How comparing people quietly turns a team against itself
Holding one employee up as the standard for another can feel like motivation. In practice it shifts attention from the work to the person, and breeds resentment rather than improvement.
THE QUICK ANSWER
Comparing team members rarely motivates anyone. A line like “Why can’t you be more like Alex?” makes the target a person rather than a skill, so people start competing instead of collaborating, and the person held up as the example often ends up isolated. The fix is to name the specific behaviour you want to see, not the colleague who already shows it.
GO DEEPER
Why the target should be a behaviour, not a person
Comparison feels like a shortcut. When one person already does something well, pointing to them seems quicker than explaining what good looks like. Managers often mean it as encouragement, assuming a clear example will give the other person something to aim for.
What the listener actually hears is that they are being measured against a colleague. The goal stops being a skill they can practise and becomes a person they are expected to imitate. That invites rivalry rather than learning, and people begin to see each other as competition instead of support.
The fix from the video is simple: name the specific behaviour you want, not the person who has it. Instead of “be more like Alex”, describe the action itself, such as how a client update is structured or when a risk gets raised. One message says “be someone else”; the other says “do this specific thing”.
There is a cost to the person being held up as the model, too. Being compared to becomes its own quiet punishment, because colleagues may start to resent or avoid them. It is still fine to recognise excellent work publicly, but keep that recognition separate from any correction aimed at someone else.
KEY TAKEAWAY
People can copy a behaviour, but they cannot become someone else. Describe the action you want and leave colleagues’ names out of it.
TEST YOURSELF
