Earlier this year, Debra and I had Zach Mercurio on Corey-osity Unleashed (Season 2, Episode 6). Zach researches mattering... the feeling of being significant to the people around you.
One detail from his story stuck with me longer than the research did.
Zach grew up the youngest of three brothers. The youngest spends a lot of time watching. You watch your brothers do things first. You measure yourself against them, because they are always a step ahead. And you spend a lot of time on your own, figuring out how to keep yourself busy.
Zach got good at both. Comparing himself. Entertaining himself. And somewhere along the way, the watching turned into a deep curiosity about how everything works. The curiosity carried him into studying mattering in the first place.
Here is what I keep coming back to. Comparison and curiosity start in the exact same spot. You look at someone ahead of you. What happens next decides whether you shrink or grow.
Comparison Isn't the Enemy
We treat comparison like a character flaw. "Comparison is the thief of joy," and all the rest.
The research says otherwise. Back in 1954, psychologist Leon Festinger put forward social comparison theory. His argument: people have a basic drive to evaluate their own opinions and abilities. When there's no objective yardstick, we use other people.
There is no ruler for "good leader" or "decent writer" or "solid engineer." So you look sideways. Everyone does. A youngest brother does it from the moment he toddles into the backyard.
Grown-ups do it on LinkedIn. Scroll for five minutes on a Monday morning and you've measured yourself against three people. Someone's book launch. Someone's keynote. Someone's new title. None of those people asked to be your yardstick. Your brain picked them anyway, without asking you first.
The urge to compare is wiring. You won't switch it off. The useful question is what you do in the second after you notice someone doing better than you.
The Fork in the Road
In 1997, Penelope Lockwood and Ziva Kunda at the University of Waterloo ran a set of studies called "Superstars and Me". They showed students a description of an outstanding graduating student in their own field, then measured how the students felt about themselves.
One study used accounting students. First-year students read about the superstar and felt inspired. They rated themselves higher afterwards. Fourth-year students read about the same superstar and felt deflated. The difference had nothing to do with the star. First-years still had time to get there. Fourth-years had already missed their shot.
The fourth-years did something else too. They rated the star a little less positively. The authors suspected a defensive move... cutting the target down to size.
A later study in the same paper looked at beliefs about ability. Students who saw academic ability as something you grow felt inspired by the star. Students who saw ability as fixed felt discouraged.
So the same person, with the same achievements, lifts one reader and flattens another. The deciding factor is whether the reader believes the gap is closable.
Here's the fork. Comparison measures the gap. Curiosity asks how to close it.
Two Kinds of Envy
The Dutch have two different words for envy. Researchers Niels van de Ven, Marcel Zeelenberg and Rik Pieters used the split to study benign and malicious envy.
Both feel unpleasant. Neither is fun. But they push you in opposite directions.
- Malicious envy makes you want to pull the other person down, even at a cost to yourself.
- Benign envy makes you want to climb up to where they are. It comes with admiration and a drive to improve.
Look at those fourth-year accounting students again. They had a whiff of the first kind. "The star isn't so special." The first-years had the second kind. "I want this record, and I think I'll get there."
Same trigger. Same sting. Different direction.
Swap the Question
Here is the habit I'm trying to build, and the one I think Zach stumbled into as a kid.
When you catch yourself comparing, swap the question.
"Why not me?" becomes "How did they pull it off?"
"I'll never be as good" becomes "What did their first year look like?"
"They got lucky" becomes "What did they see before everyone else did?"
The first version of each question has no answer. It loops. It eats your evening. The second version has an answer, and you're free to go and find it. Often you find it by asking the person directly.
Most people love being asked how they learned something. Few get asked. Comparison keeps you at a distance, staring at the result. Curiosity walks you across the room to ask about the process.
What This Means If You Lead People
The Lockwood and Kunda paper opens with a list of ways organizations try to inspire people with stars. One of them is profiling outstanding employees in the company newsletter.
Think about what their findings say about your "employee of the month" post. If your people see the star's success as out of reach, the post deflates them. If they think the gap is closable, it lifts them.
You control a lot of which way it lands.
Show the path, not the trophy. Tell people how the star got there. The false starts. The skills they picked up along the way. I wrote about this in Nobody Is Inspired by Your Best Day... the struggle is the useful part of the story.
Talk about ability as something people grow. The students who believed ability grows with effort were the ones lifted by the superstar. Your language shapes which group your team falls into. "They're a natural" closes the gap. "They worked on this for two years" opens it.
Make introductions. If someone on your team keeps measuring themselves against a colleague, put them in a room together. Turn the comparison into a conversation.
Watch for the cut-down. When someone starts finding fault with a high performer, they might be telling you they feel the gap is permanent. This is a coaching conversation, not a gossip problem.
And remember the other half of Zach's work. People who feel they matter to the people around them have less to prove. They compare less defensively, because their worth isn't on the line every time someone else wins.
The Youngest Brother's Advantage
Zach didn't stop comparing. Youngest brothers never do. He paired the comparing with something more useful. He kept wondering how it all worked.
You are going to look sideways at someone today. A colleague's promotion. A friend's launch. Somebody's highlight reel.
When it happens, notice the sting. Then ask yourself one thing:
Are you measuring the gap, or are you studying it?