One of the more frustrating challenges you will encounter in your leadership journey is when someone on your team does not like you. It happens more often than you think and it is also difficult to address.
Our family adopted a girl from Korea many years ago and in the course of that personal journey I learned about something called “Sunshine Policy”. You can Google the subject—it makes for good reading. I realized a few years afterwards that this is a great term to describe how to deal with people on the team who do not like you.
When I am faced with someone who dislikes me on a team, I find it best to adopt the approach of “encouraging courteous interaction and providing friendly assistance”.
It is very hard to develop this habit, especially if you can tell that the other person does not like you. It is also important. Both of you were hired to build things and solve problems, not to pick each other first for games at recess. You might counter-argue that you will solve problems better together if you like each other—and I completely agree with that. The challenge is how to take a relationship that started as a negative and turn it into one that is positive.
So how do you change that? Very carefully. You will need to choose your words wisely in conversation and figure out how to give them as much support and positive feedback as possible.
One of the things I find myself doing quite a bit is getting together with the individual in question and expressing curiosity in how they see things. I will often share my own point of view in the process and then when we find out what is different, I make a point of appreciating the difference in our point of view and thanking them for their time.
I have found this to be a powerful tool to reduce team dysfunction.
It is easy to find it distasteful or frustrating to interact with someone who doesn’t like you. It is important to overcome this for the good of the team.
I invest extra time on check-ins with them, and making sure they have everything they need to be successful.
Is it possible that this could seem insincere or make a bad problem worse? It is absolutely possible. The challenge is to build up the tool chest with non-negative interactions and to understand what is too much and what is not enough when it comes to creating a functional professional relationship.
I was expecting this to be a lot longer today but I think that is pretty much the story-of-the-day in totality.
I guess it was best said in a popular movie from my youth:
“Be Excellent To Each Other.”
If you have trouble remembering that then perhaps you can slide some nickels my way by Purchasing This Clearly-Promoted-By-An-Amazon-Affiliate-T-Shirt-From-The-Movie.
If that does not feel like a worthwhile investment of your hard earned moneys then tweet this or snip-snap it or something.
See you next week esteemed readers!
