
How to Collaborate with People You Don’t Like (2018) - praveenscience
https://hbr.org/2018/12/how-to-collaborate-with-people-you-dont-like
======
leto_ii
Does the advice in the article apply to interacting with people who are not
well-intentioned?

In my experience the truly impossible collaborations always involved people
who wanted to play politics, take credit for stuff they didn't do, undermine
me etc.

On the other hand I was almost always able to remove friction if the person I
was working with was well-intentioned and non-political.

~~~
at_a_remove
Once upon a time I received quite a lot of well-meaning advice on dealing with
organizational difficulties, "deal with the process, not the people," and so
on. I was told that I focused too much on individuals. The person who kept
pushing this advice on me -- they would be referred to as a "thought leader"
these days -- was absolutely blind-sided and shoved out by a bad actor.

As far as I am concerned, pretending that bad actors simply do not exist has
allowed some of the greatest problems I've seen plague organizations, drive
out good people, and so on. I have noticed that saying you have a bad actor
reflects poorly on the people doing the hiring (this insulated one of the bad
actors until all of the relevant hiring parties left), but so much of it seems
like willful disregard. I find myself sometimes amazed at how easily greased
people are by snake oil salesmen selling largely themselves and a kind of
"don't even worry about it" optimism.

~~~
carapace
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do
nothing."

~~~
blaser-waffle
A good and true quote, but to equate things like the Nazis or genocides with a
couple of assholes on the Solution Design team who strongly prefer Technology
[X] is overkill.

They're not evil, they're just a wet blanket, and you're not a good person, at
least not per se, for opposing them -- maybe they're right?

~~~
top_kekeroni_m8
It's just a quote, you're taking it too literally.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of assholes is that good men do
nothing."

------
AThrowAway99
This is a throwaway account, but I'd like some advice on this very subject.

I recently ended a working relationship with a company that had a problem with
'not liking' me. I moved to another country to offer onsite services to this
company, as I created the core (design and tech) of a product that
unexpectedly performed very well and became the focus of their business.
Unfortunately this meant throwing out years of work by their core team, the
owners work included.

As I had only been working remotely and very part time till this point, I saw
an understandable resentment toward me and addressed it head on with each of
the team when I arrived onsite. I perhaps failed in this because I was met
with nods, smiles, and a professional behaviour me most of the time but not
friendship. I was actively excluded from team lunches for example. And I heard
less than favourable rumours about me in the local community, a community I
never worked in.

This is ok, to a point if a little hurtful. As it didn't impact my work, I
thought just letting it go was a better approach. Many people had a secure job
based on my work...thats probably my resentment talking but worth saying.

Anyway it came to a head when I asked for the money we agreed for my
contribution. (I had held off charging till the company was on more solid
ground) At this point I was quickly told that the owner created the thing I
made for them. Not me. Then closed ranks and told me I was a bad friend,
refusing to pay obviously.

I think being left out in the cold all this time was a good sign that the
company as a whole was planing something like this. Not explicitly but
something.

Did I do the right thing in leaving? Am I the 'bad friend'?

~~~
Traster
Sorry but you moved to country to work for company and you didn't have a
contract to be paid for your work?

~~~
AThrowAway99
I have been paid for some of my work, just not the full amount.

I was and am a private contractor, labour was paid but not the IP transfer.
Thats what brought it to a head, me asking for the fee.

------
iamzozo
Or just move on. There are some situations or people where “smart” approach
doesn’t solve anything. The article has good points. If we understand others,
we can handle things easier, but also can be lost in the dark. It takes time
and energy, some cases doesn’t worth the quest.

~~~
orev
The “just find another job” trope is tiresome and overused. This seems to be
commonly thrown around in a hand-wavy way, and it ignores a large part of
reality.

The idea that one can just move to another job is a luxury in many places.
Many areas have only one or two employers, so there’s simply no place to go.

There’s also the fact that no matter where you go, you will likely always find
someone you don’t get along with. Learning to deal with those people is a life
skill.

