What If the Advice to “Compete Harder” Is Actually Holding You Back?
Be honest: how much mental energy do you spend sizing yourself up against colleagues? Tracking who got the nod on a project, who’s moving faster, who’s being seen more? Even when you know it’s not a fair comparison, the habit is almost automatic.
That’s not a personal failing. That’s a culture problem. And Ruchika Malhotra has a lot to say about it.
This month, we’re recommending Uncompete: Rejecting Competition to Unlock Success, a book that validates something many of us have quietly suspected for years: the hustle-and-compete playbook isn’t just exhausting. It may actually be working against us.
So What’s It Actually About?
Malhotra isn’t a self-help cheerleader; she’s the founder of Candour, a global inclusion strategy firm, a former international business journalist, and a regular Harvard Business Review contributor (and a 2025 CFW speaker!) Her 2022 book Inclusion on Purpose was MIT Press’s top-selling title that year. She brings receipts.
In Uncompete, she takes on the competitive mindset most of us absorbed somewhere between our first internship and our third performance review: the idea that getting ahead means getting there before someone else does. Using interviews with leaders, behavioral research, and her own consulting work, she makes a compelling case that this zero-sum thinking is producing the opposite of what it promises. Burnout, yes. But also worse decisions, weaker teams, and a scarcity mindset that quietly poisons the work environment around us.
The alternative she proposes—a framework rooted in collaboration, community, and what she calls “mutuality”—isn’t soft or idealistic. It’s a strategic argument for why investing in the people around you is actually the highest-leverage move you can make for your own career.
Mid-career women, especially? This one is for us.
What You’ll Take Away
- The competitive grind costs more than we admit. Malhotra doesn’t just validate the burnout—she traces it back to a specific source. When we’re constantly measuring ourselves against peers, we’re burning mental energy that could go toward actual impact. The research she cites will make you want to rethink some habits you didn’t even realize you had.
- Scarcity is a story, not a fact. This is one of the book’s most clarifying reframes. So much of how we behave at work is rooted in the belief that there’s only so much success to go around. Malhotra shows how that belief shapes our choices—often without our knowing it—and what it looks like to deliberately shift toward an abundance mindset instead.
- Envy is data, not a character flaw. Okay, this section might be our favorite. Rather than telling you to suppress the sting of a colleague’s promotion, Malhotra reframes it as useful information. Something in you lit up. That’s worth paying attention to—and she gives you a framework for what to do with it.
- Lifting others is a leadership strategy. This is where the book gets genuinely practical. For managers and aspiring leaders especially, Malhotra lays out how to build team cultures where collective success is the goal—not as a nice-sounding value, but as a concrete operating approach that makes your team (and your reputation) stronger.
- The game was written for someone else. You’re allowed to change it. Malhotra is clear-eyed about the fact that competitive systems have historically been harder for women to win—and especially for women of color. Uncompete isn’t about opting out of ambition. It’s about refusing to let someone else’s rulebook define what success looks like for you.
Why We’re Recommending It
A lot of leadership books tell you to want more, push harder, and play the long game with ruthless consistency. Uncompete asks a different question: What if the game itself needs to change?
That’s a conversation we think this community is more than ready to have. Because honestly? Most of us have already started having it—at lunch, on the commute home, in the group chat. Malhotra just gives the feeling a framework, and the framework some teeth.
Pick it up. Dog-ear it. Pass it to someone on your team who needs it too.
Get the Book
Uncompete: Rejecting Competition to Unlock Success is available now wherever books are sold, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and Books-A-Million.
Learn more about Ruchika T. Malhotra at ruchika.co.
