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How to Collaborate with People You Don’t Like (2018)
- pg_is_a_butt 7y agoStop. Listen.
- Pandabob 7y agoVery much off-topic, but is HBR worth the subscription if I'd like to learn about management and in general about good business practices?
- scott_w 7y agoI’d say it’s worth every penny. You get access to a lot of research summaries and case studies for the money.
- endymi0n 7y agoThere are some nice pieces in there occasionally, but if you ask me, nothing really replaces managing people on your own and A/B test all those things you hear and read about in practice. Your personality is unique to you and you'll find external advice fitting your personal style in a believable AND effective way less often than you might think. Even from the same sources, you'll find better and worse pieces for yourself, like for example I adopted the super easy question from Joel Spolsky's "Guerilla Guide to Hiring Engineers" because it's a super good predictor for me, while I found his brainteaser utterly useless after testing both a few times. Lots of pieces on HBR are rather abstract and handle topics in a meta way, which I did not find very usable. As for me, I'd give my former self this URL for starters and then tell them to dive right in and find out for yourself: https://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html https://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html Then again, that's the right advice for my own (very pragmatic) personality, so YMMV.
- afarrell 7y agoWhen 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 7y agoSurprisingly 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.
- iamacyborg 7y agoI'd buy some of their "10 Must Reads on X" books and see what you think about the quality of articles that way before commiting to a more expensive subscription. I read the 10 Must Reads on Communication book last week and 4 of the 10 articles were particularly good, the rest were quite milquetoast. I wrote some thoughts here: https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/reading/hbr-10-reads-on-communication.html https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/reading/hbr-10-reads-on-co...
- eucryphia 7y agoCut down on your booze consumption.
- dorkwood 7y ago> 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?
- theevilsharpie 7y agoFor executives, yes.
- manmal 7y agoIf your role depends a lot on coordinating people and building rapport with your superiors, it intuitively makes sense to do so. Similar to how a dev will get familiar with how the team communicates, does pull requests, estimates etc. - just in a different work environment.
- CaptArmchair 7y agoI 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 7y agoVery 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.
- AmericanChopper 7y agoI 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 7y ago>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 7y agoIf 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.
- iamzozo 7y agoOr 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.
- sysbin 7y agoI agree. People that dislike someone, wait for things to confirm their personal bias and ignore positive things the disliked person does. First impressions are so important and prevent unreasonable headaches with someone.
- orev 7y agoThe “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 7y agoNot 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.
- iamzozo 7y agoI meant move on as thinking, not switching a job. I’m working in an enviroment where are limited options to switch. Dealing with it, as you don’t do it. As others also wrote about bad actors. You cannot go on a path where you won’t find any. From my point and experience, sometimes you shouldn’t care. If you don’t like 5% of your coworkers or just one, thats totally fine. But if I want to go further, you may not dislike them. They are just not the same. I don’t think the only way is some scientific/psycholgical explanation to get over with them. Edit: I switched because of this, taking the risk, it’s worth it. At the current place I got another bad actor, but we could manage these differences.
- AThrowAway99 7y agoThis 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'?
- Psyladine 7y agoFriends & money don't mix. If you are owed something, get it in writing, and get a lawyer. Intra-group politics are magnified by the presence of potential earnings, and if you aren't savvy at the game, you're losing.
- AThrowAway99 7y agoYes, I usually agree. We do have something in writing and my lawyer is taking it seriously. What bothers me, if a bigger name than I is claiming my work as his own, what impact that will have on my career?
- enriquto 7y agoThis 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 7y agoThats torture. It does not have to be once we have UBI.
- leto_ii 7y agoDoes 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.
- weekay 7y agoThis is has been bugging me for some time as well. How does one differentiate between a well intended Vs not in a typical work environment? Intentions are interpreted through various signals and when there are various strands of office politics in play it makes it really difficult to open up and follow the playbook suggested. The typical fear of are we giving away too much information by opening up and is it going to make it worse sometimes comes to play. Wish human interactions were simple
- leto_ii 7y agoI think the best that we can do is to observe people over time and slowly build trust or distrust. Work interactions I guess could be treated as a repeated game with imperfect information. We have to try to refine our priors iteratively. The way I did it was to be well-intentioned, honest and open with everybody in the beginning and close up as needed. I would determine if somebody was ill-intentioned based on how they reacted to my feedback and based on their general behavior. Do they tend to talk people behind their back? Do they consistently silo information? Do they offer constructive advice? Do they focus on the actual work rather than on attention-seeking? etc. But indeed the task is not easy and things will never be perfectly clear.
- weekay 7y agoThis reminds me of the prisoners dilemma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
- ksec 7y ago
- Dextra96 7y agoThe asking for help advice I genuinely feel works pretty well, unless they're an asshole that says "you should know this already"
- btrettel 7y agoAny advice for working with people who insist that I should "know something already" that's not obvious and/or was never communicated?
- elbear 7y agoDo they always give you that answer or sometimes they actually answered your question? You could ask them how you were supposed to know that (genuinely and not with an exasperated tone). In case it's simply their attitude or world view, I don't know what you can do about it.
- jackskell 7y agoI 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.
- BlameKaneda 7y agoMy former boss used to say that to me regularly, where I'd ask myself "Yeah, why don't I know this?" It was incredibly toxic and it's one of the reasons why I was afraid to reach out and ask for help. He's still on the same team, but fortunately I'm working under someone else (the other teammates got the sense that he was a dick).
- arjunrc 7y agoI 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 7y agoyou still use a phone that can be slammed down?
- kazagistar 7y agoTossing a mobile (usually against something soft) can have similar emotional catharsis.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI 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 :)
- stronglikedan 7y agoYou don't have a desk phone at your job?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]