Is Rivalry Preventing Teamwork in Your Workplace?
Rivalry has increased in the workplace today because people feel they must compete for job security. Many work environments are filled with fear and are in dire need of healing. With the increasing uncertainty and growing layoffs, many people are insecure and lack trust in the very place that provides their financial security. The cost to corporations is immeasurable because people do not work at their full potential when there is so much stress.
This growing anxiety results in disengagement, competitiveness and lack of teamwork. Valuable energy is wasted in protecting turf and seeking validation. How can we understand and improve the culture of these unhealthy businesses? What can leaders do to support one another, help those they lead and restore trust in the workplace?
If you are dealing with a competitive work situation, you may have been confused and discouraged by the issues that prevent teamwork and productivity? I believe it is absolutely imperative to understand the source of the conflict and stop the paralysis of fear.
Conflict occurs as a result of disguised fear. When fear arises it wastes the energy of every man and woman. If allowed, it can overtake your perception of the world. Fear can flow through us like a mighty river. When blocked, it begins building up and getting stuck within the body, hardening like frozen ice or concrete, and, finally, stopping all the healthy, normal emotions and actions from flowing. Fear becomes you.
Rivalry in the workplace feeds on fear and insecurity and is accelerated by the desire to be recognized or appreciated. With the current top down management style, pressure is often pushed and projected on to those being led. Few people can withstand the discomfort and pain of being criticized, attacked and blamed by a boss or co-worker. The feeling is literally that of being stabbed and deeply wounded.
The pain is then absorbed into negative emotions creating physical illness, addiction or deep morose. Attempts are made to expel the pain by blaming, attacking or lashing out at another, which only leads to greater rivalry, competition and jealousy. The rivalry intensifies and the workplace becomes more clouded, confusing and distorted.
Fear, blaming, attacking and holding a ‘gun†at someone else gives the one doing it a false sense of superiority; a feeling that they are above the source of the threat of destruction. The pain they cause in others is not felt when they are in the attack mode. But this sense of triumph is short-lived because another enemy will show up.
This rivalry we are seeing in dramatic proportions in the workplace today actually stems from childhood pain that gets hooked in the relationships at work. It needs to be released by facing and experiencing it—the very thing that most people avoid. This resistance of understanding the self at a deep level occurs because people are afraid of opening up a dirty secret—that they are not worthy.  However, what they do not understand is that it takes so much energy maintaining this wall of protection and image of strength, because it is false. It is quite literally exhausting.
Emotional assaults are occurring every day at every level in the workplace and the world. The prognosis for this ongoing dysfunction is not good. It is an unending process leading to the deep lack of self esteem. Self worth will never be found in perpetuating drama.
What can you do to help heal the workplace? The only remedy is to stop reacting, attacking, defending, blaming and fearing to look at your own wound. When you are feeling attacked or undermined, ask yourself the following questions:
- Who is the source of pain?
- Why do you allow the attack
- Most of all, why do you believe them?
When you can discover that the real source of the pain is coming from within yourself—not the other person, you will be on your way to healing. If you allow the attack and you believe it is justified, you validate it for yourself and the other person. So healing the inner belief is the path to freedom.
Realize the true source of fear within by the staying with the pain, not running away, and allowing it to arise so that it can be recognized and released. As you allow the pain to be felt, you will gradually recall and have memories in your psyche of other painful experiences. his is your opportunity to witness to yourself how you received and came to believe these ideas and descriptions of yourself and how these fears have become you! When you recognize the fear is inside you, you will be liberated.
Discovering your true self, your beautiful self, is difficult to do when you have incorrect beliefs about yourself that block your experience of joy. Clearing out the fictitious thoughts about yourself requires the willingness to stay with your emotional pain, long enough to release it. This courageous act will strengthen your inner core of authentic power, for you will be facing your greatest fear. It only takes going to that place of pain, briefly. You do not have to keep replaying this scene of emotional suffering in your physical world. Allow the pain that is hurting you now to be the door to your release. And that can only be done by you, on your own journey, to the source of the lies about yourself.
The truth is that we are glorious beyond our own belief– all these little beliefs that we have created are nothing but this— shadowy veils. These veils of protection keep us from being fully alive and joyous by filtering the light and shrouding us from seeing our true selves.
In the ever increasing world of uncertainty, many people are recognizing the need for compassion for one another. The recent visit of the Dalai Lama to Seattle with the attendance of thousands of people is testament to the growing interest. However, the workplace is still an arena where kindness is often in short supply and people are too harried to take the time to recognize the need for compassion.
It is time to replace fear with trust and compassion. Each one of us can change the workplace and the world when we heal our own wounds and stop reacting, blaming, attacking and hurting our fellow human beings—be it the workplace or the world.
