Quickie: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust
I’m presently reading (well, listening to) Adam Kahane’s 2016 book “How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust”. See his own introduction.
The books speaks to me because I’ve found myself in such situations many times throughout my career, most often choosing the “exit” option from his four options of “adapt, collaborate, force, exit”.
Why not choose to collaborate? Always my first choice, I’ve generally believed.that collaboration generally requires cooperation of some sort from “diverse others”. Maybe Adam’s “stretch collaboration” perspective will open up new opportunities for “collaborate”.
“Collaboration seems both imperative and impossible. What do we do?
“The reason such collaborations seem impossible is because we misunderstand collaboration. Our conventional understanding of collaboration is that it requires us all to be on the same team and headed in the same direction, to agree on what needs to be done and be able to get this done, and to do what the task demands of us. In other words, we assume that collaboration can and must be under control.
“But this conventional assumption is wrong. When we are working in complex situations with diverse others, collaboration cannot and need not be controlled.”
~ Adam Kahane
Think Different
“Our conventional understanding of collaboration is that it requires us all to be on the same team and headed in the same direction, to agree on what needs to be done and be able to get this done, and to do what the task demands of us. In other words, we assume that collaboration can and must be under control.” The first sentence describes a system. It is not about control, it is about trust. That’s collaboration. I can tolerate many things but insincerity. So when the trust is gone (many times it takes time to discover BS) the only option for me is “exit” too. “Force” is fundamentally wrong while adapting (tolerating) too much is basically feeding the modern slavery of employed work. If all disengaged workers had the means to resign tomorrow, don’t you think their employers would need to change something in the way the work works?
At the risk of adding to your reading backlog, might I commend the book (it’s relatively short) to you in response to your question?