CHAPTER 8
Repair the Relationship
Whether you’re shaking hands after a productive conversation, carrying on business as usual, returning to your desk knowing someone intervened on your behalf, trying to accept that there will be no resolution, or plotting how to find an entirely new job, it’s important to put the conflict behind you and move on. And even if you’ve come to an agreeable resolution, sometimes the relationship needs to be mended. There may be some lingering resentment or you or your counterpart may be anxious that the situation will happen again.
If you opted to do nothing, you still need to think about the relationship. You don’t want to harbor negative feelings toward the person, especially if you were the one who decided against other options for addressing the disagreement. “You need to tell yourself: ‘I chose to let this go. I’m not going to ruminate or retaliate because it was my decision to let go,’” says Jeanne Brett. Even if you didn’t make the decision about how to handle the situation, it’s still in your best interest to move past it.
Putting your relationship back on track requires addressing your needs, those of your counterpart, and those of the people who may have been party to the conflict.
Pause and Reflect
You might feel amped from the tension even after it’s been resolved, or plain exhausted from the mental gymnastics of trying to remain calm, listen, and balance your goals with your counterpart’s all at the same time. Or perhaps you’re worn out from working hard to let the conflict go. No matter what you’re feeling, take a moment to consider what you’ve accomplished: Not only did you make it through the conflict in one piece, but you made smart choices about how to handle it, remained flexible, and pushed yourself to stay present. Well done. Now consider taking a break from work. After a heated discussion, you may want to take a walk outside, go to the gym, or meet up with a friend. Or you may just want to go home and get a good night’s sleep. Chances are that with a little time and space, any lingering negative energy will dissipate and you’ll return to work feeling clearer and more focused.
Look Forward
Although you’ll want to reflect and learn from what happened, resist the tendency to analyze every detail of the conflict. Who said what? Why did they say it? That isn’t productive. “Lots of people think that it’s only by understanding the past that we get beyond it. But what you focus on is what grows,” Susan David says. So contemplate what’s worked well previously, what you like about the person, and what you want from the relationship. “Take a solution-focused approach, not a diagnostic one,” she says. (See the sidebar “A Success Story” for one example of how a common purpose helped two people move beyond their conflict.)
A SUCCESS STORY
Rachel had an ongoing conflict with her coworker, Pia. At the consultancy where they worked, it was Rachel’s job to sell projects to clients, but it was Pia’s role as the business director to vet the sales proposals and pricing. Whenever Rachel sent Pia a draft for review, Pia would increase the prices that Rachel was pitching. She’d send back a curt email that explained the prices were too low and told Rachel to fix them, which Rachel did. As a result, Rachel lost potential sales.
Because she didn’t know Pia personally (she had met her only once at a team retreat), Rachel went to her boss, the regional manager, to explain that Pia was being unreasonable about the prices and rude to her. “I had targets I was supposed to meet, and every time Pia caused me to lose a sale, I was getting angrier and angrier,” Rachel says. But Rachel’s boss was not receptive to her appeals. “She told me that she trusted Pia’s judgment implicitly and that I just had to find clients who were willing to pay the premium price,” she says.
The circumstances were starting to affect Rachel’s morale, not to mention her sales performance. She didn’t enjoy going to work anymore because she wasn’t making progress toward her goals. She cringed every time she got an email from Pia. One day, after learning that she’d lost yet another potential sale, she called Pia.
Rather than criticize her, though, Rachel explained how upset she was and the impact the situation was having on her: “I wanted to let her know that I really couldn’t keep working like this, having strained relationships with my colleagues, bringing in clients and losing them again and again.”
Pia was receptive to what she had to say. “She heard me out and said she wasn’t aware of how she was coming across.” It turned out that Pia was also frustrated by the lack of sales and her performance was also being affected. “This gave us a common purpose to address,” Rachel says. So the two of them switched into problem-solving mode. How could they both do their jobs and close the deals together? “She taught me how she did the pricing, and we reached a compromise on what could be quoted,” Rachel says.
Pia and Rachel ended up closing several big deals together. “We weren’t best buds, but we didn’t have any further disagreements either,” she says. Both women eventually left the company, but they still keep in touch.
Rebuild Rapport
If the relationship has suffered some damage, don’t expect it to change overnight. “The real shifts in relationships happen less in those watershed moments and more in your everyday actions,” David explains. Sitting down and talking is helpful, “but that’s not where the work really happens. It’s more subtle than that.” Make an effort to change the tone of your everyday interactions. Say hello before you sit down at your desk in the morning. Offer to buy him a coffee. Small gestures of civility go a long way.
Reconnect Through Questions
One way to rebuild rapport is to ask questions, says Caroline Webb, author of How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life. “It’s inherently rewarding to people to get to talk about themselves or share their opinions.” The trick is to move beyond more typical, factual questions like “When’s the presentation due?” to what Webb calls “quality questions” that go beyond exchanging basic information. Instead of asking “How was your weekend?” ask what your counterpart did specifically and follow up with something like, “That’s interesting. What led you to do that?” If you don’t have a personal relationship, ask questions that signal you value his opinion: “How did you think that meeting went?” “What are you working on at the moment?” The goal with these questions is to create what Susan David calls “a shared psychological space.” Make it less about you and more about “creating a connection,” she advises.
