How to handle difficult work relationships: Expert tips

Tammy Tansley:
When people start to feel like, and we've probably all felt this, that kind of knot in your stomach where you don't want to go to work or when you see the person, you're like, "There's something here that's not good." It's really spilling over from not a structural systemic issue anymore, but it's actually something personal and it is potentially becoming unhealthy at that point.

Tahn Sharpe:
We all know the importance of building great relationships at work, of connecting and collaborating and finding our people. But what do you do when you have to work with someone you simply don't get along with? It's a reality most of us have faced at one time or another, but in high-stakes finance environments, the cost of mismanaging those relationships is real. I'm Tahn Sharpe, editor of INTHEBLACK, and today we're talking about working with people you simply don't like.

With me today, I have two people who have been studying and navigating this train for quite some time. We have leadership and workplace consultant, Tammy Tansley, as well as Paula Brough from Griffith University Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellness. Thank you both for joining us.

Paula Brough:
You're welcome. Hi, Tahn.

Tammy Tansley:
Nice to be here.

Tahn Sharpe:
Great. Now I might start with you, Tammy. A simple question, just to get a premise off the ground. Is tension in a workplace relationship healthy?

Tammy Tansley:
Look, I think it can be healthy. You think about what difference can create in terms of difference of opinion, diversity of thought, different ways of doing things, different ways of approaching a project. And I think really critically where there is a problem. So I think tension in and of itself, conflict in and of itself can be very healthy and that isn't problematic. I think it's where it spills into something that is less about the issue and less about the system that I think Paula will speak to and gets into more the kind of personal behaviours that it can become more tricky.

Tahn Sharpe:
And Paula, you look at these dynamics through a systems level more so. How often do you see what on first blush might look like an emotional or a personality clash, but then as you get deeper down, you realise it's more of a structural or a design problem within the organisation?

Paula Brough:
Yeah, that's very common, Tahn. So obviously you have both. So there could just be personality clashes, someone you don't get on with. You have to work professionally through that to your best of your abilities. If there's any underlying issues that might be a little bit difficult, like harassment or bullying going on, that's a whole different conflict issue. But the system often works against workers.

So it might set them up in whether it's just the hierarchical structures or the opposite, having a very loose structure so people are not very cognizant of the chain of command or very clear about it. That can also cause conflict. So yeah, we try and look at it both from an individual worker's level and also look at the systems and how we can improve all sorts of systems within workplaces to try and improve just communication and performance of workers.

Tahn Sharpe:
Yeah. So both count really, that interpersonal stuff and the organisation. Tammy, we spoke a moment ago about tension in the workplace and how it is a part of relationships. At what point does a healthy tension in a relationship become something that's damaging?

Tammy Tansley:
Yeah, look, I think that's a good question. I think it's when it's not so much about the issue anymore. When it is spilling out into that kind of personal piece, as Paula alluded to, as soon as you've started to see anything that meets a definition of harassment and bullying, whenever you're seeing dissent quelled and there not being any psychological safety to actually to speak up, I think that's when it's starting to become dangerous.

When people start to feel like, and we've probably all felt this, that kind of knot in your stomach where you don't want to go to work or when you see the person, you're like, "There's something here that's not good." It's really spilling over from not the issue anymore, perhaps not a structural systemic issue anymore, but it's actually something personal and it is potentially becoming unhealthy at that point.

Tahn Sharpe:
Does that scan with you, Paula, the idea that the tipping point being when it gets personal?

Paula Brough:
Definitely, definitely. That's when it becomes a psychological injury threat or risk to psychological injury, especially if it's enduring, ongoing. So harassment, bullying. If you're constantly rubbing up against someone in a conflict situation, then it definitely becomes difficult. And if there's a power imbalance, that exasperates it even more. So you have to be very careful on both sides, but especially employers now have to be very careful about ensuring they have a responsibility to ensure a psychologically safe environment for all workers.

And that includes trying to avoid unnecessary conflict. As Tammy said, some conflict is good and can create or can produce creativity in teams. That's fantastic. But if it's too serious, it's just going on too long, and importantly, it's making the worker feel more uncomfortable than they need to, then that's where it should be attended to.

Tahn Sharpe:
Yeah. I think that power imbalance especially that you said that can exacerbate interpersonal conflict is something we're becoming more aware of and which can only be a good thing. So that's good. Tammy, I just want to flick to you for a second. You've spoken before about assuming good intent as a first step, but when I guess in financial services, finance and accounting, accountability is very high. And so is it always feasible? Is it always possible to assume good intent from the outset?

