Working in Adversarial Relationships By the same author: Managing Politics at Work: The Essential Toolkit for Identifying and Handling Political Behaviour in the Workplace Managing Workplace Bullying: How to Identify, Respond to and Manage Bullying Behaviour in the Workplace Building Influence in the Workplace: How to Gain and Retain Influence at Work Working in AdversAriAl relAtionships OpeRAting effectively in RelAtiOnships chARActeRized by little tRust OR suppORt Aryanne Oade Director, Oade Associates Limited © Aryanne Oade 2011 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-23843-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-31560-4 ISBN 978-0-230-29239-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230292390 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 About the Author Aryanne Oade has worked as a Chartered Psychologist since 1991. She has appeared on C4 speaking about customer complaints han- dling; has given an address on ‘Creativity in Business’ at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and has appeared on Radio 4 speaking on the same topic. Aryanne has spoken at the Leeds and York Institute of Directors breakfast meetings on ‘Politics, Power and Profit’ and contributed to the Institute of Directors’ Director mag- azine; and has given an address at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference on ‘Stress Levels Among South Yorkshire Probation Officers.’ She is a member of the British Psychological Society’s Special Group in Coaching Psychology and holds general membership at the Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology. Aryanne is also a Member of the Association for Coaching. Note from the Author This book focuses on your skills and resolve while working in adver- sarial relationships. In writing the book I am not seeking to advise you, the reader, on how to handle your workplace relationships, but rather to offer you my experience and know-how as someone who has coached and worked with many clients on these issues. In addition to reading this book, you might want to seek the services and profes- sional advice of a coach, business psychologist, or consultant, each of whom should be able to offer you tailored, detailed, and impartial counsel on the more challenging interpersonal and influencing issues you might face at work. v Acknowledgments I would like to send my heartfelt thanks to a number of people. Firstly, my deep gratitude goes to all the clients who have spoken with me over the years about their experiences of working in adver- sarial relationships. I am grateful to the very many of you who have shared with me your successes, frustrations, reactions, and strategies for managing adversarial colleagues and for handling these challeng- ing colleagues and co-workers. Due my commitment to confidentiality I am not going to name any of you, but you know who you are, and I hope you will be able to own the thanks I would like to send to you anonymously. Next, I would like to acknowledge the excellent value I received from the several clients and contacts that allowed me to pick their brains at the start of the writing process. These conversations were really great and helped me to decide how to structure and focus each of the chap- ters in the book. I send my thanks to each one of you gratefully and again, out of respect for confidentiality issues, anonymously. Lastly, I would like to thank the banking executive who read the typescript for me at the end of the writing process and suggested an additional chapter which does, indeed, make the book more complete. vi Overview WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT This book is about working in adversarial relationships. It is about operating effectively in working relationships which are routinely char- acterized by little or no trust and support, and in which one party actively seeks to work against the other, no matter how closely struc- tured their roles may be on the organization chart. The book is about how to work productively and wisely alongside and with co-workers whose job descriptions ought to involve them in working towards the same outcomes as you in broadly the same ways, but who are, in real- ity, actively pursuing their own internally derived, emotionally driven agenda which is in opposition to you and your concerns. This book is about how to manage this conflict on a day-to-day basis, and conse- quently how to operate effectively with adversarial colleagues, whether they are your managers, peers, or team members, and whether they use adversarial behavior on a selective or permanent basis. The book focuses on the skills of working effectively with adversarial colleagues despite the challenges and the obstacles that their opposi- tional nature will inevitably create for you. It is about your willingness to use the specific behavior which will enable you to work within an adversarial relationship sufficiently well that you will be able to get done the things you need to get done by when you need to get them done, even though you are dealing with a colleague who: n Is difficult and obstructive in nature. n Will seek to undermine you when they perceive a suitable opportunity to do so. n Is likely to actively work against you, at least some of the time. The aim of the book is to equip you with the insight, skills, and