When You Feel Envy, Turn It Into Something Productive

Alison Beard (0:02)

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Adi Ignatius (1:00)

I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.

Alison Beard (1:10)

Adi, today we're going to be talking about envy.

Adi Ignatius (1:13)

All right, that sounds like something that is not good for an organization.

Alison Beard (1:16)

In some ways, you're right, but I'm going to ask you to be a little more open-minded because actually envy in the workplace isn't all bad.

Adi Ignatius (1:24)

Ooh, you sound like one of those hard-charging bosses who pits everyone against each other to increase performance.

Alison Beard (1:30)

Some people do do that, but no, this isn't what I'm talking about. Our guest today is making a more subtle argument.

She is a researcher who says that envy can give us clues as to what we really want and value and where we might want to direct our energy, whether that's a more senior colleague that you admire or a competitor's company that you can learn from. So instead of being petty or toxic, envy can be a good thing for our careers and our organizations if it's leveraged the right way.

Adi Ignatius (1:57)

That sounds like a really tricky emotional balance to get just right.

Alison Beard (2:00)

Yes. She acknowledges that envy can play out in negative ways and we'll talk through that. But more importantly, she's going to explain how to turn these feelings into something productive for yourself and your team.

Stacy Kim wrote the book Envy, Why Wanting What They Have is the Key to Getting What You Want. Here's our conversation.

I think that a lot of us are taught to see envy as a sort of a negative, toxic thing that we should avoid both because we want to be good people, but also for our own mental health. It's the green-eyed monster, it's one of the seven deadly sins. Why do you have a different perspective on envy?

Stacy Kim (2:41)

I think I have a different perspective because I spent my adolescence in Korea in the 70s, late 70s, early 80s.

And in Korea, at least back then, people were far more open about talking about their envy, and they would say the phrase, 不老油 or 不老った to their envy target. So they were basically saying, I envy you, I admire you, I wish I could be like you. And they were pretty open about it. And I've come to realize that that actually helps start a conversation about envy. And it's more of an opportunity to learn about, well, how did this person get what you wanted? It's more emulative, it's more motivating. And it also aligns to what research tells us about the different types of envy. So there's two basic types. One is benign, and one is malicious. And so that Poodle Oil is aligned with that more benign side, which is a motivating side to envy, that I think that English speakers, because there is no word for that benign envy, we don't think about. And so we kind of automatically default to the deadly sin, that shameful emotion that we are more familiar with here in the US or in the Western world.

Alison Beard (4:04)

I'm hearing you say that, one, it's useful to acknowledge or admit that you have envy, and two, that you should distinguish between malicious envy and benign envy, and maybe move more toward benign envy. How do you tell what kind of envy you're feeling and then encourage yourself to make it more benign or motivational?

Stacy Kim (4:27)

Partly, we can't really control it. Envy is just a negative emotion that just happens, but it does tell us something. And I like to define it very simply as wanting something that someone else has, and you feel low about it because you're lacking in some way or you feel behind in some way, and so it's a negative emotion.

But there's two different types, and if that feeling is more focused on the person that you envy, it's more likely to be malicious. For example, if you wish that person didn't have it, or if you wish that you wanted to take that away or bring that person a notch down, that tends to be more malicious. Whereas the more positive envy, the benign envy, you're more focused on the good or the desire, what it is that you wanted. And so if you're able to kind of refocus your attention away from the person who has it, and more towards what it is that you want, and really look at what it is that you want, then I think it becomes more motivating, and then you can more easily turn that negative feeling into emulation rather than envy.