I see this attitude too often among technical people. They think that having a good relationship with someone means sucking up and losing one's integrity, when

I see this attitude too often among technical people. They think that having a good relationship with someone means sucking up and losing one's integrity, when in fact, it just means having a good relationship. Having a good relationship with my wife doesn't mean I'm sucking up to my wife. We love and respect each other because we value each other. I don't love my manager, and my people don't love me, but we better respect each other and know how to have good relationships with each other. Technical people who have difficulty having good relationships with others in the workplace need to understand that they can be difficult people to work with, and that they often create drama due to their misconceptions about what relationships are. People who have good relationship skills can also tell the difference between having a good relationship with mutual respect, as opposed to actually sucking up to some narcissist. All technical people need to be able to have that level of relationship wisdom, the ability to see the difference. Sadly, and this is the most unfortunate part, people who are bad at it often think that they're good at it, and so they don't understand why they're being attacked when they're not actually being attacked; then they get angry and disgruntled, creating what was a preventable situation.