Improving Relationships

Great work stems from great relationships. The more a team can trust one another, the closer their collaboration will be. Unhealthy relationships burn people out, creating toxic work environments, where folks avoid or even actively undermine each other. That’s not a healthy work environment. And yet, when you’re part of an ongoing conflict, it’s difficult to see how it negatively impacts the people around you.

Worse, they’ll carry their own conflicts and tensions into the broader team, creating an environment where folks constantly feel on edge and like they need to tiptoe around the issues, making sure they don’t take sides. Especially when power differentials are involved, like when a leadership team or a group of founders is having issues, it’s the broader company that suffers the most.

Conflicts and tensions show up in all kinds of work and situations:

• In a meeting, one constantly interrupts the other, stepping in to “correct” them or to offer an immediate counterpoint.
• Different departments work towards different priorities, insisting that it’s everyone else that’s working on the wrong thing.
• Different leaders or founders give different priorities, or answers to the same folks, causing great confusion about what the true answer is, putting teams in a bind.

As a team tries to skirt around the issues, avoiding to talk about the conflict at all, they’re inevitably caught in the middle. There’s no right path for them to choose, only a wrong one.

Especially in senior leadership positions – founders, executives, vice presidents – conflicts can lead to tensions spreading across several organizations, hampering the folks doing the work from producing the best outcomes for the business as a whole.

When you’re in the thick of these conflicts yourself, it’s hard to see, let alone acknowledge, that you’re a part of it. When you’re a bystanders, worried about taking sides, it can be difficult to even bring up the fact that there’s an issue. Depending on how deep the tensions go, you can be seen as taking sides.

In short, nobody wins when conflicts or tensions escalate isnvolving senior leaders. Individuals suffer, mostly in silence, and the business suffers as a whole. Time and energy that could be spent on more productive things is instead spent on avoiding each other, skirting around the real issues, and collaborating with openness, trust, and candor.

How Do We Know?

We've had our fair share of difficult relationships, to the point of breaking. We know how much they impact everyone involved and also everyone who's pulled into the conflict, whether intentionally or not. We know how much energy is spent, how it wears everyone down, and how much it impacts the work.

We've also found ways to move past the issues, working towards a healthy approach to collaborating. We're happy to help you get there, too.

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