A healthy rivalry within the company is desirable but the excesses are to be understood in time.

Whether pushed by managers or self-reeinged, competition among employees in the various business departments is effective as long as there remains a constructive push to achieve common goals. If competitive impulses become excessive they can be destabilizing.

The famous phrase “Divide et Impera” that the past has handed down to us and that well molds itself in every situation of conflict, it seems to be attributable to Philip II of Macedonia,father of Alexander the Great, who managed militarily to reunite Greece at the expense of the countless tribes and military factions present on the territory.

In the modern world, the strategy wants to express a system of power that is deliberately fragmented, in a condition of eternal balance between internal conflicts and impulses to prevail, in order to shine towards the higher hierarchical step.

From a managerial point of view,having a team made up of competitive elements that hold small areas of power, fractional of each other, can be, if well managed, an important force in achieving common goals.

But the problems can arise when the competition, between the team members, transcends into a creeping state of infighting, concealed by the reason to achieve the goal of the team, which could be a budget or the finalization of other goals.

The team born to be a ram in the market,which should be composed of intelligence, constancy, heart, reliability, loyalty and team spirit, could begin its slow transformation with the creation of internal factions that have the primary purpose of running alone and discrediting other team members.

The first thing that can happen is the creation of a new team within the group, enlisting the “faithful” on one side and the other, immediately interrupting the lines of communication.

The factions no longer talk about professionally relevant things, trying to maintain normal social behavior, creating a carbon-based climate where apparently the working climate within the team seems peaceful.

Each component of the factions instills much more psycho-physical energies into the work, but it does not always manage to turn them into efficient operation as the information chain can be fragmentary or deliberately not complete or correct.

There are many reasons for workers to engage in hyper-competitive behaviours between them:

• A precise strategy on the part of the responsible manager who, unsure of his professional qualities, urges the subordinates to avoid forms of coalition that could put him in trouble.

• A habit of the team leader who, embodying his desire to emerge, accepts direct competition and increasing tension between the factions, in the hope that they generate more profit in terms of results than a cohesive but less competitive team.

• A lack of involvement on the part of the manager in the daily life of the team could lead to a subtle form of anarchy, in which every faction leader feels like a project manager.

• The lack of charisma of the team leader could lead members to seek, through sometimes unscrupulous actions and behaviors, new spaces for the fight against succession.

• A marked unevenness of the qualities and skills of the team members could lead to natural selection, with the creation of Serie A and Serie B teams, creating feelings of uptio and forms of obstruction in the work.

• It is undisputed that a good level of competition within the work teams is a very positive thing to achieve the company’s goals, but the management of a team of work involves the direct involvement of the manager,not so much as a superior element of the hierarchy, but as an ally in which the authority of the leader can galvanize the team in a positive way.

The circulation of information must be objective and comprehensive and evenly distributed to all so that everyone can process it and make their own contribution in interpreting it in order to generate a better intervention strategies.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.