ALISON BEARD: I’m Alison Beard.
ADI IGNATIUS: I’m Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.
ALISON BEARD: Adi, today we’re going to be talking about envy.
ADI IGNATIUS: All right, that sounds like something that is not good for an organization.
ALISON BEARD: In some ways you’re right, but I’m going to ask you to be a little more open-minded today because actually envy in the workplace isn’t all bad.
ADI IGNATIUS: Ooh, you sound like one of those hard-charging bosses who pits everyone against each other to increase performance.
ALISON BEARD: 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: That sounds like a really tricky emotional balance to get just right.
ALISON BEARD: Yes. So 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: 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 bureowoyo or bureopda 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 bureowoyo 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 U.S. or in the Western world.
ALISON BEARD: 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: Well, partly we can’t really control it. Envy is just a negative emotion that just happens, but it does tell us something. And envy, I like to define it very simply as wanting something that someone else has, and you kind of 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 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.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Where do you see envy playing out or coming up most often in people’s professional lives today?
STACY KIM: Yeah, I think that anytime you’re in a competitive situation, you’re naturally going to compare yourself with other people. People will say comparison is a thief of joy. I don’t think that that’s all that helpful because we can’t help but compare. We even as children, comparison helps us figure out how to join a group, how to stay in a group and how to behave in that group and how to not get kicked out of that group. So those comparisons are important for those reasons and we learn more about ourselves through those comparisons.
So we’re naturally wired to compare. And then when we make those comparisons in more competitive situations, we’re more likely going to feel some kind of envy because we’re focused on people who are ahead of us, who are doing things that we want to do or maybe getting things that we want.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I imagine that the rise of social media has made envy a more common phenomenon because you’re not just comparing yourself to the people in your organization or your town, but in the entire world. I can see every journalist or an editor who exists and the amazing things that they’re doing right now.
STACY KIM: Right. Keeping up with the Joneses meant people in your neighborhood, people you interact with in real life. But now social media allows us to see everything about anyone’s career. We can look up on LinkedIn all the places that they’ve worked, all the volunteer work that they do, and those pieces of information we didn’t used to get and now we can. And so there are many more opportunities to envy.
ALISON BEARD: What are some wrong ways that you see people responding when they feel envy at work?
STACY KIM: The first thing is to ignore that envy, to kind of push it down or to suppress it because envy, like any other negative emotion, gives us information that’s important. So for example, fear tells us that there’s danger and so we better watch out or anger tells us like, “Okay, there’s some kind of injustice here. We need to correct this.” And envy tells us what we really want. And so to ignore that information I think is a mistake.
I ask people to take a moment after the sting of the negativity to try and look at it more closely and learn from it because you can naturally kind of get into the more malicious envy, especially at work, where you start to think, “Okay, well, that person got that promotion or that person got that cool assignment.”
And then you start to think about, “Okay, how can I bring this person a notch down?” I think that’s a natural thing that we do. Or maybe it’s gossiping, we’re gossiping with other people like, “Can you believe that person got that promotion? It’s so easy to do.” And so taking a moment to pause and recognize, “Wait a minute. Oh, I’m feeling some envy here. What can I do with this information that’s more productive?”
ALISON BEARD: You note also that because of what we’ve been taught about envy, it’s often associated with shame or guilt. So when you do feel envious of a colleague, you feel bad about it and then sort of start beating yourself up because you’re like, “Ugh, not only am I not succeeding as much as he is, I’m a terrible person for begrudging him his success.”
STACY KIM: You know, I think most people are good people, and so they’re going to feel guilty that they’re having these feelings of ill will towards another person. And I think that that also is natural. Feeling guilty is slightly different from feeling shame. So feeling guilty is like, “Oh, I did a bad thing,” whereas feeling shame is I’m a bad person. And when we feel that guilt so much that it kind of morphs into shame, the real problem with that is that it keeps us stuck.
It keeps us from doing something about it or it just kind of freezes you. Bret Lyon and Sheila Rubin write about shame and they talk about that. That’s a big problem with shame is that you freeze when you feel shame. I saw that in my coaching clients. These are high achieving, very conscientious people who have done a lot and they still envy and then they envy somebody gets the promotion again, we’ll use that as an example, and then think, “Okay, well, I feel bad because I’m feeling bad about this person, plus that person got that promotion, that means I can’t get it.” And so there’s kind of this freeze that happens.