strategies you need so that you can avoid the pitfalls that non- adversarial colleagues tend to make when working with an adversarial mindset, and so that more often than not you will: n Become skilled at sizing up the dynamics of adversarial situations before deciding how to handle the characters and issues involved. vii Overview viii n Act in ways that will gain you the degree of influence you would like to have with an adversarial colleague. n Retain a greater amount of energy and resolve for the aspects of your role that you most enjoy instead of seeing your enthusiasm dissipate as you struggle to manage an adversarial co-worker. WHAT YOU WILL FIND IN THIS BOOK I wrote this book for those of you who work with adversarial colleagues and who want to understand what practical actions you could take to better handle your adversarial co-worker. I believe that to be effective in an adversarial working relationship you need to develop a suite of people-handling skills and tactics relevant to that specific context. In particular you need to: n Understand that using open, transparent behavior with an adver- sarial colleague could leave you vulnerable and lose you power, rather than gain you influence and respect, as would normally be the case. n Recognize the irregular nature of the boundaries in adversarial relationships, respect them, and work actively within the room for maneuver that does exist. n Develop a suite of people-handling skills specifically tailored to adversarial relationships that will enable you to get things done despite the challenges presented by these particular co-workers and workplace contacts. I wrote this book for those of you who work in adversarial relationships at any level in an organization in any industry in any part of the world. The characteristics of adversarial relationships with which the book deals can be found in employees in any size of workplace, on any continent. These characteristics are not created by the particular industry in which you work or the number of colleagues you work alongside, although some industries may attract a greater proportion of people inclined to use adversarial approaches than others. Instead, the decision to adopt an adversarial attitude is down to the individual choice of the colleague who decides to do things this way. So whether you work for a small, medium, or large organization, and no matter which industry or continent you work in, this book should help you to gain the insight, tactics, and skills you need to enable you to work more effectively and efficiently alongside adversarial colleagues. Overview ix MY BACKGROUND AND WORKPLACE EXPERIENCES I am a Chartered Psychologist. I began working as a business psychologist in the late 1980s. During the following five years I worked for three consultancy firms before deciding to work as an independent business psychologist in early 1994. I made this move because I wanted to spend the greater part of my time working directly with clients, rather than managing colleague relationships. Some of my initial projects were carried out as an associate to smaller consultancy firms. Then, in January 2000, I set up Oade Associates to design and deliver bespoke executive coaching programs, tailored professional skills workshops, and custom-made conference scenarios. In this work I combine business psychology with the skills of professional actors. We create real-life scenarios that reflect the leadership and influencing, negotiating and conflict resolution, political management and people-handling issues that my clients deal with in their day-to-day work. Since starting Oade Associates, I have run hundreds of executive coaching programs and professional skills workshops for managers and leaders working in the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America. Many of these projects have involved working with clients on the reality of selecting and using behavior that will prove effective in adversarial working relationships. In my coaching programs and workshops I ask clients to step back from their day-to-day work and workplace experiences. I ask them to reflect on the quality of the behavior they use when things are going well for them, and to compare that with what they do when they are under pressure. Then, with the help of my professional actor colleagues, I recreate the very meetings clients find most challenging, meetings in which they need to handle the dynamics created by an adversarial colleagues, or in which they misinterpret the intent of adversarial colleagues, and unwittingly lose influence or credibility. I help clients to revisit these meetings using different and more productive behavior, skills, and tactics, behavior that is selected with the specific aim of enabling them to handle an adversarial situation. I coach clients to understand the links between their intrapersonal world – their values, character, and personality – and their interpersonal behavior: the behaviors, tactics, skills, and strategies they use when working with an adversarial colleague. Clients practice their new approaches until they are satisfied that they can go back to work and use them straight away. As a result of working in this way clients perform better in their roles, have greater influence in their key workplace relationships, and demonstrate sustained behavior change.