How to Handle an Employee Who Is Overly Competitive with Their Peers

The weekly team meeting is on screen. Ben is walking everyone through his Q3 projections when another face un-mutes. It’s Alex, your top performer. “Just to build on that,” Alex says, cutting in smoothly, “if we actually segment the data by new acquisitions, which I did this morning, we see the trend is much stronger.” Alex shares his screen, showing a more polished version of Ben’s own analysis. The air in the virtual room goes completely still. You see Ben’s shoulders tighten. You want to praise Alex’s initiative, but you also feel a familiar knot in your stomach. You find yourself Googling things like, "how to handle an employee who is overly competitive with their peers" while trying to look engaged on camera.

This situation feels intractable because it’s not a simple performance issue. It’s a communication trap. You’re caught in a double bind, sending two conflicting messages simultaneously: “Your aggressive drive is what makes you valuable to us,” and “You need to stop that aggressive drive to be a team player.” The employee hears both, gets confused, and defaults to the behaviour that gets them the most tangible rewards, individual wins. You’re left trying to manage the fallout, feeling like you’re trying to solve an equation where the variables keep changing.

What’s Actually Going On Here

That hyper-competitive employee doesn’t see collaboration and winning as compatible. In their mental model, recognition is a finite resource, like a single pie. If a colleague gets a slice of praise for a good idea, that’s one less slice available for them. This isn’t necessarily malicious; it’s a belief system, often one that has been rewarded by previous jobs, school, or even your own company’s structure. When Ben presents a solid analysis, Alex doesn’t see a team success. He experiences a fleeting moment of panic that Ben might be seen as more valuable, and his instinct is to immediately re-establish his own position at the top.

This dynamic is incredibly stable because the wider system often feeds it. Does your organisation have a “President’s Club” for the top 3% of salespeople? Do you stack-rank employees during performance reviews? Do managers talk about “A-players” and “B-players”? If so, you are institutionally confirming that work is a zero-sum game. You’ve created a system that rewards individual gladiators, and now you’re asking one of your best gladiators why they aren’t helping the others sharpen their swords. The individual’s behaviour is a perfectly logical response to the environment you’ve created.

What People Usually Try (and Why It Backfires)

When faced with this pattern, managers tend to make a few well-intentioned moves that only strengthen the problem. You might recognise some of your own tactics here.

• The “Be a Team Player” Talk. You pull the employee aside for a private chat. You might say something like, "Your work is fantastic, but I need you to be more of a team player." This backfires because it’s a vague critique of someone’s character, not their behaviour. It provides no concrete actions and can be interpreted as, “Stop being so ambitious”, the very trait you value.

• The Public Praise, Private Reprimand. In the team meeting, you say, "Great save, Alex. That's the kind of deep thinking we need." Then, in your one-on-one, you say, "Hey, can you try to create more space for others to contribute in those meetings?" This is the double bind in action. It teaches the employee that public praise comes from winning, and private feedback is a confusing, low-stakes annoyance to be managed.

• Reassuring the Rest of the Team. After a tense meeting, you send a private message to the slighted colleague: "Don't worry about Alex, that's just how they are." This move is corrosive. It signals to the rest of the team that the behaviour is acceptable, that you are unwilling or unable to handle it, and that they should just learn to work around the problem. You effectively sacrifice the team to protect the star.

A Different Position to Take

The way out is not to become a better coach or a more inspiring motivator. It’s to change your position entirely. Stop trying to be a therapist who fixes the employee’s competitive personality. Start acting like an architect who defines the rules of the game for the entire team.

Your job isn’t to make Alex feel less competitive. Your job is to make unhealthy competitive behaviour ineffective. This means shifting your focus from the individual’s internal state to the team’s explicit process. You are the person who defines, in concrete terms, what “a win” looks like for a project or a meeting. If your definition of winning requires collaboration, then the lone-wolf behaviour simply stops working as a strategy for advancement and recognition.

Let go of the responsibility to make everyone feel happy. Take up the responsibility of making the rules of engagement clear and upholding them for everyone, including your top performers. You’re not managing a personality; you’re managing the conditions for performance. When you focus on the system, the individual’s behaviour has a reason to change.

Moves That Fit This Position

The following are not a script, but illustrations of how you might operate from this new position. The language is direct, focused on process, and reinforces the idea that success is a team function.

• Redefine the Win at the Outset. Before a project begins, state the criteria for success, including collaborative metrics. You might say: "For this launch, a successful outcome isn't just hitting the deadline. It's that the final proposal has documented input from sales, marketing, and engineering. Alex, I want you to take the lead on the data modeling, and your specific role is to ensure the model incorporates the objections we get from Ben in sales." This channels their drive into a task that requires, rather than excludes, others.

• Actively Manage the Conversational Space. In the moment someone is interrupted, intervene as a facilitator, not a scold. "Alex, that's a powerful point. Hold it for a moment. Ben, I want to make sure you finish your thought, you were explaining the risk you saw in the Q3 numbers." This isn’t a reprimand. It’s traffic control. You are protecting the integrity of the conversation so the best ideas can surface, regardless of who they come from.

• Assign Interdependent Tasks. Structure work so one person literally cannot succeed without the other. Don’t just ask them to “work together.” Create a formal structure that requires it. "For the next client pitch, Alex, you are responsible for the first half of the deck on technical specs. Ben, you're responsible for the second half on business impact. You will both be presenting it together, and you have to sign off on each other's work before it comes to me." This makes collaboration a non-negotiable condition for getting the job done.

• Tie Feedback Directly to Observable Behaviour. In your one-on-ones, stop using abstract labels like “dominant” or “aggressive.” Instead, name the specific behaviour and its impact. "In the meeting this morning, when you shared your screen while Ben was talking, the effect was that we lost his original point. In the future, when you have a related idea, I need you to wait until the person has finished speaking and then frame it as a new option for the team to consider."