Raises and bonuses at work are an interesting thing. Depending on the company the practice can be shrouded in mystery. An employee may not be fully aware of all the things that go on behind the scenes to get him or her an increase in pay. The naive employee (i.e. me in my early career) just thought if they do a good job and perform well during the year a raise or bonus (or both) would come. When I became a manager I realized it was something different entirely. As a low-level manager I as responsible for the first level of assigning raises. This meant I was notified it was time for raises to be apportioned and was given a pool of money to distribute in the form of added compensation. The problem with this approach soon became clear. If there was an employee who particularly stood out that year and deserved a large raise, the only way to accomplish this was to reduce the raises that would have otherwise gone to other employees in that pool. How would you handle this situation? You have an overachiever but giving them more means giving someone else less, and they don’t deserve less.
This way of doing things is commonplace in industry. It is known as a “zero sum game.” Have you ever heard of that term? It’s called that because the amount of money available to give is finite. There is only so much of it to go around. And if someone gets a lot of it, well, it means others will get less. One person’s gain is another person’s loss.
What do you think this kind of set up does in the workplace?
It might create competition. That isn’t a bad thing (most of the time). You want your workers to do their best at the job. But it also might lead to what is called the crab bucket effect. That is a great phrase isn’t it? We get that name by literally watching the behavior of crabs in a bucket. You can put a lot of crabs in a bucket and not usually have to worry about putting a top on it. The crabs won’t get out of it. And it isn’t because they aren’t trying. They don’t manage to climb to the top and escape because whenever one crab gets near the top, the other crabs will pull it back down. All the crabs manage to do is pull themselves back to the bottom.
Another term for it is the Tall Poppy Syndrome. The best or fastest growing poppies stick up above the rest in a field. This makes them easy to spot and they are the ones that get cut down. The phrase applies to an organization that leads to attacking those who perform well.
Do we do this?
In 1954 Social Comparison Theory was proposed by psychologist Leon Festinger, who suggested people have an innate drive to evaluation themselves. This manifests itself often as a comparison to others. It’s a form of judgement of oneself. We grade ourselves based on the comparisons we make to other people. In a zero sum game, this actually makes a lot of sense. Someone else’s gain does mean your loss, so it is understandable that you would compare. But what if life isn’t a zero sum game? Why would someone else’s success feel like a threat?
Why would your neighbor getting a new car, for example, make you feel any less about yourself? What if your cousin won the lottery? Would that affect you in any way? Should it?
Social comparisons usually happen close by. Distance seems to dampen the effects. You probably aren’t comparing yourself to some rich person halfway around the world, for example. It only hits home when someone’s gain occurs nearby. Some person close to you is “winning,” and that means you feel you are falling behind. We see this in the Old Testament with Joseph, who had his father’s favor. His brothers were envious of this, and if you know the story you know how that envy manifested itself. But you don’t have to go that far in the Bible to see envy. You can get it in the first few chapters.
Genesis 4:3-8
Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. 4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
What did Abel do to deserve getting himself killed? Nothing. The problem is Cain thought life was a zero sum game. Abel’s success meant Cain’s failure. “I want. God’s favor,” he thinks, “and you are preventing me from getting it.”
This is the problem we encounter when we think of our faith as a zero sum game. It makes perfect sense if you think God’s favor is limited. If God only has so much love to go around, then you’re in trouble if someone else gets it. But this is not how God works. Everyone can have God’s favor. Your spiritual success does not depend on the spiritual success of others. This early story tells us, right off the bat, that God doesn’t play a zero sum game with us. And envy has no place in God’s Kingdom.
God Bless