This is a rather contrived Accidental Adversaries example consisting of two individuals working in the same group. Amy is very well organized and methodical, while Ed is very insightful and creative. Together they could make a great team, yet over time they defeat each other's, and eventually their own, success.
The insightful and creative person, Ed, continues to come up
with new ideas for improving things, yet has difficulty figuring
out how to present his ideas and how to plan their implementation.
Amy's activity supporting Ed is then in terms
of presentation development and planning. This leads to Ed's
success for the presentations go very well and the implementations
are perceive as very well planned. Ed's activity supporting
Amy is then in terms of giving credit to Amy for the
assistance in the presentation development and planning. This
contributes to Amy's success, encouraging Amy
to continue to act supportingly toward Ed. This is very definitely
a virtuous reinforcing cycle.
All this works well until Ed becomes wrapped up in his own glory
and begins to take credit not only for the concepts and ideas
but for the presentation and planning of them. This is Ed's
activity toward Ed which detracts from Amy's
success. This also acts to decrease Amy's activity
supporting Ed. At the same time this is happening Amy
becomes dissatisfied with Ed getting credit for all the creative
thought and Amy's activity toward Amy tends to
be in terms of beginning to take some measure of credit for the
development of the ideas. This action in fact detracts from Ed's
success thereby diminishing Ed's Activity Supporting
Amy as Ed is likely to start looking for someone else
to assist him with presentation and planning, or even worse Ed
may begin to believe his own lies and consider he is quite capable
of doing his own presentation development and planning.
As it turns out the two balancing loops that are created tend
to negate the reinforcing nature of the initial cooperative activities.
We are most certainly our own worst enemies.