Jealousy at work can manifest itself in many ways. We may envy a promotion, good contacts with the boss and employees, ease, skills and composure in every situation. We may also envy successes in our private lives, a raise, or even a perfectly styled hairstyle or great clothes.

Jealousy can occur for many reasons and can take various forms. It is often a „healthy” feeling that simply motivates us to act – if someone has acquired new skills that are appreciated by the boss, it means that we can do it too. So we get down to work and put more energy into it, but we also know exactly what our goal is. It’s a gentle jealousy at work that allows us to do more.

However, it may happen that jealousy grows to great proportions. Thus, we can even throw obstacles in the way of people we are jealous of. This may create conflicts and an unhealthy and toxic atmosphere.

We also lose because of envy. Many negative feelings accumulate in us, it is harder for us to concentrate, we lose interest in everything, we lose motivation to work. We spend all our energy on jealousy, wondering what the other person has that we don’t have. We are happy when it suffers even the slightest failure.

This approach may cause the quality of not only our work, but also our lives to decline, making us frustrated and irritated, and thus may also cause negative emotions in other employees. For them, we will be a toxic employee who disturbs the atmosphere and operation of the company.

Often, our jealousy at work results from low self-esteem. We don’t really believe in our capabilities and skills, so we defend ourselves against this by denying the competences of people whose work we are jealous of. We do not notice the positive aspects of our work and focus on the negatives, which has a negative impact on the quality of the duties we perform, but we know everything about even the smallest mistake of the person whose skills we are jealous of.

We are also jealous when we believe that we are not treated fairly, for example, the boss favors one of the employees and that is why he gets a promotion. We don’t take into account that it may be about skills. This often comes from the fact that in childhood we felt our parents’ injustice towards us – for example, our younger siblings were, in our opinion, unfairly more pampered. We later transfer this jealousy to work in adulthood.

To combat jealousy, first of all you need to become aware of your own abilities. Sometimes it seems to us that one of our co-workers can do a lot, we envy him/her these skills, but if we just think about it, it may turn out that we can do just as much, but these are different skills (those that the co-worker cannot share) praise).

We focus on others more than ourselves, we follow what they do. It is worth trying to focus mainly on yourself and your professional career. Let’s ask ourselves whether we really want to do exactly what our co-worker does in life, whether we have the same goals and values. Perhaps we are so different that comparing ourselves is a huge mistake.

If we feel that our jealousy is justified, we feel that it is unfair that someone gets a raise and we have been passed over, let’s talk about it honestly with our boss. However, let us remember to prepare substantively for such a conversation and present arguments that we really deserve this raise.

Don’t disrespect anyone just because you’re jealous. If he is where he is, he probably deserved it. Let his successes be a driving force for you to continue. Remember that if someone else can do it, you can do it too. But instead of wondering why not you, roll up your sleeves and get to work. There can be no success without your own contribution.

Jealousy at work can stop our professional career. So if you feel it, try to find its cause and fight its effects!

Source:https://poradnikpracownika.pl/-zazdrosc-w-pracy-jak-sobie-radzic

Supported by Norway through Norway Grants 2014-2021, in the frame of the Programme “Social Dialogue – Decent Work”.