There’s this hopelessness. Sara Protasi, she’s a wonderful philosopher who studies envy and she calls that inert envy when you think, “Okay, now that somebody else got that promotion, it’s unobtainable.” And you’re focused on the promotion, that’s something that you wanted. And so you feel this inert envy, you kind of sulk is what she says, and you sit with it, you kind of go inward and blame yourself or feel bad about yourself and you get stuck. And so that’s something that I really hope people will avoid by taking another look at their envy.
ALISON BEARD: So if the first step is admitting that you have it, maybe trying to move yourself to a more benign feeling about it, you also argue that it’s important to sort of pick it apart, analyze the sort of four elements that make it up. So walk us through that framework.
STACY KIM: Yeah, so there is, I call it SIRN because it’s S-I-R-N, and envy is a negative emotion and it’s trying to tell you something. It’s like an alarm bell ringing. S is “similar target.” Envy usually occurs when it’s someone close to you that has something that you want. And I find that to be somewhat hopeful because it means that what you’re envying what you want is actually within your reach, right?
So to remember, “Okay, I’m not so far as behind as I think I might be.” “I” is the intangible desire, and I think that’s the most important thing. It’s looking a little bit more deeply into what it is we think we desire. It’s not usually the tangible thing like the promotion or more money or more wealth or more beauty or the nice vacations. That’s more tangible. The more intangible desire is looking closely at how would I feel if I got this thing?
What is the feeling that I really want to capture? So going back to the promotion, getting a promotion might mean to you that you’ll feel more secure, that you’ll feel more financially secure, and that’s the intangible that you want. Or maybe it means that you’ll be able to mentor other people, and that’s a feeling that you want to capture. So looking more closely at the intangible desire is the second step.
R stands for relevant comparison. We not only envy people who are close to us, but we envy in domains that we really care about. Basketball players are going to envy other basketball players, cellists are going to envy other cellists. I envy knitters, I envy writers and stuff like that.
So it shows you what domain is important to you. For a long time, I kind of tried to ignore the fact that I wanted to be a writer, and when I started looking at my envy, I realized, “Oh, wait a minute, this is something I need to pay attention to. This is something that’s important to me.”
So envy can help us in that as well. And then finally, N stands for negative emotion. I mentioned that it’s an alarm bell, but it also kind of serves as a gauge. The more envy you feel, the more negativity you feel, the more you can’t shake off the feeling of envy, the more important this is to you and the more you want to pay attention to it.
ALISON BEARD: So you’ve done that analysis. How do you then shift that envy to a positive for you in your career or your team or your organization?
STACY KIM: I always ask people to start small. I want you to find the smallest step you can take, and rather than focusing on outcomes or that envy goal that you aspire to, think about what is the activity? What is the smallest micro action that I can take that can move me a little closer? And then think about, “Oh, how can I start that this week?”
So for example, envy often points us to work that we want to do. So how can we then go take one little step? Envy points us to people we want to emulate. And so what can I do? I like to start, for example, by studying that person that I envy, researching. There’s thankfully a lot of information online, right? If I admire an author, for example, I will go and search for every podcast that they’ve been on and hear more about their writing process and then figure out, “Okay, well, what’s something I can try out? What’s something that I could practice?”
I’ve had clients study the people that they envy at work, just watch them and see if there’s anything that they can learn from them and just kind of keep notes on them for a little bit. And then after a while, once you’ve gotten to know that person a little better, even though it’s through research, you might be able to approach them simply by saying, “I envy you. I admire you. How did you do that?” Or, “I appreciate that you’ve been able to do X, Y, and Z. Can you tell me more about how you got that done?” And providing a compliment and then asking a very specific question. I think people are surprised at how much other people would appreciate something like that and are willing to help.
ALISON BEARD: Public expressions of envy seem a little bit risky, so how do you figure out when it’s going to help you or hurt you?
STACY KIM: Yeah, I think it’s trial and error. Not everyone’s going to help you, and I think you would probably be able to know when it’s safe to do that and when it’s not. And so another way you can do it is to look for people that are similar to the person that you’re envying that might be even closer to you or more friendly, and so that’s something. Another thing is don’t just jump right into the big envy question or that big envy admission.
