You have prepared for a meeting, read the material and now sit comfortably in a meeting room, waiting for your turn to comment. A colleague presents the analysis you were going to present. It is better than yours would have been. Clearer and sharper, and they even thought of the thing you missed.
For two seconds you might feel a sting and go looking for the flaw. Or you might just feel glad. Then comes the part that matters: what you do with the information.
Because that is what it is. Someone on the team is better at something than you, and now everybody knows where that capability sits. Whether it gets used depends on which way you are looking: at a colleague, at someone on your team, or at your boss.
The sting
Envy comes in two kinds. One says: I want that, so I will work for it. The other says: they should not have it, so let me find the problem. Van de Ven and colleagues separated the two in 2009. The first moves you up. The second pulls them down.
The second rarely announces itself. It looks like rigour. A few pointed questions, a caveat about the sample, and “Has anyone checked this?” A tell is whether your first question is how they did it or what is wrong with it.
And some people feel none of it. They are glad, or satisfied, or even relieved that someone is better at something, even when they know they are fairly good at it themselves. It seems to depend on how much of your identity sits in that skill. When the area is central to how you see yourself, a close colleague’s success is a threat. When it is not, you share in the pride (Tesser, 1988). Being fairly good at something is not the same as needing to be the best at it.
The colleague
This is the hardest one. Envy tends to pick someone similar to you, in an area that matters to you. That is a peer, on your own territory, and often over the same promotion. When ranking feels zero-sum, credit starts to feel zero-sum too.
Two things help. The first is accuracy. Ask people to estimate their own share of a joint effort, and the answers add up to more than 100 per cent (Ross and Sicoly, 1979). Your own effort is simply easier to remember than anyone else’s. So crediting a peer is not only generous. It corrects a bias nobody chose.
Accuracy has a price, though. When people were made to look at their collaborators’ contributions, their claims shrank, but the ones who reported doing more than the others became less happy with the group (Caruso, Epley and Bazerman, 2006). Seeing the real split can sting most for the one who carried more.
The second is being specific. “Great job, team” is credit-shaped, but nobody can find anyone in it. “She found the pattern in the data we had all looked past” is credit, especially said in front of her boss.
The team member
This is the one leaders think about, and what goes wrong is documented. Managers who doubt they can meet the competence bar of the role ask for less input, and judge the employee who speaks up more harshly (Fast, Burris and Bartel, 2014). It is ego defence. The person with the answer becomes the threat.
I once handed half of my responsibilities to a team member who was more competent on that side of the job. Looking back, it could have been laziness, or it could have been seen as trust. I explained it to myself as decent staffing. OK, my role got a bit smaller, but the aim was a clear playground for that person, and faster, better quality results for the company. And a more committed team member.
Leaders asked what humble leadership looks like named three things: admitting mistakes, naming what others do better, and learning in public (Owens and Hekman, 2012). Later work linked humbler leaders to more engaged employees and better retention, though that cannot prove cause. And you cannot fake it. People can tell.
The boss
A boss learns what is really going on from the people below them saying so, and it is the most fragile line in the organisation. Say something nice and you might be the suck-up. Say something critical, and you might upset the boss. So many people say nothing (Ashford, Blatt and VandeWalle, 2003), and the boss decides on a filtered picture and thinks it is the real one.
Suck-up is an image you can give, and a stamp you can get. Observers grow suspicious of niceness aimed at power, and your sincerity is the one thing they cannot see. What they can see is the rest of you. Vonk found in 1998 that someone likeable to superiors and unkind to subordinates was judged as slimy as someone unkind to everybody. So the answer is not silence. It is the same credit in every direction: up, across and down.
Make it specific and true. “Great leadership” is a suck-up sentence. “The way you handled that call on Thursday changed how I will run mine” is information, and “That change cost my team two weeks” is critical without being personal. The boss’s part is what happens next. Managers who doubt they meet the competence bar of the role judge the person who speaks up more harshly (Fast, Burris and Bartel, 2014), and one bad reaction teaches everyone the price.
It does not have to come from your team. A peer, someone from another department or a customer can say it, and they have less to fear. Some stamps you will get anyway. Say it true, and say it in every direction.
Credit is information
Credit is usually filed under kindness. I think it is also information. A team can only use the expertise it can identify. In a study of production teams at a large technology firm, the teams that judged expertise by experience and education did better than those that went by race or gender (Bunderson, 2003). Saying out loud who is better at what is part of how a team finds out. Without it, the capability sits there unused.
And the bill is uneven. People also read expertise from social cues, which are less reliable. Female leaders often feel expected to show more humility than men, and then have their competence questioned when they do (Owens and Hekman). Giving credit costs some people more than others, and receiving it can too.
The one who did it better
Then there is the person who managed to do something better. They notice quickly what happens to people like them. People who expect to be the target of malicious envy are more likely to give advice (van de Ven). If it is safe to be seen, they stay visible. If it is not, they get quieter. I suspect that is how organisations lose the people who knew the most. Still, I urge you always to be better!