Tammy Tansley:
Look, I think what I mean by assuming good intent is that to slow down. So I think to just take a pause and to think what other possible explanations might there be? I think it's possible to absolutely assume good intent to slow down and also hold people accountable for behaviours that are inappropriate or for whatever else needs to be held. Two things are possible. But really what we're trying to do in a conflict situation is to slow down, is to work out what is actually going on here and to interrogate the data that you've got, if you like.

And it's really difficult to do that if you're coming from a position of this person is wrong as the starting point. So assuming good intent just allows you that slight space to say, what's going on here?

Tahn Sharpe:
Yeah. I guess it's both in a personal and professional world. You don't know what other people are going through, correct?

Tammy Tansley:
Not only do you not know what other people are going through, but there's this lovely bias that I'm sure Paula can probably speak to better than I, which is the fundamental attribution bias where we assume we explain our own behaviour through circumstances, but we tend to assume that other people's behaviour is a personality flaw.

And so not only do we not know what people are going for, but if we are coming from this position of, "Oh, well, that's because somebody else is doing something wrong because of who they are." It can just make it a little bit more difficult. So again, just stepping back, what else could be going on? What other explanations could there be?

Tahn Sharpe:
That is fascinating. I haven't actually heard that perspective, but now that I've heard it, it's true, that blame attribution. We look through different lenses, don't we? I'd like to hear your thoughts on that, Paula, as well. And also I'd love to know what you think about the role of neurodiversity in all this. And I feel like they might be connected as well.

Paula Brough:
Yes, for sure, Tahn. Yeah, Tammy's absolutely right. So we do have an attributional bias because we like to think we're good people. So we think what we're doing is correct. We might not fully either understand the other person's position, what they're going through. We might not consider, for example, middle managers meat in the sandwich between workers and the executive.

We might not totally fully understand the responsibilities middle managers have or the constraints they have when they act in certain ways. It's very easy to blame them or criticise them for something you don't like. But also workers might not fully understand the system they're working in. So managers often have a, because of their role, they often have a greater perception of all the issues, all the constraints around a certain decision, financial, personal policies, which a worker, if they don't like a decision, it's often a gut reaction.

So it's just being cognizant of that your manager might have different responsibilities and might have different perspectives about a certain decision. And yes, the neurodiversity issue has become a lot more prominent in the last few years, which is good. It's always been there, but it's certainly become more prominent. So people are starting to understand that some emotions, high emotions in the workplace may not be or might have a physical or a psychological attribution to them which needs consideration.

So for example, as a manager, you can be trained now in how to best manage workers with certain neurodiversity, ADHD is the classic one here, to help better understand their responses, especially if those responses are a bit short or a bit confrontational for you perhaps. So there's certainly training now that's happening around that issue and that's to be welcomed.

Tahn Sharpe:
Yeah. I think you're right. I think self-awareness is obviously a big part of this, Tammy. And I'm not sure if you'd frame it up like this, but I think self-awareness is a skill that you have to learn and train yourself in constantly. Working as a consultant and I imagine dealing with firms and companies that are looking for help on these kind of issues, how do you help someone to have that self-awareness or to build it?

Tammy Tansley:
Yeah. So I think going back to that fundamental attribution bias piece, that's a really nice starting point to think actually the story I'm telling myself may not be an accurate story. And so that's just as you said, when you had that reaction to knowing that, it makes you think, "Oh, hang on a sec. What else might there be that's going on there?" So I think that's a nice starting point. I think the other thing is that in any conflict, it's a relationship. So back to your point about both personal and professional, there are two people that are involved in it.

From a self-awareness perspective, I think it can be really nice just asking, what's my part in this? So I am 50% of this relationship. How am I showing up? And not just how do I think I'm showing up, but if a neutral observer was looking at it, what am I bringing to this situation? What am I bringing to the conflict? What am I bringing to the relationship? So just asking yourself those questions or getting somebody to ask you those questions can be the starting point of self-awareness around how do I show up generally, but how am I showing up specifically in this relationship and how might that be potentially affecting this conflict?

Tahn Sharpe:
Yeah. It's so difficult, isn't it, to take that, as you said, that neutral observer perspective and to look completely objectively without any bias. And it's tough because you have your own convictions and you have the courage of your convictions, but you also need to ask, am I wrong? What's my place in this from a neutral perspective?

Tammy Tansley:
Sorry Tahn, it's not just am I wrong here? Because I think right and wrong can be tricky, but what am I bringing to this? So how am I showing up from a personality perspective, from an energy perspective, from a data perspective, from all sorts of different things? Let's even take right and wrong out of it because that's a judgement piece again and just think about what's my part to play in this.