You can kind of start to befriend that person or just make small steps closer to that person or find out a little bit more doing the research. But yeah, I think most people know when it feels not so safe, and I’m not telling people to go ahead and jump in and do that. At the same time, you’ll be surprised.
Like I said, people are so yearning for compliments or to be recognized, and so if you’re able to spot out something small and that’s really specific and give them a compliment there, like, “I noticed that you did X, Y, and Z. I noticed that after that meeting in the conference room, you picked up the garbage and other people’s garbage, and I think that’s so cool that you did that.” So let your observations kind of guide you and see where that might take you.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I guess when in doubt, you can always use the word admire instead of envy.
STACY KIM: Exactly. Yeah.
ALISON BEARD: So you also draw a distinction between primary responses to envy and secondary responses to envy. So explain that to our listeners.
STACY KIM: I think the best way to probably describe it is like, if you were to say, “Oh, I envy – let’s pretend I’m a basketball player and I envy another basketball player, I’m going to watch that person and figure out what it is that he’s doing or she’s doing to make their game better. And so I’m going to actually build my skill to be able to be as good as the basketball player that I envy.” And that would be a primary response. That’s really going after what it is that you want and then building the skills in order to do that. So maybe it’s like I practice as much as the person that I envy or I dribble more, I shoot more and I try to build those skills.
A secondary response would be like, “Oh, trying to somehow bring that person down a little bit or bring myself up by saying things like, “Oh, that person just has a freak ability to play basketball, so I’m never going to catch up with that person.”
So that’s a genius effect, right? That’s one secondary response. Another secondary response might be that I start gossiping and saying, “Oh yeah, that basketball player actually does X, Y, and Z, and that’s not okay.” Or saying, “Well, if I practice more, I probably could be better than that person and just kind of giving up. But that’s another way to kind of build yourself up or to say something like, “Well, actually, I’m a better runner than he is or she is.” And so building yourself in that way.
ALISON BEARD: And so we want to move towards primary responses because that’s the most useful and helpful?
STACY KIM: Exactly. I think that’s more useful.
ALISON BEARD: On the business or organizational side, I imagine that looking at the things that a competitor is doing well could be a useful thing for a leader to point to, to say, “We really envy the way this organization does customer service or their website design.” So have you seen that play out at that broader scale?
STACY KIM: I think the best example for that is Korea in the late ’70s and early ’80s. It was still struggling to overcome the wars that had taken place and the occupation that the Japanese had occupied Korea for 36 years, and that was kind of another really tough part in Korea’s history. Everyone back then was still struggling.
I think what Koreans did was that they used their envy or their hatred, actually, of Japan to really mobilize themselves to improve themselves. It just became this national desire, a collective envy of Japan to beat Japan. As a student, in Korea, you would hear teachers nearly every day tell you, “You have to study hard in order for us to no longer be a Third World country and beat Japan.”
And people took that nationalism and channeled it into something that was very helpful. So for example, they really competed against Japan to get the 88 Olympics, and they also competed in areas like cars and electronics. And I think that that helped motivate and helped channel that anger and that frustration and that envy into something more productive. And what’s also interesting is that it didn’t just occur back in the 70s or late 70s, but it also happens more recently.
Korea recognized that its population was aging and then looked again to Japan to see, “Okay, well, how are the Japanese handling that?” And they copied their long-term care insurance program after the Japanese and actually tried to improve on it so that they could serve their citizens, their aging up population. And as a result, it’s a very popular social service that the Korean government provides its people and it does more good. So I think we can even as groups harness envy for good.
ALISON BEARD: And a more fun example is the success of BTS and KPop Demon Hunters and all of that, which has surpassed any Japanese sort of cultural stardom, right?
STACY KIM: That’s right. Yeah. Koreans were very deliberate about it. There was a ministry of culture division of the government that invested in the movie industry, in the entertainment industry, because Korea doesn’t have that many resources. And so they said, “Okay, well we have people, we have talent and we’re going to nurture that.” Yeah, they looked to J-Pop and then K-pop surpassed that. And it’s definitely a phenomenon now.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And I think that’s a great example of envy not necessarily being copying exactly what another group or company or in this case country does, but figuring out, “Okay, what is it that we really want? Maybe it’s global cultural relevance.” And so how do we do that in our own way?
