Two good people who cannot work in the same room: interpersonal skills beyond personality

Two senior people in a product team were each, by any measure, good at their jobs. Both were liked by their own reports. Put on the same piece of work, they produced delay, duplicated effort and a level of mutual irritation that was visible to everyone. Neither had done anything wrong. One thought aloud and decided late; the other decided early and disliked revisiting. One wanted the context before the ask; the other wanted the ask and would request context if needed. Each experienced the other's way as either indecisive or abrupt, and neither had ever named their own.

That is the shape of most interpersonal difficulty in competent teams. It is not a clash of personalities and it is not a conflict, though it becomes one if left. It is two working styles that have never been described to each other, and it is fixable in an afternoon if the afternoon is used for that.

Interpersonal skills and conflict management are sold separately and are two ends of one thing. Conflict management is what a manager does when two people have already stopped working together; it is covered in conflict management work and it involves separate conversations, a joint one, and a written agreement. Interpersonal skills are the daily habits that stop most pairs from ever reaching that point. A team trained in the second needs the first far less, and the second is cheaper, earlier and much less awkward.

INFORMATION   context first, or the ask first?
DECISIONS     think aloud and decide late, or decide
              early and defend?
FEEDBACK      direct and immediate, or considered and
              private?
CONFLICT      raise it now, or let it settle and revisit?

Two people who know each other's answers stop
reading style as character. Most teams have
never asked.

The exercise is exactly as simple as it looks: each person answers the four questions about themselves, in writing, and then reads their answers to the people they work with most. The reaction is a small, slightly embarrassed recognition, 'so when you go quiet in a meeting you are thinking, not disagreeing', and it removes a surprising share of the friction on its own, because the behaviour that was being read as a judgement turns out to be a preference.

1. 1

   Answer the four, honestly

   Not aspirationally. The person who wants to be seen as decisive but actually thinks aloud should say so; the exercise only works with the real answer.

2. 2

   Read them to the people you work with most

   In pairs, then the team. The reading aloud is the point; a document circulated is not read and not remembered.

3. 3

   Agree one adjustment each way

   For each pair that works together closely: what will you do differently for me, what will I do for you. One thing each. Written down, a line.

4. 4

   Revisit in a month

   Did the adjustment happen? Where it did not, was it forgotten or was it harder than it looked? Both are fine; the second needs a different adjustment.

Beyond the styles exercise, interpersonal skill at work comes down to a handful of habits that are easy to describe and hard to keep under pressure. Asking before assuming, 'is now a good time?' before launching into the ask. Saying what you need rather than hinting. Acknowledging what someone said before disagreeing with it. Giving the small piece of feedback the same day rather than saving it up. None of these is sophisticated. All of them are dropped when people are busy, and the two seniors in the opening had dropped all of them with each other and none with anybody else, which is the pattern to look for: the friction is specific to a pair, and so is the fix.

One further habit matters more than the rest for pairs who have started to grate: assume the generous reading first. A late reply is a busy day before it is a slight; a blunt message is a style before it is a rebuke. The assumption is not naive. It is a default that costs nothing when wrong and saves a working relationship when right, and it is the one that pairs in friction have quietly abandoned with each other.

• Run the styles exercise for the whole team, not just the two who are struggling. Singling out a pair makes it a remedial measure; running it for everyone makes it a normal thing the team knows about itself.
• Model the adjustment. A manager who says 'I know you want the context first, so here it is' has shown the team what using the exercise looks like.
• Notice pairs early. Two people who route work around each other are a pair to run the exercise with before it becomes a conflict management case.
• Do not diagnose personalities. 'They are difficult' is a conclusion that ends enquiry. 'They decide early and you decide late' is a description that starts one.

Sometimes two good people cannot work together because the structure has put them in genuine competition, overlapping accountability for the same outcome, a decision right that was never allocated, objectives that pull in opposite directions. The styles exercise will surface that quickly, because the friction survives the adjustments, and at that point it is not an interpersonal problem and no amount of interpersonal skills training will touch it. That is organisation design work, and recognising the difference is part of what the training should teach a manager to do.

The test is straightforward: would two reasonable people in these two roles, whatever their styles, end up in this dispute? If yes, fix the roles. If no, fix the styles, and the afternoon exercise will do it.

The two seniors in the opening were visible because their friction produced delay on a project the manager was watching. Most style friction is quieter: a pair who simply route work around each other, so that the manager sees two productive people and never sees the collaboration that is not happening. The tell is in the work rather than the behaviour, two versions of the same document, a decision that was made twice, a client who was contacted by both. Managers who run the styles exercise for the whole team find these pairs, because the exercise makes people say out loud which colleague's way they find hardest, and the answer is not always the pair the manager expected. That discovery is worth the afternoon on its own, and it is why the exercise is better run before there is a visible problem than after.

A team that has done the exercise talks about work differently. 'Give me the ask first' replaces irritation at a long preamble. 'I am thinking, not objecting' replaces a misread silence. Feedback arrives the same day because people know which of their colleagues wants it that way. The two seniors in the opening, having named their styles to each other, agreed that one would send the decision with the context attached below it and the other would read the context before replying, one adjustment each, written on a line, and the duplicated work stopped within a fortnight. That is the whole of what interpersonal skills training is for, and it is worth doing before it is needed rather than after.