How to deal with a competitive female colleague at work

Under a constant pressure of workplace, I have observed some female colleagues who act deliberately competitive with other co workers. Just recently I’ve been annoyed by one of my senior colleague who always constantly wants to highlight her achievements, perhaps to give an impression of her job and life is amazing. It feels totally weird if we have this thing at the office, I miss my other offices (suddenly)... This type of behaviour is quite annoying and depressing. Though her intention, perhaps is to motivate the junior colleagues, but she let me think that she is such a competitive person. So, I’d like to teach myself to understand this behaviour, its impact to other colleague, and how to cope with a constant exposure of super competitive colleague at work.

As a result of working at a male dominated domain, i.e. Engineering, I’m facing a strange competition with other female colleagues. We are not more than 10 people in our office, but a pressure of wanting to be recognised in our teaching/researching, and trusted for certain top jobs lead us to be more competitive with each other. Some female colleagues are quite low profile at work. But when they are at a top position, they tend to be more aggressive, competitive and narcissistic. This is understandable, because woman at the top job position has different characteristic, strategy and skills to climb the professional ladder. However, their competitive behaviour could disturb the performance of the teamwork, and create anxiety in our work circle.

Some competitive person could be an openly ambitious (superstar), who wants to shine and to be admired because doing a high-profile work. They could inspire others and need a constant praise of the efforts. On one hand, there is a weightlifter who like to take extra workloads at work. They hope could be a source of morale-boosting at work but have problems with deadlines and territorial. The other type is the speeder who wants it done yesterday or being precise. They could lift up morale and motivation of others. Other type covers a person who is a saboteur competitive or a sneaky person. They are seeing other colleague as a potential threat by keeping the information from others and trying to get all credit of work that the team work have done.

How to deal with them? Take these tips: 

A) Encourage cooperation that competition. 

B) Treat them as an equal and avoid to respond to their competitiveness behaviour with arrogance or jealously. 

C) Remind ourself that we are capable, competence, exceptional and wonderful as we are. We don’t need external approval or validation from other people by keep telling them about our achievements.

D) Harness their competitive energy and get motivated from it. 

E) Learn to listen, we could learn many useful things to improve our own abilities. 

F) Let the competitive colleague to work on their thing as long as it is beneficial for the workplace.

G) Find a particular goals that we could use to get them work with us rather than against us.

H) Don’t take it personally or to attach to change them. It is their own inner insecurities and not about people around them.

I) Sometimes you need to surprise them with your confidence, high status, accomplishment and appearance because they are tend to be narcissistic and status-conscious.

J) Be selective about female colleagues that you let into your inner circle. Pick the one that earn you trust and treat you as an equal.

Pekanbaru,
Sources:
http://www.wikihow.com/Deal-With-Overly-Competitive-Colleagues
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201109/how-keep-your-cool-competitive-people
http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/Caution-Women-Competing-at-Work.aspx
http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/the-eight-types-of-workplace-bitch-and-how-to-deal-with-them/story-e6frfm9r-1226600625232