STACY KIM: Exactly.
ALISON BEARD: So if you’re a manager and you notice feelings of envy on your team or maybe a CEO who’s noticing envy between functions or departments, how should you handle it? How do you harness it for good?
STACY KIM: First of all, it’s really hard to tell if somebody else has envy. You might think that they do, but there’s some researchers who found that envy is not, there’s no facial expression for envy. And so I think that it’s wise not to assume that somebody’s feeling envy, but to maybe talk about it and to say, “I’ve noticed some things. What are you feeling here?”
And talk about it in a more general way. Or look at the four components of envy and really diffuse that you’re not out there to get this person, but to just start conversations about, “Okay, let’s talk about envy more freely.” And then what you can do is you can use teamwork to shift that envy and to describe how we really want to work as a team here and not against each other. And so what is it that we can learn from one another and how can we support one another and look at things like that.
How can we get closer to people? Another way to, I’m thinking of actually a better example right now. There is Susan Fiske. She is a professor emeritus of Princeton and she looked at envy very closely as well. And she talks about, when I interviewed her, she noticed that she shouldn’t put two people in similar circumstances together to work with each other. So if there were research projects, she would never put two people at the same level on that research project.
What she would do is she would find very different people, different people at different stages or people with very different skills because she wanted to avoid envy in that way. And so I think that’s probably a better use of preventing envy from this get-go, preventing that competition, because remember, we envy similar targets.
If you envy or if you bring together two people who have very different levels of experience or different skills, then you’re more likely to have collaboration. So I think that’s probably the best advice I could give an executive who wants to avoid the negative impact of envy. It’s a another reason why we want to have more diverse people working for us.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I imagine also that you can get a team working together by focusing their collective envy externally, right?
STACY KIM: Yes, yes.
ALISON BEARD: Whether it’s, we want to get resources that this other team has, so what are they doing and how do we mimic it?
STACY KIM: That’s a great idea.
ALISON BEARD: This competitor is doing this and so let’s focus on our envy there instead of internally.
STACY KIM: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s what sports teams do, right? Rather than compete with each other, they will direct their envy or their negativity towards a different team.
ALISON BEARD: So if someone listening realizes I’m feeling envious of a colleague right now, what should they do right away? Not sometime in the future, but right now to turn that feeling into something useful for them?
STACY KIM: Yeah. Well, I hope after listening to this, people will realize, “Okay, envy is not necessarily a bad thing.” And so feeling envy doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person and just kind of recognizing, “Hey, this is universal, this is natural that I’m feeling this way. It doesn’t feel great, but it’s okay.” And then going through the steps of looking at the four components of envy and saying, “Okay, let’s remind ourselves I’m not so far behind. I’m envying a similar target.”
And then thinking about what is it that I really want? What is the feeling that I want to capture? You go through all of those things and just list out very briefly. I suggest people take a three by five index card and just kind of write out, scribble, what are those four components of the envy that I’m feeling? And then I would just think of what is one small thing?
What is one thing that I could practice? What is one thing that I could do to get myself a little closer to what it is that I want? What is that intangible desire? And is there something that I could do this week? Is there something that I could do within 20 minutes? And then just really trying to make it into a small practice. I think those are the things that really do help.
ALISON BEARD: Would you adapt that advice any way for a leader who’s feeling envious of another team or a competing organization?
STACY KIM: I wouldn’t because I think that it’s funny because no matter how high up you are, if you’ve gotten that high up, that means that you’ve been in a competitive environment or you are in a competitive environment. And so a leader is just as likely to feel envy as somebody who isn’t a leader.
And that going through those different components, really looking at more closely at that intangible desire and being honest with yourself and saying, “Okay, what is it that I really, really want?” Because it’s so easy to chase the next thing. It’s so easy to keep trying to go for more or trying to go for better, but sometimes that’s not really what we want. Sometimes there’s something deeper that we want to do. I would use the same advice for leaders or for people who are just starting out.
ALISON BEARD: Well, thank you so much. It’s a terrific book and I’ve loved talking to you.
STACY KIM: Oh, thank you so much, Alison. I really enjoyed speaking with you.
ALISON BEARD: That’s Stacy Kim, a researcher and author of the book Envy: Why Wanting What They Have Is The Key to Getting What You Want.
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