Difficult Work Relationships: What Leaders Miss
The project review blamed too much work and too few people. What it missed was that the two people who had to agree on priorities hadn’t had an honest conversation since March.
Most leaders I work with can sum up their strategy in a sentence. Far fewer can name the difficult work relationship that’s slowing it down. Yet that relationship is often what’s really holding things back, and by the time it shows up in missed targets, it has usually been costing you for months.
Four things leaders need to understand about difficult work relationships
1. Execution is relational. Strategy is a set of decisions, and decisions are made between specific people. Jody Hoffer Gittell’s research on relational coordination in airlines and hospitals found that communication and mutual respect between roles predicted performance.
2. Tension leaves a cost trail. Decisions get escalated that should have been settled in the room. Meetings repeat. Capable people work around a colleague instead of with them. None of it appears on a budget line labelled “relationship problem.”
3. Everyone reads it before you name it. Your team watches how you handle a strained relationship and learns what is safe to say. A leader visibly stuck with a peer starts to look indecisive, however sound their judgement.
4. Your behaviour is part of the pattern. Under pressure, most of us become more of what we already are: tighter control or quiet withdrawal. The other person is responding to that version of you, which is why the view from inside is unreliable.
Three misconceptions about managing difficult colleagues
“It’s a personality clash.” Sometimes. More often it’s competing incentives or unspoken expectations that feel personal because they keep causing friction. Clarify who owns what, and many clashes lose their heat.
“Time will settle it.” Unaddressed tension hardens. People build explanations for each other’s behaviour, and the explanations get more convincing with repetition.
“Raising it will make things worse.” Avoidance feels safer because its cost is spread thin and hard to trace. A clumsy, honest conversation usually does less damage than months of polished silence.
Two surprises about leadership relationships
Healthy debate is fragile. De Dreu and Weingart’s 2003 meta-analysis found that task conflict was also linked to weaker team performance, and that it correlated strongly with relationship conflict. Debate only helps when people trust each other enough to keep it about the work.
Better teams can report more problems. In Amy Edmondson’s early hospital research, the stronger teams recorded more errors, not fewer. They felt safe enough to say so. A quiet team isn’t necessarily a well-functioning one.
The one thing to do this week
Ask which single relationship, if it improved, would unlock the most this quarter. Then have the conversation within a week, and open with what you’ve observed and what you might be missing, not with your conclusion.
For example: “Decisions on the roadmap keep coming back to me after we’ve agreed on them. I’d like to understand what’s getting in the way from your side.”
That sentence names the impact, owns your limited view and invites their account.
Common questions
How do you deal with a difficult colleague as a leader? Describe the behaviour and its business impact, not the person’s character. Ask what pressures they’re under, then agree specific changes in a direct conversation. Follow up consistently, because trust returns through reliability.
Why do difficult work relationships affect leadership performance? Decisions slow down, projects stall, and your team takes its cues from you. Even sound judgement looks indecisive or political when a key relationship is strained.
When should a leader get a coach involved? When the same tension keeps returning, when you can’t see your own part in it, or when the stakes make a clumsy attempt too costly. An outside view works best before the problem becomes public.
Don’t wait for the numbers
If a working relationship is holding back your results, you don’t have to untangle it alone or in public. Relational leadership coaching, in confidence, can show you what you can’t see from inside the dynamic.
Request a free 30-minute confidential conversation. We’ll identify what’s really going on and what a sensible first step looks like.
Zana Busby is a certified business psychologist who works with executives, founders and business partners in the UK and internationally.
