What's your advice on improving a historically tense relationship between functions?
Understand how each of you are wired. Personality tests are helpful here, especially as it relates to how someone makes decisions, and how they like to receive or give feedback. And then, I prefer to rip off the bandaid, meet face to face (screens are okay too) and share objective feedback. If you need to work together to be successful, it’s worth the time and effort to understand the situation, behavior and impact each of you has had on each other. Both parties need to accept the feedback, even if it’s brutally hard to hear/accept. Once you have shared the feedback, take the time to digest, have a follow up conversation and align on a path forward, what needs to happen in order to build trust and commit. If you aren’t committed or genuine, this won’t work. High degree of care and candor is essential.
It’s challenging to improve a historically tense relationship. It takes time and mutual respect. The key is to create an environment that is a safe space. Model and foster an environment of communication, transparency and empathy. Know that you will need patience as you work to create a more collaborative relationship.
It’s important to meet people where they are at. Why has there been a tense relationship? What’s within your control that you can do to help improve the situation? How do you help support others to improve the relationship? Think deeply about the answers to these types of questions.
For historically tense relationships, one of my coaches has given me a fantastic framework:
Take a step back and request time to address your relationship. Request the time to discuss this so they aren't blindsided and have time to think about what they'd want to share.
In the meeting, both sides share a rating of 1-10 with 10 being an incredible relationship, where they stand. Have a discussion on how to raise the rating and what is needed from both ends. Be vulnerable and share where your challenges have existed and the stories you're telling yourself.
Agree on a cadence for check-ins and ensure you're both committed and celebrate the stronger relationship.
Here's some steps I would take:
Acknowledge the current state of the relationship, don't shy away from that
Create a team charter for your own discipline/function and share it with the team you have a tense relationship with to reset expectations around how your team works and how you will engage with and work with other teams
Try to plan something fun together that will enhance cultural dynamics and ease tension
Set goals for that quarter/next projects together so you're both approaching upcoming work from a state of collective achievement
If these things don't work, then potentially having some mediated conversations with key stakeholders that are causing the tension might be an option in moving forward. Sometimes people need to get things off their chest in a safe space in order to really move on and rebuild trust.
In the case where you are new to an organization and trying to improve the relationship with another team there are three things to do first.
Listen - Ask a lot of questions. Understand what the function is responsible for, the current projects they are working on, their goals and challenges, and what went wrong in the past.
Learn - Don't be afraid to ask more questions about the details if anything is unclear or if you don't feel that you could explain the specifics to someone else later. Ask for material to read as a follow-up, and actually read it.
Collaborate - Bring new ideas to the other function, discuss them, and build a plan together that ensures that both teams are getting what they need from the project.
When you are not new to an organization but a tense relationship has built up over time, the only way to truly resolve it is to have an honest conversation with the team leader. These are never easy to have, but you both need to be honest about how you might have acted in the past and come out on the other side ready to move forward.
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