson, who coined the term psychological safety in 1990, has long argued that safety alone isn’t enough. Growth requires productive discomfort, the spark you feel when someone’s work pushes you to lift your own. Safety and growth aren’t opposites; they’re interdependent. It’s a subtle nuance, but one we need to embrace if we want truly high-performing teams. As leaders, our job is to find the balance, and when needed, create tension if apathy starts to take hold.

REFLECT on an idea.

“Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17)

This old-school biblical proverb is still spot on today. So many high-performing, driven, ambitious leaders I coach share the same sentiment when they’re about to quit: “I’m just not feeling challenged anymore.” When apathy creeps in, your best performers start looking elsewhere. Because they want to be surrounded by people who push them, sharpen them, and challenge them to grow.

SMILE a little.

I’m not sure who killed competition, but I’m pretty sure it was done as a group project, and decided by a committee. 😉

DO IT to get results.

If you want to reintroduce healthy competition without making it personal, try the Red Team vs Blue Team approach. It’s a tactic used in the military and cybersecurity that I’ve used many times in my career and still use as a team coach working with leadership teams. The Blue Team builds a plan or develops a solution, and the Red Team tests it, challenges assumptions, and looks for weak spots, all with the goal of making it stronger. This turns challenge into a team sport. It’s not one person against the room; it’s many minds sharpening each other. You might be surprised by how much suppressed competitive energy is just waiting to be unleashed when the conditions are right.