Tahn Sharpe:
What about avoidance? I find that avoidance is just a bigger problem as looking through these issues through lens. How do you feel about actually being able to directly have these conversations and the reluctance that people have to address those? Tammy, I think that would be something that you'd be dealing with in your work.

Tammy Tansley:
So look, we know absolutely that from a personality perspective, there are some people for whom conflict is fun and for some people for whom they will literally do anything than have a difficult conversation. We know that some people's childhood experiences absolutely goes a long way to how they show up to conflict or avoiding conflict. And we also know that neurodiversity has an impact on that as well. So for some people, avoidance is a really, really real issue. And I spend a lot of my time when I'm doing coaching with execs around how do we have that difficult conversation.

So I think again, the self-awareness, if you know that you would rather stick pens in your eye rather than have a difficult conversation, that's a really important piece of self-awareness. So get some help around it. Don't just avoid it because we absolutely know that avoidance almost never, ever resolves the situation. So get some help, get some coaching around how to have the conversation, but don't just leave it and hope that it will get better because it very, very rarely does.

Tahn Sharpe:
That probably applies in both the workplace and at home as well. Paula, are there some relationships that are just irreparable and can't be fixed?

Paula Brough:
Oh, totally. Oh, totally. But that's going into the extreme area. So for example, we did some work looking at toxic leadership and that was just people love hearing about psychopaths in the workplace. That's a very popular lecture that we give here, but there's a real serious bent to that research. And if you are dealing with a supervisor who displays a whole trait of unpleasant behaviours towards you and other people that you may observe them behaving terribly, awfully, or you may actually experience it as well, then that's a very distressing situation for you and your team to be in.

The issue there is they are often very good at managing up. I think we all know this. So their superiors might think they're doing a good job or they've been brought in at a time of financial stress because they're particularly, for example, ruthless or cutthroat and are able to get finances back in order, which is an issue at the moment with the financial situation for many organisations, the type of leaders who are being brought in.

But if you are someone dealing with a toxic leader, then we talk through a number of coping strategies that may help and recording incidences so you have a record to give to HR, going through processes, all that information. But really at the end of the day, for your own wellbeing, we often recommend workers walk away. If that situation isn't changing, if that leader is not going to be removed or guided, coached as to how to be a better manager, then don't put yourself through that stress. It's definitely not worth it. That's the advice we often give.

Tahn Sharpe:
What if there is a relationship that is full of conflict, but it is reparable and there is a chance of salvaging it? What do you recommend to someone who's going through that and is consciously trying to fix things but doesn't know where to start?

Paula Brough:
Yeah. I think it's important to understand, is it just you? Is it just you and your manager? Or is there a trait of bad behaviours that your manager's displaying to other colleagues or to the rest of your team? That's the starting point. Then you can work out, okay, is it me or is it them? Try to keep a record of what's going on. If you feel that conflict, if you have to stay there, there's strategies such as making sure as much as you can, that there's other colleagues with you when you're discussing things with the manager to get a different perspective, to help you understand, improve the clarity of their instructions to you.

What else? Yeah. So there's either training for the worker or conflict resolution for the worker or for the manager, you can get HR involved. But yeah, finding out, trying to understand the source of it. And often it's the manager's stress as well. So when they're under pressure from their execs, we talk about the contagion of stress. So when they're under pressure, they might not be making the most correct decisions or their manner might be a bit sharper than it need to be because of the stress they feel.

So that gets passed on to their workers, their team. So we try and understand the cause of it before we can obviously try and remedy it. But yes, if you are stuck in a situation, there's certain things you can do, but trying to understand first, is it me or is it them is a good starting point I'd suggest.

Tahn Sharpe:
I guess that speaks to Tammy's answer earlier about looking at a situation and saying, "How am I contributing to this?" And asking yourself those questions first. Tammy, any other advice for our hypothetical friend who's dealing with conflict at work?

Tammy Tansley:
I think that was a really nice comprehensive answer. I think probably a couple of other things just to think about are where can you get some support from colleagues? Are there other aspects within the organisation where you're actually getting support? And so it balances itself out a little bit. There's some nice research around that that can show that that can actually make a difference. And now most organisations also have employee assistance programmes and I would always recommend that that can be a really nice source of I've got this situation, unpacking the various bits to it and making that decision around how do I manage it on a day-to-day basis or at what point has this actually become untenable? And I need to be looking for different options.

Tahn Sharpe:
Great. Well, thank you so much Paula and Tammy for your insights. For what it's worth, I think you'd both make wonderful colleagues and we'd get along famously.

Tammy Tansley:
Absolutely.

Tahn Sharpe:
For our listeners eager to learn more, please check out the CPA Australia website or the show notes for more details. And for all our listeners, please don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with your friends and colleagues. Until next time, thanks for joining us.