Let’s start this week with a tricky topic and one which I hope won’t come up that often for you! But if and when it does happen, it can demand a lot of time and headspace to overcome.
What if you and a team member simply don’t like each other? Or they just clearly don’t like you? Or you don’t like them?
It happens. Sometimes, there may be a tangible reason for it. Other times, it may be something where you simply don’t click with each other and you’re not quite sure why, but it’s definitely there under the surface.
As a manager, you still need to do your job. As an individual, they still need to do theirs.
Allowing personal issues or tensions to get in the way won’t help either of you, nor your colleagues who may become aware of what’s going on.
So, let’s look at a few tactical ways that you can confront, own and handle this kind of situation.
Own the conversation and bring it into the open
If you’ve worked with someone for a period of time and it’s pretty obvious to you that you’re not clicking and that an issue exists, the chances are that the other person is aware of it too. If this is the case, then it’s almost certainly worth a conversation first to try and see if you can work through the issues.
When having this kind of conversation, it’s really important to be present and listen to what the other person is saying and trying to understand what the core issues are.
In cases where there is simply a dislike of someone, the reasons for the issues may be a little but fuzzy and hard for them to quantify. This makes it hard for you to work through things because you don’t actually know what the issues are.
Even with this in mind, you need to at least try to have the conversation first to see if there is a chance of resolving things.
At the end of this conversation, if it’s clear that there is a dislike of you (or you know that you dislike them!) then you may need to accept that this dislike isn’t going to be easily fixable. If this happens, then you need to find a way to function as colleagues, without the strong relationship that you may have with others.
You don’t need to like each other in order to work together
The starting point is to acknowledge that you don’t always have to have a super strong relationship or like each other to work together.
It’s important not to let any subjective dislikes of each other get in the way of the fact that you both have a job to do and there are likely more important, bigger things that you both need to work on.
For this to work, you both need to have a level of maturity and respect for each other but more importantly, for the company / project / client that you’re working for. Essentially, you need to embrace this mindset and be capable of putting any personal issues and dislikes to one side.
When working with your team members, it can be a good idea to openly talk about this and make it clear that you can work together effectively, even if they don’t like you or you’re clearly not clicking together.
Acknowledging this, along with having that hard conversation with them, can actually make you both feel better and remove tension and awkwardness from the situation.
Don’t air your issues to others or play sides
One thing that you’ll both need to agree upon is to keep these issues between the two of you and not to let the situation escalate by sharing them with colleagues. If this happens, it’s very easy for colleagues to either feel uncomfortable or to take sides which isn’t good for anyone.
This is why having an open, honest conversation with each other to begin with is really important. By setting this tone and owning the issue, it becomes easier to talk about what needs to happen in order for you both to function as colleagues. One thing being that you don’t air your issues or grievances with colleagues.
It’s particularly important to be clear that you can’t let a dislike for each other manifest itself in team settings such as meetings and calls. Again, this can make colleagues feel uncomfortable and most importantly, distract from the work that you’re trying to do.
Find the trajectory that matters to you both
Whether you like each other or not, you need to find common ground on what matters to you both in your roles and careers.
This is likely to be one of, or a combination of the following:
- You both care about doing a good job for clients or stakeholders.
- You both want to demonstrate high levels of performance and standards in front of your colleagues.
- Both of you care about progressing in your careers, getting promoted and taking on more responsibility.
Whatever it is, it’s important that you find that common ground and something that you both care about where you are aligned.
This is even more important for you as their manager because even if you have a dislike of each other, you still have a job to do – getting the best out of them.
If you allow any personal issues or dislikes to get in the way of this, it’s not going to work out well for you as a manager or them as an individual. Trying to find what you both care about and having some alignment on this can prevent this from happening.
Focus relentlessly on what truly matters
Leading on from this, outside of your own careers, progression and ambitions, you need to focus on what truly matters to your team and company – high performance, high impact and getting results.
If you work in an agency, this is going to be about the impact that you have on the clients that you work with.
If you work in-house, this is going to be about the impact that you have on the brand performance in your area of expertise.
Whilst not meant for this context, I really like the following quote which I’ve taken from Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle:
Beat the politics out of the situation by bringing up the problem clearly, then forcing everyone to focus on it.
Whilst a personal issue or dislike or someone probably isn’t about politics, the quote still holds true. You can push these issues out of a situation by forcing everyone (yourself included) to focus on the problem, the challenge or the task that you need to work on.
Be the manager that they need you to be
Let’s end with one that’s a little bit abstract, but that I think is important to remember as a manager.
As mentioned earlier, your core role as a manager is to get the best out of the team that you work with. You need to do whatever you can to enable them to perform to the best of their ability.
When it comes to a mutual dislike of one another, this is even more important to focus on.
One way that you can do this is by asking yourself – what do they need you to be in spite of the tension that exists between you?
For example, they probably don’t need you to make attempts to get to know them personally or make an effort to socialise with them. Whereas they may just want to be given space, a clear task to work on and then be allowed to get on with it without you being close to the day-to-day.
This may go counter to how you work with and develop other team members. But that’s kind of the point when it comes to managing people – everyone is different.
In this case, the difference is that there is a personal issue, a dislike or a tension that can’t be fixed between you. So you need to take this into consideration when figuring out how to get the best out of them.
It’s a challenge for sure and I won’t lie, it’s one that you can only really understand when you’ve been in this position yourself. When it does happen, you need to adapt and figure things out as you go along. But the guidelines above will help you get there a little faster.