~~~
watwut
Not just luxury, but it is making us collectively incapable of dealing with
bad actors. Over time, we (as an industry or culture or whatever) are loosing
behaviors and skills needed to expose or minimize harm.

Meanwhile, culture is increasingly dictated by bad actors - making it even
harder to oppose them. For example, some of what is said to be
"professionalism" are basically rules that make it harder to deal with bad
actors or companies.

------
AmericanChopper
I think some of the advice is pretty good. Especially the bits about using
questions rather than assertions to resolve conflict, and asking people for
help (asking somebody who doesn’t like you for help can be very disarming).
But I think the root of the problem comes from caring about things you
probably shouldn’t care about all that much. If somebody at work doesn’t like
you for some stupid/immature/political reason, the natural reaction is to not
like them back. But a better reaction is to not care. I’ve never had much
trouble working with people who didn’t like me, because I’ve never been
particularly bothered by it. If your work is so full of those people that you
really don’t like turning up every day, then finding a different job is a
better reaction than getting too wound up about it. It’s the company’s problem
more than it is yours, and there not much reason to care about that either, if
that’s the kind of working environment they’ve chosen to create.

~~~
BlargMcLarg
>If your work is so full of those people that you really don’t like turning up
every day, then finding a different job is a better reaction than getting too
wound up about it.

Honestly, I'm approaching this point myself. The problem isn't chemistry or
letting go or whatever. The problem is when the other side is extremely
inflexible and has a position of power over you. They get to comfortably sit
in an ivory tower and tell you what's wrong, and there's nothing you can do
about it. Its extremely soul-crushing and trying to fight it with their
higher-ups is generally a waste of time for a myriad of reason (cargo cults,
echo chambers or simply pride aka "surely this senior knows better than his
subordinate!"). And 9 out of 10 times, these discussions are absolutely
trivial in nature and only break the flow of the person waving at the ivory
tower along with incurring the cost of switching contexts. Rarely, if ever, do
I get a discussion which results into an actual new insight or actual transfer
of knowledge. And at the end of the day, the company wonders why they can't
keep any employees or why their workforce is burned out, yet somehow they
still manage to survive despite making these poor choices.

Of course, this is just personal experience and is by no means a
generalization.

~~~
AmericanChopper
If you can leave a situation like that, you absolutely should (unless there’s
some other major benefit that would make you want to stay).

> yet somehow they still manage to survive despite making these poor choices.

Sometimes when you leave a company like that, you’ll get the pleasure of
watching them go down in flames. But usually not. The thing to keep in mind is
that all companies have an incredibly broad set of responsibilities to
maintain. To be a successful company, they really only have to be actually
good at a few of those things (even less to just survive). Most companies are
actually quite bad at most of the things they do. So I wouldn’t get upset when
you see a company with terrible practices continue to tick along. The only
thing it really means is that those practices haven’t completely obstructed
them from delivering whatever value they do deliver to their customers (yet).

In any case. The more important thing to worry about is your own happiness.

~~~
BlargMcLarg
> To be a successful company, they really only have to be actually good at a
> few of those things (even less to just survive). Most companies are actually
> quite bad at most of the things they do

Yeah, laws and the nature of the job in particular protect the company I work
at really well. Specifically, no international players see reason to compete
which helps their position (any American startup with an ounce of competence
would steamroll our feature set within a year), as well as the customers
themselves putting massive emphasis on security over quality. A case of sunken
cost fallacy from the customers and first-mover advantage.

> If you can leave a situation like that, you absolutely should (unless
> there’s some other major benefit that would make you want to stay).

You're right. Case of risk-adversity kicking in and laziness, along with lack
of opportunities presented, but those are personal obstacles and to a large
degree, poor excuses.

------
dorkwood
> Over a series of conversations, Kacie and I worked through the situation.
> She revisited the stakeholder map she had created in her first few weeks in
> the role, which clearly showed that Marta’s collaboration and partnership
> were essential for getting the business results Kacie wanted.

Is this something people do when they start a new job?

