It would be awesome if we always got to pick who we worked with. But we don’t. Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young suggested that “if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” But if you look a little further into their history (a few months to be exact) the band decided they couldn’t do that and went through a tumultuous breakup.
What do you do when you are forced to keep the “band” together? How do we collaborate with those whom we would not naturally connect? As leaders, how do we ensure that we get great results, even when the relationships underlying the work are shaky? Rock and roll legends may not have the answers but here are few things we’ve learned from our clients over the years.
Invest on the front end aligning on outcomes and what success looks like.
Bottom line, many common workplace disagreements stem from core differences in focus and expectations. Consider whether your teammate comes from a different functional perspective or has different marching orders from their boss. Are you all about the bottom line and they constantly bring up issues about how people are feeling or experiencing the change you all are guiding? Do they jump to problem solving within the first five minutes of your multi-day session when you want to deep dive on the data? Rather than assuming it’s a personal affront to you and the work at hand, step back and ask yourself whether the team, and in particular the two of you, spent enough (or any) time getting aligned on why you are there, what you are expected to deliver, and how best to approach the challenge.
Intent versus impact.
We’ve all heard the saying “assume beneficial intent” but we rarely practice it. Look for commonality in the actions or exchanges that are particularly annoying or grating to you. What do you think your peer was really trying to do or get across? Obviously, it had some unintended consequences because it has negatively impacted your relationship. But starting from an assumption of positive intent allows you to provide gentle and candid feedback about how you were impacted and how they might go about it differently. Chances are they had limited self-awareness or have used the same strategy or tactics before with other leaders and it worked.
It’s all data – about you.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was to look at every interaction and reaction as data. Typically, as a consultant I am trained to assume this is data about my client. But in the situation where you are working with someone who pushes all your buttons you need to actively stop, get some quiet time, and ask yourself what is triggering you? Why is this person/instance/conversation frustrating to you? What is it in your past and how you see the world that makes this an uncomfortable situation? You don’t have to psychoanalyze yourself for hours to find a triggering event or relationship in your past that could be subconsciously recalled. Knowing what it is can allow you to distance from the current situation and regain a sense of perspective.
Develop your “them” strategy.
Take the time to strategize on how to change the tenor and tone of the relationship. If you know they are going to offer opinions and ideas that you will struggle with then plan what to extract from them, what you can learn, and which questions to ask. Everyone loves to talk about themselves – engage them in this conversation and truly listen. You might find you are closer together than not. Or at least you can gain some insight into how they think and why it feels so foreign to you.
Call the question.
The worst thing we can do in a work relationship that isn’t working is ignore it. There is no ghosting your way out of this one. Going dark in the team just leads to ineffective and inefficient outputs. If you truly struggle with a teammate, ask them to join you 1:1 and lay bare your own struggle with making it work. Ask how you can better relate to them and if there are things you are doing to trigger them unintentionally. Opening yourself up for feedback first often lays the foundation for true relationship progress.
Teams, like rock and roll bands, are places where great creativity is possible. But in order to produce that platinum album or achieve your OKRs we must find ways to remain calm during tense times and truly love the ones we are with.