7 Ways New Managers can work with difficult peers

Managing difficult peers is a common challenge for new managers. Building relationships with difficult peers is crucial for succeeding in…

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Managing difficult peers is a common challenge for new managers. Building relationships with difficult peers is crucial for succeeding in the role.

As a manager, your success depends on how well you collaborate with other team managers. Without their support, your team’s deliverables may suffer.

Hence having a strategic partnership with peer managers becomes important. However, the issue arises when they are not collaborative.

The non-collaborative situation arises due to various reasons. It could be because boundaries are not clear, the plan is not clear, there are other challenges of which you are not aware or their team’s goal is not clear, and many more.

So it is important to strategize the collaboration rather than expecting everyone will collaborate no matter the situation.

In this blog I will provide seven strategies to improve peer interactions and relationship building, to improve collaboration and support.

The Issues

Following are the top 5 issues that you will face if the collaboration with peer managers is not established.

Issue#1: Missed deliverables
Your team’s deliverables will have delays due to a lack of collaboration from peer teams.

You need to answer for the delays for your team more than anyone else in the organization.

Issue#2: Increased stress
Lack of trust and collaboration impacts the deliverables and creates a stressful work environment.

Continuing in such an environment is not good for you and your team members.

Issue#3: Low team morale
Due to delays and non-cooperative peers, your team will be affected as the deliverables are not going on time.

This will result in low morale and the continued non-cooperative environment is not an ideal working environment.

Issue#4: Misalignment
Due to poor communication and collaboration, there will be always misalignment between the teams.

This in turn results in missed deliverables and low morale.

Issue#5: Reduced productivity
Due to the above 4 issues, there will be always waiting for something to progress.

This results in reduced productivity of your team.

The Strategies

Below are 7 strategies that you can employ to improve your relationship with difficult peer managers.

Strategy#1: Build Trust
In any situation, building trust is needed to succeed.

To build trust with difficult peer managers, start by keeping your side of commitments.

Listening to their concerns and challenges and professionally showing your support helps to gain their trust.

So, put consistency in your efforts to build trust, and will help in the long run.

Strategy#2: Being transparent about your team’s work
Transparency avoids misalignment and conflicts. Regularly sharing your plans and goals will help your peers.

The transparency will help align your work to peer managers’ plans and goals.

Having shared centralized documentation or a common project management tool will further help be transparent.

Strategy#3: Being Flexible
While one of them is not collaborating, being flexible by understanding other managers’ situations will help you to adapt.

Being flexible shows that you value the working relationship and that you are committed to team success.

This will send signals to peer managers they also need to be flexible otherwise nobody will complete the work.

Strategy#4: Setting up a regular cadence for progress review
Scheduling regular meetings to review progress helps to address any concerns.

Consistent communication helps in maintaining alignment and keeps everyone on track.

Track the action items that come out of the regular meetings to further strengthen the alignment.

Strategy#5: Combined stakeholder meetings
Involving stakeholders in joint meetings can help further align goals and expectations.

The collective approach ensures everyone is on the same page and can lead to better collaboration.

The joint meeting will create a platform for resolving conflicts and help to build collaboration.

Strategy#6: Seek support from other members
Many managers make the mistake of not seeking support from senior managers in such situations.

If you approach senior managers with specific issues and with possible solutions will show that you’re proactive and want to achieve the organization's goals.

Their experience can give you insights on how to handle difficult peer relationships.

Strategy#7: Focus should be on outcomes
Keeping the focus on outcomes will help to remove any personal conflicts.

Always try to associate the discussions and decisions back to the project’s goals and results. In this way, there is no room for conflicts.

A results-oriented approach will ensure everyone works towards common objectives.