Competitiveness

Strengths

• Maintains emotional steadiness regardless of outcome
• Values learning, participation, and collaboration over rivalry
• Supports team cohesion without needing to come first
• Less likely to get caught up in ego or comparison

Liabilities

• May lack urgency or drive in high-stakes environments
• Can be perceived as passive or lacking ambition
• Might miss chances to push performance to higher levels
• May avoid situations where assertive competition is required

Development tips if you lean left

• Set a visible performance goal and review it weekly.
• Join a friendly competition, challenge, or game with peers.
• Speak up in a meeting to propose a bold, results-oriented idea.
• Ask a driven colleague what motivates them and try applying one technique.
• Take the lead on a project where outcomes are measured and compared.
• Practise evaluating your week through results rather than effort.
• Reflect on how ambition shows up in your leadership story.
• Redefine competition as striving to grow, not just striving to win.

Strengths

• Motivated to exceed goals and achieve high performance
• Raises the bar for self and others
• Brings energy and urgency to competitive contexts
• Often excels in environments that reward results

Liabilities

• Can create pressure or strain on teams
• May value outcomes at the expense of relationships or learning
• Risk of burnout through overexertion
• May struggle with collaboration when success must be shared

Development tips if you lean right

• Let someone else take the lead on a task you usually own.
• Praise someone’s contribution without comparing or adding your own achievement.
• Choose one day not to track your productivity and focus on collaboration.
• Hold back from turning a casual discussion into a debate or race.
• Ask a team member how your drive affects their work or motivation.
• Participate in a group success where outcomes are shared and collective.
• Journal about a time when you benefited from letting go of competition.
• Define success more broadly to include support, sustainability, and shared progress.

If you lean unconcerned for winning, you may:

• Focus on learning and collaboration rather than comparison
• Remain steady whether outcomes are positive or negative
• Encourage shared success rather than individual victory
• Prioritise process and relationships over competition

If you lean driven to win, you may:

• Set ambitious goals and push hard to achieve them
• Measure performance relative to others or clear benchmarks
• Bring urgency and determination to challenging situations
• Encourage teams to stretch and outperform expectations

Competitiveness helps when:

• Ambitious goals require energy and determination
• Teams must raise performance standards
• Markets or environments reward strong results
• Momentum and urgency are needed to move work forward

Competitiveness hurts when:

• Relationships or trust are sacrificed for outcomes
• Teams feel constant pressure or comparison
• Learning and collaboration are undervalued
• Success becomes individual rather than shared