Reestablish Reciprocity
You’ll also want to restore trust if it was broken. One smart way to do that, Brian Uzzi says, is to “offer things to the other person without asking for anything in return.” Propose taking on a small project she hasn’t been able to get to. Or bring her lunch one day. This will activate the law of reciprocity and restore the give-and-take of your previous relationship. But don’t verbalize what’s taking place. “That will get you into the tight accounting system of who’s doing what for whom,” warns Uzzi. Keep your word, too. “Being true to the things you’ve offered will continue to deepen the relationship and make sure it doesn’t slip back into mistrust,” says Uzzi.
Apologize
“You don’t have to be completely at fault to say you’re sorry or show some penance,” says Adam Galinsky. It’s rare that a conflict is completely one-sided, so chances are that you contributed to the situation in some way. Apologize for your part and express genuine regret that the situation occurred (only if you feel it). Doing this will often elicit a similar expression from your counterpart. But don’t expect that. You don’t want to resent the person if she doesn’t apologize, too.
Focus on Commonalities
During the course of your conflict, you likely had disagreements that emphasized how different you were from one another. This can push you apart. Webb says that “if we see someone as part of our in-group, we’re more likely to feel empathy for them and not see them as a threat.” And fortunately, “it takes very, very little to perceive someone is like you.” Find something you agree on. Perhaps it’s the common ground you identified before your discussion or something as simple as a shared dislike of the new printer. If this is someone you’ve had a long-standing relationship with, talk about projects you’ve worked on together that went well. Reminisce about things you’ve done in the past. Consider paying the person a compliment or asking about his pet. “Flattery—no matter how ludicrous it is—always works,” says Webb.
Spend More Time Together
“One of the best ways to repair a relationship is to work on a project that requires coordination,” says Bob Sutton, a Stanford University management professor. This seems counterintuitive, since you may be sick of each other at this point. “Over time, if you work together closely, you may come to appreciate your colleague more and perhaps even develop some empathy,” he says. You may discover there are reasons for your counterpart’s actions: stress at home, pressure from his boss, or maybe he’s tried to do what you’re asking for and failed. Spending more time with him will also grant you the opportunity to have more-positive experiences.
Involve Other People
It’s likely that throughout the conflict, you turned to other people for advice and commiseration. Your attempts to repair the relationship won’t be successful if those people aren’t included. “You need to get any involved third parties on board to fix it and keep it healthy,” says Uzzi. Explain to your confidants that you’re working on the relationship and that you’d appreciate their support in making it work. You might say: “I know Howard and I have been at odds over the past few weeks, and you’ve heard an earful from me. I want to let you know that we’ve sorted through our problems, and I’m determined to make our relationship work. It’d be great if you could help by calling me out if I start to complain again.” This helps not only you but those around you as well. You’re contributing to an office or team culture that allows for conflict to happen. “You’re showing that it’s safe to disagree,” says Annie McKee. “It’s not enough to deal with conflict well; you have to make sure everyone knows it was dealt with well.”
Consider Providing Feedback
This isn’t always possible, but if you’ve directly addressed the conflict and you’ve reached a resolution, you might want to give your colleague some feedback about the process. You can share observations with the intention of improving how you interact in the future. It may be that how your counterpart behaved with you is something that regularly gets in her way as a professional. “Don’t assume the person knows how she is coming across,” says Sutton. This isn’t a diatribe about everything she did to annoy you—that will just pull you back into the fray. Focus on behaviors that she can control. Describe how they affected you and your work together with the aim of supporting change. Your carefully framed feedback can help her develop greater self-awareness and increase her effectiveness. And of course, you also need to be open to hearing feedback yourself. If you’re seeing some things that your counterpart might change, she’s liable to have her own observations to share with you.
However, weigh this option carefully. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, says whether you give feedback “depends on how artful you are as a communicator and how receptive they are as a person.” If you feel your counterpart might be open and you can have a civilized conversation, then go ahead. But if this is a person you suspect will be vindictive or mad, or will turn it into a personal conflict, don’t risk it. You’ll be back to where you started.
For most of us, the word conflict conjures up a difficult struggle: We want people to like us, but we also want to get our way. It would be ideal if our colleagues always saw the brilliance in our ideas, gave us the resources we asked for, completely agreed with us on the best way to run the business, and still adored us at the end of the day. But work is not a perfect place. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be. And when we fight with people at work, it doesn’t have to be scary or threatening. “Going through difficult experiences can be the makings of the strongest, most resilient relationships,” says David. We make it through, and in the process, we learn about each other, and ourselves, as we make the next conflict less likely to occur or at least easier to manage.