"How are Your Relationships With Your Peers?"

Auditing your organizational relationships

This week I’m giving you a chance to experience what it’s like to be in one of my leadership workshops. I’m going to take you through one of the most popular exercises — auditing your peer relationships.

During the workshop, there’s a section on organizational relationships. It begins with this question.

“How are your relationships with your peers?”

The answer tells me a lot about how their experience is going. Before we get into leadership we often dream about owning and having an impact on an area. Once we get into the role, we realize it isn’t that simple.

The problems become bigger, more gnarly. We have to operate inside a complex system with many moving parts. We have to come together to make decisions. We work at the organizational layer as much or more than we do in our own area. We realize that rather than owning an area, our work requires a cross-functional approach. We begin to reorient our markers of success from what we or our team ship to what we accomplish as an entity. We recognize that our peers, not our functional team, are actually our most important team.

This adds a conundrum.

In the past, our peers have largely been inside our function. While we may have some relationships outside our area, they’re likely limited. But it’s nearly impossible to do well in an organizational leadership role without strong relationships. Sure, you can force your opinion on others…for a while. This grows old. Others won’t want to work with you. You lose influence. Your leadership experience isn’t very fun or fulfilling. You might even regret taking the role.

Effective partnerships are essential for organizational leaders. You can’t do the work well without them. That’s not to say that it’s easy. There’s friction in building partnerships — lack of time, we’re not sure how to go about it, we feel awkward putting ourselves out there.

Back to my leadership workshop. When I ask them, “How are your relationships with your peers?” they often indicate that they’re so-so. They know peer relationships are critical but feel overwhelmed with the task. They give me confused grins that say, “I know this is important. Where do I start?”

In the workshop, we start with the following exercise.

Conduct a peer relationship audit

With heaps of responsibility and weighty goals, many of us haven’t taken the time to think holistically about our peer relationships. Building strong partnerships begins with assessing their status. If you don’t have a good picture of where they currently stand, you’re likely to feel overwhelmed. You can’t mend or improve what you don’t acknowledge.

Here are the three steps to doing a relationship audit

Step 1: Identify your peers

Who do you work with? 

Who do you need to work with? 

Make a list of your peers. Be sure to include those outside your functional area. Once you’ve made a comprehensive list take a few moments to reflect. What did you discover? What surprised you about your list? In workshops, I’ve found people can have profound a-ha moments even just doing this step.

Step 2: Classify your relationships

How are those relationships going?

Categorize your list using these relationship types:

Non-existent/transactional: You don’t know each other well or at all. You’re likely apathetic to each other, interacting only in a transactional sense, or have been in the same room with little interpersonal interaction. You probably don’t think about them much.

Fledgling: You know each other a bit or have found something in common. You’ve likely had dinner or a longer conversation outside of leadership team interactions. You might have worked on a project together so you have some foundation but the glue is still setting so to speak.

Mutual support: You know and like each other. You understand what motivates the other, how they like to work. It feels when you good interact. You’ve likely worked together on a shared goal or emerged stronger after a conflict. Trust is high so you support each other publicly and confide privately when you want advice or feedback. This is the kind of partnership most of us long for.

Lopsided: One person puts more in more effort than the other. One bends or gives in to the other more. There’s often a power imbalance in these relationships. These relationships don’t feel very good, especially if you’re the one putting in more effort or giving in more. These are tricky but important to partnerships.

Conflicted: These relationships can have hot conflict which is obvious — the two of you don’t talk much, you bristle when you interact, you might even argue out loud. They can also look like false harmony — you say everything is fine, everything looks okay at the surface but trust is low and you don’t respect each other much.

A couple of notes. Your relationships will likely spread across categories. Don’t worry if you don’t have many mutual support partnerships. These take work and sometimes a bit of magic to create. You won’t likely ever have a slate of mutual supportive relationships and that’s ok. Even having a couple is a real boon.

Step 3: Prioritize the relationships you want to transform

Where should I invest time and energy?

Decide which relationships you want to build or strengthen. I’d choose two or three at most. There isn’t a right answer. Who you pick will vary depending on what you discovered in the first two steps as well as what’s going on inside the company. That said, here are some things to consider based on relationship type.

Non-existent/transactional: Since you don’t know each other well if at all, there’s no glue holding you together. This means trust is weak. This could turn into a contentious relationship but it could also turn into a partnership. If you identify someone you need to work with in the future, you might prioritize this relationship.

Fledgling: Trust is still relatively low but there’s potential. With some effort, you can likely turn this relationship into an ally or one of mutual support. If you need to work more closely or the org would benefit if you did, you might pick it as one to invest in with hopes of moving into mutual support.

Mutual support: The best thing to do with these relationships is not to take them for granted. This means we make some effort to maintain them — small check-ins and asking for feedback or advice can do the trick. You might prioritize this type of relationship if there’s recently been friction.

Lopsided: Trust is low in these relationships. While they can be frustrating, finding balance is important, particularly if your work intersects with any frequency. Ignoring these isn’t good for anyone. Shifting this into more balanced interactions will reduce your stress and reduce obstacles for the org. By the way, if you are the one not putting in effort, reflect on why that is.

Conflicted: These relationships are difficult for everyone, including bystanders uninvolved. The conflict distracts people, the team and can even threaten business goals if it continues. This also goes for hidden conflict — pretending that everything is ok takes energy. It exacts a cost. Given the low trust and high stakes, if you discover you have one of these, you’d be wise to prioritize working on this kind of relationship.

Prioritizing relationship building will take time away from other things you’ve been doing. It’s so worth it and frankly, one of the most important things you can do to increase your impact. You need to make space. This is a good opportunity to reflect on your time and where you can reprioritize. It’s also a good time to identify what you can delegate to your team to open up energy. This will also give them a chance to stretch into new areas.

Good luck! Let me know how it goes.