How competitive are we really - and what’s fear got to do with it? In this episode I’m joined by Ruchika T. Malhotra - global inclusion strategist and author of Uncompete - to question one of the most dominant assumptions in modern work and life: that success requires competition.

We’re often told that competition drives performance, innovation and excellence. But what if it’s also driven by fear - fear of scarcity, fear of falling behind, fear that if someone else wins, we lose?

In this conversation, we unpack the fear that underlies the logic of “survival of the fittest” and explore what becomes possible when we choose collaboration over rivalry.

Together we explore:

• The hidden cost of competition - in childhood, in our careers, and in our communities
• The myth of “survival of the fittest” and how it shapes workplace behaviour
• How a scarcity mindset shapes decision-making, status, and success
• What becomes possible when we choose to practice collaboration and abundance
• How shifting from individual success to collective power changes the game entirely

If you’ve ever felt the pressure to prove, outperform or outshine - this conversation invites a different way forward.

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About Guest

Ruchika T. Malhotra is the author of Uncompete: Rejecting Competition to Unlock Success. She is also the founder of Candour, a global inclusion strategy firm. A former business journalist, her writing appears regularly in publications such as Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Seattle Times, and more. Named LinkedIn Top Voice for Gender Equality and selected to Thinkers50 Radar, she is a keynote speaker on leadership, workplace culture and the Uncompete™ framework. She has previously held adjunct faculty positions at Seattle University and the University of Washington, where she now advises the Communication Leadership graduate program.

Her last book, Inclusion on Purpose, was The MIT Press' top selling book of 2022 and called "transformative" by Dr. Brené Brown.

Find out more at www.ruchika.co LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruchikatm/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rtulshyan/