The ability to navigate workplace relationships can make or break your career. The people who thrive are those who know how to both collaborate and compete with their colleagues. They clearly understand how work relationships affect their interests and the organization’s, carefully consider the risks and trade-offs, and dispassionately decide how much to invest in each coworker and when to walk away.

Navigating effectively means that you must first understand where you and your colleagues fall on the conflict-collaboration spectrum. Once you’ve figured out the relationship type, you can use various tactics to manage it. That requires you to step back from the existing emotional and behavioral dynamics and carefully analyze your situation.

 

 

Conflict – In an outright conflict your counterpart is trying to take something that you want or need. It is a zero-sum relationship that ends when one party wins and the other loses the sought-after reward. In a conflict relationship you need to be clear about what you must protect and what’s not possible, given the circumstances. Confrontation is both necessary and costly, so work closely with allies and do not engage your rival alone.

Competition – This type of rivalry is very common in workplaces where pay and opportunities are routinely allocated by assessing and comparing the performance of employees. You and your colleague want the same things, but supply is limited. Unlike an outright win-or-lose conflict, competitive situations offer some flexibility, because value can still be found in other, albeit less attractive, options. The right move in cases like this one is to recognize where your goals and your rival’s are compatible and where they’re not and work from there to improve the odds of good outcomes while minimizing unwanted ones. By recognizing what drives a rivalry, those in it can find a way to reduce competition.

Independence – In the middle of the spectrum is independence, which entails deliberately reducing your reliance on others as much as possible—evading the problem rather than trying to fix it. One challenge with this approach is that it is difficult to maintain over the long term. Another challenge is that avoiding might also isolate you from potential allies who could help you perform your job better. Instead, consider treating the relationship as a conflict or a competition.

Cooperation – In a cooperative relationship you and your counterpart share key interests but also have separate ones, so you choose to work together on specific issues where your interests align and not to compete where they don’t. That doesn’t require you to like or make any material or long-term investments in each other. It’s just a mutually beneficial transaction in which each party brings something to the table.

Collaboration – Collaboration happens when two parties have many key mutual interests and would both benefit from investing in the relationship to help each other. While such relationships feel psychologically safe and promise the most mutual gain, they are the hardest to disengage from if interests change, because the parties’ resources are intermingled.

We all navigate a range of cooperative rivalries at work. Understanding and figuring out how to optimize each of them is crucial. The solution is not to find positive relationships and avoid negative ones. You must recognize that conflict and competition inevitably arise among interdependent coworkers but can still be managed in ways that reap rewards. Career success depends on relationship management as much as any other skill. Get it right, and both you and your organization will benefit.

 

Reference: Harvard Business Review (2022, March-April) Randall S. Peterson and Kristin J. Behfar: When to Cooperate with Colleagues and When to Compete