The green-eyed monster: How embracing jealousy at work can make you more productive
Resource Details
Author(s): Meena Andiappan, Lucas Dufour
Date: January 23, 2024
Instances of negative emotions, such as jealousy, are frequent in the workplace. Perhaps your boss just complimented your co-worker on a job well done while ignoring your contributions to a project. Or maybe your new mentee asked to transfer to another supervisor.
Although employees are often expected to ignore or, at minimum, leave such feelings unrecognized, they arise in any social setting.
In fact, organizations are often the perfect breeding grounds for jealousy (i.e., fearing the loss of a valued relationship). Resources are scarce, competition is fierce and maintaining favour with the right people is often critical in moving up in your career.
However, employees are often unsure about what to do with such negative social emotions. Simply ignoring negative emotions or letting them fester has been shown to lead to detrimental outcomes, from anxiety to burnout.
On the other hand, addressing these emotions with actions such as sabotage and revenge and social undermining is also unproductive — at least in the long term.
Our research suggests a different approach may be warranted, and even fruitful: embrace the emotion. When employees are able to reconceptualize jealousy as a motivating force, this opens up new (and more positive) venues to address, overcome, and even capitalize on the feeling.
Although employees are often expected to ignore or, at minimum, leave such feelings unrecognized, they arise in any social setting.
In fact, organizations are often the perfect breeding grounds for jealousy (i.e., fearing the loss of a valued relationship). Resources are scarce, competition is fierce and maintaining favour with the right people is often critical in moving up in your career.
However, employees are often unsure about what to do with such negative social emotions. Simply ignoring negative emotions or letting them fester has been shown to lead to detrimental outcomes, from anxiety to burnout.
On the other hand, addressing these emotions with actions such as sabotage and revenge and social undermining is also unproductive — at least in the long term.
Our research suggests a different approach may be warranted, and even fruitful: embrace the emotion. When employees are able to reconceptualize jealousy as a motivating force, this opens up new (and more positive) venues to address, overcome, and even capitalize on the feeling.