~~~
CaptArmchair
I have done this once, when I started in a middle-management role. During the
first weeks, I was introduced / introduced myself to a couple of dozen people
in various capacities with whom I would need to collaborate.

I kept a text document in which I listed who's who and what's what, and what
their relation was to the organization I worked for. Nothing too fancy, just
names, organisations, contact info and a few keywords.

It's a useful exercise to do at the start of a new position for several
reasons. For instance, you want to ensure you didn't skip or include the wrong
people when sending out an e-mail. Or you have to attend, or organize, a
meeting, so you want to know who's going to sit around the table and how they
tie into the goal of the meeting is.

When the lay of the land shifts fundamentally, it's useful to revisit the
exercise.

If you're in a purely operational role and your territory doesn't extend
beyond your team or your office floor, there's not much point in doing such a
formal exercise.

~~~
matwood
Very useful in a big company setting, even if you're an IC on a team without
much contact beyond your team. It's relationship building and helps to know
who is who.

------
arjunrc
I just slammed the phone down after a difficult conversation with a difficult
person. And then opened Hacker News to see this article.

Its prescient and even though may seem antithetical to me, back in my 20s,
gives a good view of what is expected to be in Management going forward.

~~~
jiveturkey
you still use a phone that can be slammed down?

~~~
kazagistar
Tossing a mobile (usually against something soft) can have similar emotional
catharsis.

~~~
Ididntdothis
I can’t afford to do this more often but I once threw an iPhone against a
wall. It felt really good and the phone still worked :)

------
enriquto
This is important not only in the context of jobs.

Fruitful collaboration among of people who may hate each other is the very
basis of a civilized society.

~~~
eric234223
Thats torture. It does not have to be once we have UBI.

------
Dextra96
The asking for help advice I genuinely feel works pretty well, unless they're
an asshole that says "you should know this already"

~~~
btrettel
Any advice for working with people who insist that I should "know something
already" that's not obvious and/or was never communicated?

~~~
jackskell
I had a mantra I used to use, I would say with emphasis “And I would know this
how?” But, communication depended on word of mouth trickle down, which was
horrible, and I refused to accept responsibility for things I was not made
aware of.

------
Pandabob
Very much off-topic, but is HBR worth the subscription if I'd like to learn
about management and in general about good business practices?

~~~
afarrell
When you want to “learn from experience”, how much better do you do if you
first have a theoretical framework that points out where to direct your
attention?

~~~
wenc
Surprisingly much better.

Theory and practice, when done together, is much more powerful than either
alone.

Good practice books like "High Output Management", "Influence", "Hard Things
about Hard Things" gives you a view of what other people at other (high-
functioning) organizations do and exposes you to the norms in industry. They
also give you mental models to think about things, and helps you to become
aware of the problems you never knew existed. And it helps your normalize your
expectations: you may think your company sucks, but reading widely and
critically helps you realize even the very best companies deal with the same
problems and don't really have significantly better solutions.

Reading a good book is like having a conversation with and picking the brain
of a really competent mentor, dead or alive, and of a calibre that not exist
in your organization. Internal mentorship is sometimes oversold. Most
organizations have managers that have merely adapted to their local ecosystem
and don't really have any insight on management as a craft. Managers who
learned purely through experience tend to be shaped by the company's culture
and may do very well in their niche but lack imagination to go beyond because
they have no theory to hang their thoughts on.

Also, books are like travel -- you don't know what you don't know until you've
seen for yourself what exists. You sometimes need to peek outside your
organization to see what other cultures exist.

~~~
hartzell
Is your second recommendation "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" or
"Influence: Science and Practice" (both have Robert B. Cialdini as authors)?

~~~
wenc
I believe they're the same book, the latter being a later edition.

(I've only read the former though)

