Managing Difficult Relationships at Work

Managing difficult relationships at work

Often relationships at work fail quietly. But hidden conflicts and 'silent fails' in relationships can be just as harmful to the team as palms on desks and raised voices.

Managing difficult working relationships is key to ensuring team success.

Belbin Team Roles can help by providing a common language and framework for understanding individual behaviour and strengths. By identifying individuals' preferred ways of working, Belbin Team Roles can help to reduce misunderstandings and conflicts between team members.

Difficult for you or difficult for everyone?

To begin with, it’s important to identify the scale of the problem. Is there one person who is seen as a ‘difficult coworker’ by a few members of the team or does the difficulty surround your individual working dynamic with someone?

 

Help them to better understand how they come across

During the Belbin process, we counteract this by asking people to collect Observer Assessments. Whilst the Self-Perception questionnaire focuses on an individual’s own view of their behavioural strengths, the Observer Assessments allow colleagues, managers and other key stakeholders to give their views.

 

For those with low self-awareness, the Observer Assessments can help them to better understand how they come across.

They can reveal hidden strengths and act as a discussion-starter. Perhaps the individual is playing out of role? Perhaps the team’s expectations of that person don’t align with what they believe to be their strengths? Maybe they have aspirations to play a different role?

Working through the Belbin process – both as individuals and collectively as a pair or team – can open up crucial discussion about behaviour anchored in real-world examples.

The language of Belbin Team Roles helps defuse conversations, so that they don’t result in personal attacks.

How does the ‘difficult person’ fit with the team culture?

It’s also important to consider the Team Role culture of your work environment.

Sometimes teams have a predominance of a particular Team Role. Individuals who fit the mould are hired or recruited into the team and behavioural diversity is lost.

If someone in the team does not share these Team Role strengths, they can be labelled as ‘difficult’ or cast as an outsider just for contributing in a different way.

 

Is there a strong team culture?

For example, consider a team high in Resource Investigator and Shaper strengths. This team would be fast-moving and dynamic, taking ideas and running with them. If we introduce a strong Monitor Evaluator, who points out potential drawbacks and takes time to arrive at a decision, this person may be seen as cynical, pessimistic and obstructive, when in fact, they are simply contributing to the team in a different way.

The Team Role Circle (in the Team report) can help to identify these difficulties by showing the spread of Team Roles within the team.

Helping to articulate contributions

The Suggested Work Styles page (of the Individual report) can help with appropriate phrases to help people articulate their contributions so that others know what to expect.

Failing to establish a relationship to begin with

In this situation, it could be that there isn’t enough common Team Role ground. Even without knowing one another’s Team Roles explicitly, two people might have detected a difference in approach or priorities that feels insurmountable or not worth their time and energy.

The good news is that there is often scope to work well with someone who has Team Roles complementary to your own, so long as each person has an understanding and appreciation of the contribution the other is making.

Plant and Shaper relationship

In this example, Lisa, who has a top Team Role of Plant, might clash with strong Shaper, John.

Lisa is likely to need space and time to explore new ideas, whereas John will be focusing on goals and deadlines.

If Lisa understands that John will be concerned with timings and John gives Lisa space to create, the two are likely to work together more effectively.

And since the two share the Implementer role, each is likely to have an eye to practical considerations. This commonality can help them to navigate their differences in approach successfully.

Team Role opposites

Each Team Role cluster has an opposite number.

• The dominant Shaper and the supportive Teamworker;
• the creative Plant and the practical Implementer.

When it comes to difficult relationships, Team Role opposites are often the cause of the disconnect. In these situations, one person’s approach is anathema to the other.

Resource Investigator and Completer Finisher relationship

For a high-scoring Resource Investigator, the Completer Finisher’s unrelenting insistence on pinning down every last detail might feel tiresome and draining.

For the Completer Finisher, the Resource Investigator’s enthusiasm without apparent substance might be fanciful and unnerving. Failing to see the value of the other’s contribution, each does their best to ignore the other.

In this situation, Team Role learning and understanding is key. Once each person has identified the value of the other person’s contribution – and devised a strategy to deal with it effectively – the relationship can develop more successfully.

Shadows of the past: once bitten, twice shy

In the second scenario, the working relationship may have been working well, up to a point. Whether or not the bad experience falls within the bounds of Belbin Team Role behaviours, we can use that language to attempt a repair.

First, we need to rebuild trust. A facilitator might explore the incident with both parties, using Team Role language to depersonalise the conflict.

It might be explained that one played the Shaper and made the final decision before the other (a strong Monitor Evaluator) had been given time to reflect and advise. The first was anxious to move things along, whilst the second felt their position to be undermined.

Shaper and Monitor Evaluator relationship

The first step towards a solution can be as simple as articulating our styles clearly.

For the high Monitor Evaluator, this would mean saying, “I need time to arrive at a decision, and I become disengaged when I’m not consulted”. For the high Shaper, this would mean saying, “There comes a point when discussion needs to make way for action. I’m always keenly aware of that deadline.”

With this in mind – and with a greater understanding of the dynamics of the working relationship – the terms of the new ‘relationship contract’ can be negotiated.

Team Role Sacrifice

The last possibility – if both individuals are needed in the team for structural or logistical reasons – is for one person to make a Team Role sacrifice.

In addition to our preferred roles (the roles we play most readily), we also have a number of manageable roles, those behaviours we can call upon if needed, and cultivate for the team’s benefit.

This is known as making a Team Role sacrifice. Developing manageable roles in this way can work to our benefit, as we uncover new skills which might not otherwise be brought to the fore.

However, making a Team Role sacrifice for a long period of time can be a strain.

As Dr Belbin says, ‘Moving from a natural role into a secondary role is like changing gear. That shift may make you feel as though the vehicle is not going at the speed for which it was designed’.

As such, Team Role sacrifice may be appropriate for the duration of a project, but shouldn’t be considered as an effective long-term strategy.