“I’m thinking of firing my CFO,” my executive coaching client, a healthcare CEO, said. “She came highly recommended, but she’s so negative—she’s constantly shutting down my ideas.”
It’s possible the CFO was a bad fit. But I had to ask more. “A big part of her job is to keep the company solvent. Right?” I said.
“Yeah,” my client replied. “So?”
“What if she’s really good at it? And the conflict between you comes from her being realistic about how much you can grow without putting the whole enterprise at risk?”
My client blinked as he suddenly saw the conflict in a new light: he’d been taking the inherent conflict in the two roles personally. While he was thinking big—as good leaders should—the CFO was also performing her role.
It’s a misunderstanding that I see in organizations all the time: people attributing all kinds of motives and personality issues to colleagues when they’re just doing their jobs. But there’s a fix, too. Whether you’re a leader, a manager, or a teammate, understanding role-to-role relationships can help you separate the real jerks from the worker bees—and take disagreements less personally. And seeing role-to-role relationships for what they are can help you embrace the right kinds of conflict on the job.
1. Get clear on your roles as a team—it holds you together
Everyone on a team needs to understand both their role and that of their teammates: not the minutiae of the job, but the top 3-5 overarching outcomes each role is responsible for.
It’s this understanding that helped one team completely reframe their feelings about a “super controlling” project manager who was getting on everyone’s nerves. In a meeting in which people were voicing their frustrations, he reminded everyone of his top priority. “I’m in charge of how we’re doing the work,” he said. “If I see a more efficient way to do things, or I see a bottleneck, it’s my job to call it out so the work gets done faster.” When the team realized that his directions were for their benefit, eyerolls turned to appreciation. Now his requests—like could everyone please use only one dedicated Slack channel for the project, not four—were seen as part of his work ethic.
2. Understand the conversations you have about actual work are role-to-role conversations
Outside of work, your colleagues may be friends, relatives, or acquaintances. But at work, your conversations and relationships should focus on carrying out your role. Once everyone has a team-wide understanding of those roles, they should feel authorized to make requests and give feedback on behalf of them.
A new SVP had a team of former peers who were slacking off, and she was worried about being a jerk. “I can’t tell them what to do, they’re my friends,” she said. Friends don’t confront friends about their performance, but leaders do: asking staff to be accountable is part of the job.
Once the SVP understood it was her job, she used the concept of role-to-role relationships to help her. She started the conversations with: “I’m talking to you as your boss right now,” signaling to her colleagues that they were in work mode and the conversation would be different from the one they’d have later at happy hour. Calling out the role is a great way to distinguish supervision from power trips.
3. Remember that while roles may not be equal, people are
An employee got an email from her boss: “This is sloppy. Do it again and have it on my desk by EOD.” What a power trip, she thought, and shared the email with a few colleagues to illustrate her boss’s ego.
Nobody likes to be told what to do or how to do it. But the typical workplace is organized in a system of hierarchies, in which some are charged with directing others. It’s not personal; it’s by design.
It can be difficult to remember that people are of equal value when roles hold varying degrees of power. Clearly, the boss could have sent a kinder email, registering more personal respect. At the same time, employees can feel less personal about critical feedback by remembering it’s part of their boss’s role to set work expectations. While bosses should be mindful of employee emotions, it’s not their job to tiptoe around them.
4. Know that the responsibilities of a role may not be negotiable, but how the role is played is
A friend’s supervisor who was tasked with reinforcing government compliance had a habit of standing over her shoulder and watching her screen for large chunks of time. This made her so nervous, she couldn’t focus. She’d mess up and have to redo her work.
“I’m so conflict averse. I can’t tell my boss their management style sucks,” she said. There are no guarantees that speaking up will make a difference in a colleague or boss’s behavior, but if that behavior truly impacts your ability to do your work, it’s your job to address it.
Role-to-role conversations work for managing down, laterally, and up. Realizing her job performance was suffering, she summoned the courage to say: “I know you need to know that I’m actually working in the correct format, but when you stand over me, I get so nervous, I mess up and take longer. Can we figure out another way?” They agreed for her to send him batches of her work to review at set times. Supervision may be part of a role, but behaviors like hovering don’t have to be: when a team understands roles have set functions that can be carried out in a variety of ways, everyone feels empowered to negotiate. The trick is to avoid thinking that if you don’t like a behavior it means the person or the behavior is bad.
When a person uses mean words, harsh tones, crosses boundaries, or actively drives humiliation, it’s clearly harmful. No one should work under those conditions. Misuse of power should be processed and brought through HR or other appropriate channels.
But when work behavior is annoying, the framework of role-to-role relationships can help us make sense of our reactions so we know how to respond. Sometimes roles, like a CEO and CFO, have tasks that clash. Employing the principles of role-to-role relationships can help teams step into those conflicts with less emotional stress, that sticky stuff that clutters workplaces and reduces their efficiency.
Blair Glaser, MA is a leadership and organizational development consultant who helps leaders and teams thrive.