A theme in my practice is helping clients navigate a relationship with a rival. In a better world, we might convert our rivals into collaborators, and sometimes that is indeed an option--but not always. Some rivals are external competitors pursuing the same customers or business opportunities. Others are peers or colleagues going after the same roles or internal resources. On occasion these are openly antagonistic relationships, but more often they're what I've described as "power struggles among nice people":
We often think of a power struggle as a rancorous, zero-sum battle between bitter enemies, but that's just one version, and it's relatively rare. Far more common are the everyday efforts [to] [influence] others, [wield] authority, [maintain] status. [1]
When facing a rival, we always have four options: confront them, co-opt them, avoid them, or ignore them. These are by no means mutually exclusive, and we may adopt any or all of these tactics over the course of the relationship. The key is identifying which option best suits a given situation at that point in time, while ensuring that we're not simply solving for our comfort with a given tactic (or our discomfort with others).
Confront
This entails a show of force with the goal of compelling the rival to give up and back down. It often comes to mind first because that's how many of us were trained to think about rivalries, and it should certainly be in our repertoire. As I've noted before, comfort with conflict is an essential skill in professional life. [2] But it can become a reflexive response, particularly if the relationship was an antagonistic one before the emergence of a rivalry or if the conflict has come to feel "personal" in some sense. At such times it behooves us to remember that "force isn't power," and there may be other, more effective means at our disposal. [3]
Co-opt
Rivalries emerge when resources and opportunities are scarce or finite (or are perceived to be). But the object of a given rivalry is rarely our counterpart's only goal or aspiration. In almost all cases they want something else as well--and if we can learn more about their broader interests, it may be possible for us to convince them to substitute an aim equally valuable to them and less valuable to us. Optimally we can induce them to accept an offer that costs us little or nothing. Here it's important to maintain contact and build trust in order to reduce the information asymmetry in the relationship, which typically involves approaching it as a negotiation. [4]
Avoid
In emphasizing the importance of being comfortable with conflict, I'm not suggesting that avoidance is unworthy or illegitimate--not all conflicts merit the same amounts of attention and energy. [5] There are many different ways to avoid a rival--pursue alternative goals, defer open conflict, recruit allies to serve as proxies. The common thread is maintaining our awareness of the rival and their aims while minimizing direct contact. Sometimes this should be taken literally--at certain points in the relationship it may not be in our interests to have any interactions with a rival. Or if we can't avoid interactions, we can still choose to avoid the subject of the rivalry--this is one reason why I often think of leadership as a performance. [6]
Ignore
And at times we need to go a step beyond avoidance and completely ignore our rival and the rivalry itself. This option sometimes fails to occur to us, in part because contentious relationships usually generate strong feelings, and emotions are attention magnets. [7] We may find ourselves ruminating on the situation when there's no productive action to take and even proactive steps to avoid our rival are a waste of effort. But as the early 20th century comedian W.C. Fields once said, "I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to." [8]
Footnotes
[1] Power Struggles Among Nice People
[4] For more on negotiation, see the following:
[5] Conflict Modes and Managerial Styles
[6] Leadership as a Performing Art
[7] Why You Can't Stop Thinking About Something
[8] My Favorite Piece of Advice...
Photos: Boxers by IBA Boxing. Bullion by 401(K) 2012. Detour by R. Nial Bradshaw. Hand by Tobias Begemann.
