The competition automatism

Three team members work closely to build a protective house for an egg, sharing tools like scissors and glue to complete the collaborative task.
Simple tools, deep insights: Collaborative tasks like the egg-drop challenge surface the subtle dynamics of resource sharing and mutual support.

The goal was clear: All eggs must survive.
Each team received a basket with some of the materials needed to protect an egg -
scissors for one group, glue for another, only paper for a third.
No one had everything. But together, they did.

And yet... as soon as the materials were divided, something shifted.
Teams retreated into their corners. They stopped sharing. They whispered.
No one said it out loud, but the assumption was already in the room:
"We're competing."

So naturally, each group focused on its own success.
The collective task became a silent race.
That's what we call competition automatism.

The automatic, often unconscious reflex to protect your corner, your idea, your resources - even when the goal is clearly shared.

And this doesn't just happen in playful team exercises.
It happens in workplaces.
Between departments. In cross-functional projects.
People silo off. They focus on "my result" instead of our outcome.

But what if the teams had paused and asked:
"Are we actually competing?"

They might have pooled their materials.
Shared their thinking.
Built smarter solutions.
And in the end - not just one egg would have survived, but all of them.

Because the real challenge wasn't physics. It was mindset.

The ability to override the competition automatism -
and rediscover a deeper kind of teamwork:
The kind where success means everyone wins.

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