How to Repair a Relationship With a Coworker
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How to repair a broken relationship with a coworker
It’s nearly a guarantee that throughout your career you will experience a relationship at work that doesn't feel great. Maybe it's a co-worker you butt heads or just don’t get along with, or caused by an event that caused a damaged relationship.
Something I believe pretty strongly is that if everyone repaired just one strained relationship at work, their day-to-day life would be noticeably better
“If everyone repaired just one strained relationship at work, their day-to-day life would be noticeably better.”
Having an "enemy" at work, or someone you're constantly in low-grade conflict with, takes a real toll on your well-being. All the way up to dreading coming to work because you’ll have to face that person. It’s a heavy way to spend many hours a day.
So let's talk about how to actually fix it.
Fixing it is worth giving a shot.
The first move can be just gently naming it out loud. Something like: "Hey, things don't feel great between us. I don't love how it feels, and I imagine you don't either. I'd love to get together and talk about how we could make it better."
From there, set up a time to sit down together. Not a big dramatic meeting, just a real conversation. Here is a simple structure and framework you can use to guide that conversation:
Four questions that can shift the dynamic.
1. What's going well? Start with the good stuff. What do we appreciate about each other? What works well between us? Don’t skip this step and go straight to the problems. Naming what's already positive sets a different tone for everything that follows.
“It’s not a hashing out of every grievance. Stick to observations and experiences, avoid labels and accusations.”
2. Where do we get stuck? This is where you talk through the friction. Tread gently here, it’s not a hashing out of every grievance. Stick to observations and experiences, avoid labels and accusations. Where does communication break down? What does each of you do that contributes to the tension?
Keep it light and honest rather than turning it into a courtroom. The goal is understanding the pattern, and hearing each other’s perspective, not assigning blame.
3. What would things ideally look like? Paint the picture of what you want things to look and feel like and the relationship working well. How do we communicate? How do we bring things up when something's bothering us? How do we want to show up and interact in a more ideal way? Getting specific and clear here matters, because "let's just get along better" isn't actually a plan.
4. What can we each commit to going forward? Based on everything you just talked through, what are a couple concrete ways each of you will show up differently? This is the part that turns a good conversation into actual change. Again, be specific here with exactly how you will both choose show up a little differently.
Working through those four questions together can be extremely productive. It's really about wiping the slate clean and determining what things will look like going forward.
You don't need to hash out every grievance, ruffled feather, and hurt that's ever happened between you. In fact, trying to do that usually backfires and isn’t all that productive.
“We have some history, and it hasn’t felt great. I’m willing to wipe the chalkboard clean and start fresh”
The more useful approach is more like: "We have some history, and it hasn't felt great. I'm willing to wipe the chalkboard clean and start fresh." You don’t need to aim for best friends who hang out on weekends. Just having interactions that don't feel like a minefield can be a pretty big upgrade.
Build in a check-in.
One thing that can make this stick is a small recurring touch point. Maybe once a month you grab coffee for ten minutes, or catch up over lunch.
Depending on your history and your relationship, that might feel a little unusual. But if that’s what it takes to not have an enemy at work, it’s a small price to pay for not carrying that weight.
That check-in doesn't need to be complicated. It can just be, "How are things going? Does things still feel okay? Anything we need to bring up?"
Create some shared language for static.
A really useful thing you can do together is agree on how you'll handle friction when it comes up again. If either person is feeling irritated or upset about something, is there a gentle way to flag that and bring it up before it escalates? A lot of workplace conflict spirals because there's no agreed-upon way to say "something's bothering me" without it immediately turning into a blowup.
1000x worth it.
If two people who don't get along end up watching this and use it to repair their work relationship, awesome. It takes real courage to initiate and navigate a conversation like this. But the upside is significant.
You spend a huge chunk of your life at work, and not having to navigate around a strained relationship every day makes everyone’s lives so much easier.
If you repair even one relationship using this approach, it's massively worth it.
Related Blogs:
Conflict Skills: Don't Be So Quick to Anger
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop
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