Back

Work tension resolved!

I wanted to share here a win, that on the surface can seem small, but feels huge to me.

For the past two weeks (hello sprint model) there has been tension between me and another team member who I would describe as my work best friend. I think some of this stress may be coming from the economic climate and pressure to fundraise but regardless, our communication was deteriorating and it was affecting the larger team.

We are both directors on different teams and this past sprint, we have had competing/overlapping projects. I wanted more collaboration and transparency and was getting a lot of pushback and resistance from my coworker. I suggested moving our conversations to public vs. private slack threads which then resulted in less communication overall. I felt like this was leading to poor practices around transparency in data collection and lack of processes. I was so upset about this, my work best friend, now barely talking to me, had really impacted how I approached the work and felt about my job overall.

I brought this up to our CEO in our 1 on 1s, I was terrifed. I thought that being a squeaky wheel could get me fired immeditably (an irrational automatic thought, but hey, honesty). They were not only extremely validating, but they set up a time for us to have a relationship equity meeting. This was basically a time for both of us to share what had been happening. Our CEO mediated, mostly sitting quietly, and sometimes prompted us to share. It was so awkward but ultimately amazing. This led to my co-worker sharing that they felt that I no longer trusted them and their judgment. I didn't realize I had done this. We were both able to see each other's side, own up to our assumptions, apologize, and build ways to avoid this in the future. Our CEO shared that they and the other c-level members have a relationship equity meeting once a week to help address these issues, sometimes there is nothing to discuss, and sometimes there is a lot.

It sounds so small and basic, of just talking to my co-worker and listening to them. Having our boss encourage us to set aside protected time for this because it is really important was huge for me. This is the first time I have had a boss who was so transparent about how not only they handle issues like this but also walked us through and checked in with me after and encouraged us to prioritize this.

Hopefully this post encourages more people to feel comfortable raising issues and for other managers to try a technique and encourage team members to have protected relationship equity time. 💕

This is so amazing to hear and I'm so glad it unfolded it a manner where your CEO created an open space for you to share and hear thoughts! Appreciate you sharing this ❤️
Ohhhh I love this! Congrats to you for stepping into an uncomfortable situation and resolving it. Love the idea of a relationship equity meeting as well!!!
I love this! Curious, for the weekly meeting between the c-suite execs, does your CEO moderate those or are they essentially 1:1s? Were there key check in questions or rituals for each relationship equity check in?
So far there has only been one (yesterday) and it wasn't moderated which may have to be adjusted in the future along with maybe adding in some structure. We had the meeting yesterday, I shared concerns, but they denied any, and last night I got a message over slack outside of work hours about how hard it has been working with me lately which was not brought up in our meeting. I am trying to schedule time again today to address it.
I would love to hear how this goes. I have been dealing with a similar issue at my job and my accomplishments are being diminished to feed the story that I'm "difficult to work with" and I'm also practicing catastrophic thinking. Do you feel you have support from leadership to continue this conversation? Does your leadership value the work you do for your team and adjacent team?