To succeed, executives must manage a myriad of relationships with their subordinates, colleagues, bosses and others. People who are adept at doing so can, for instance, better navigate the organizational politics at their companies. However, executives who lack such interpersonal skills are prone to misreading important situations. They might, for example, count on a colleague’s crucial support that then fails to materialize. Indeed, the ability to manage work relationships effectively is often what differentiates executives who make it to the top rungs of the corporate ladder from those who don’t.
For more than 20 years, we have worked with hundreds of senior executives in dozens of industries. Many of those individuals have a keen intuitive sense of how best to deal with others. The majority, though, need some guidance because they lack an effective framework for accurately classifying — let alone developing strategies for — their work relationships. At most, they might categorize co-workers as friends, foes and neutrals, but that view is far too simplistic, leading to bad misjudgments and costly mistakes. Instead, we have found that work relationships can be defined along one of two continuums: unconditional and conditional, each requiring a different set of strategies.
Unconditional Relationships
Relationships that are independent of situation and context are called “unconditional.” At one end of this spectrum are friends; at the other end are enemies. In the... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
Get a premium subscription today to read this and all MIT Sloan Managmeent Review articles.
More Info.
Buy this article. Purchase one or more copies of this article as a PDF.
Subscribe today to read the most recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
Upgrade to premium
Current Subscribers: Do you subscribe to MIT Sloan Management Review? Register for online access.
- Register for free access to recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
- Subscribe and read articles from the past three years online.
- Premium subscription—access to the entire archive of articles.
