Dream project with a challenging partner
March 2, 2018 10:11 PM Subscribe
I was assigned to lead my dream project. I need to collaborate with a partner company, and unfortunately we have creative differences. I find their behavior disrespectful. How do I improve the working relationship, so that I can enjoy this project?
Imagine that I work at a company that makes music-related websites. I'm a longtime fan of a popular band. I recently took over as leader of a team making a state-of-the-art website for this band's new music. Because I love this band so much, I am thrilled. It's a dream come true to work with this band's music.
But we need to collaborate every day with a team at Company X, who owns certain rights to the band's music. The contract specifies it's a joint collaboration, and we and X would decide together on how to present the music and video footage on the website.
My team has experience making new & interesting award-winning music websites. We have many ideas. The team at Company X is accustomed to vanilla websites for an older audience, which are more suitable for a bank than modern-day music.
X gave us a long specification for a vanilla-looking website. Before I took over the team, my predecessor (the previous team leader) tried to present a more modern design, but the team at X refused to listen to him. So he backed down and started following their specification.
When I took over the project, the whole team grumbled daily about the boring website and how it's going to be ridiculed by the band's fans. I agreed. I politely stated our case to X a couple times, and they got defensive and angry. After getting nowhere, I escalated to management. My management agreed with me, and got X to capitulate to changing the website. Now we're in the process of changing it, and my whole team thinks the chance of success is much higher.
The problem is that X's team leader now treats us with open disdain. He tries to catch my team in mistakes, which he then magnifies and calls out with a harsh tone in public. When I see him at meetings, he stops smiling when he sees me, and gives me the cold shoulder. He makes passive-aggressive comments criticizing us any time that my team doesn't know the answer to a question or if there's any small miscommunication.
I want to improve our working relationship. We both want this website to succeed. If it succeeds, team X is going to get bonuses. It feels crummy to get icy stares and rude body language every day. How do I get them to be more collaborative and positive toward us?
Imagine that I work at a company that makes music-related websites. I'm a longtime fan of a popular band. I recently took over as leader of a team making a state-of-the-art website for this band's new music. Because I love this band so much, I am thrilled. It's a dream come true to work with this band's music.
But we need to collaborate every day with a team at Company X, who owns certain rights to the band's music. The contract specifies it's a joint collaboration, and we and X would decide together on how to present the music and video footage on the website.
My team has experience making new & interesting award-winning music websites. We have many ideas. The team at Company X is accustomed to vanilla websites for an older audience, which are more suitable for a bank than modern-day music.
X gave us a long specification for a vanilla-looking website. Before I took over the team, my predecessor (the previous team leader) tried to present a more modern design, but the team at X refused to listen to him. So he backed down and started following their specification.
When I took over the project, the whole team grumbled daily about the boring website and how it's going to be ridiculed by the band's fans. I agreed. I politely stated our case to X a couple times, and they got defensive and angry. After getting nowhere, I escalated to management. My management agreed with me, and got X to capitulate to changing the website. Now we're in the process of changing it, and my whole team thinks the chance of success is much higher.
The problem is that X's team leader now treats us with open disdain. He tries to catch my team in mistakes, which he then magnifies and calls out with a harsh tone in public. When I see him at meetings, he stops smiling when he sees me, and gives me the cold shoulder. He makes passive-aggressive comments criticizing us any time that my team doesn't know the answer to a question or if there's any small miscommunication.
I want to improve our working relationship. We both want this website to succeed. If it succeeds, team X is going to get bonuses. It feels crummy to get icy stares and rude body language every day. How do I get them to be more collaborative and positive toward us?
Is it just the team lead who's being a jerk? I'd aim for a sort of flawless professionalism and victor's good grace toward the lead ("yes, good point on nitpick X", "you're right there's a mistake there, Alex will have a fix for that by Monday") and look for more reasonable collaborators among the team members.
(The team lead sounds extremely unprofessional, which makes it seem like this is about personality and petty power plays rather than any actual issues with your design. That said, it's possible to imagine a situation where the other team's perspective is something like "we make solid, functional websites following solid UX principles and here these young know-it-alls want to replace that with flashy animations and gimmicks that reduce usability!" Despite the lead's unprofessionalism, keep an eye out in case there actually is something good the other team can bring to your design, or positive aspects of their approach that your design retains.)
posted by trig at 12:09 AM on March 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
(The team lead sounds extremely unprofessional, which makes it seem like this is about personality and petty power plays rather than any actual issues with your design. That said, it's possible to imagine a situation where the other team's perspective is something like "we make solid, functional websites following solid UX principles and here these young know-it-alls want to replace that with flashy animations and gimmicks that reduce usability!" Despite the lead's unprofessionalism, keep an eye out in case there actually is something good the other team can bring to your design, or positive aspects of their approach that your design retains.)
posted by trig at 12:09 AM on March 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
This is the professional version of “you can be right, or you can be happy.” You chose right which sounds like a good choice.
I recommend relentless good cheer. (Sometimes I think of it as weaponized cheer.) if you’re in the area, you could try inviting the other team for a milestone celebration and be sure to give a toast outlining the incredible dedication and hard work of the other team.
It sucks to have to play this game for sure.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:03 AM on March 3, 2018 [5 favorites]
I recommend relentless good cheer. (Sometimes I think of it as weaponized cheer.) if you’re in the area, you could try inviting the other team for a milestone celebration and be sure to give a toast outlining the incredible dedication and hard work of the other team.
It sucks to have to play this game for sure.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:03 AM on March 3, 2018 [5 favorites]
Another technique is to label it every time he does something hostile, and announce, "Poor Xteam Leader is still upset about the changes," - basically rub his face in it, patiently being "comforting". This will probably blow up in your face and increase the hostility level until it is impossible for everyone to work together, but if the hostility has already made things impossible you have nothing to lose, and you can actually use this technique with some compassion. He is still upset, so alternating with asking project participants to cut him some slack for bad behaviour, and calling out his behaviour might shame or frustrate him into stopping. It probably won't. It is more honest than pretending that he is still working with you in good faith instead of letting his anger mess things up, but it is also manipulative and likely to be seen that way.
Since this fellow has already revealed himself to be incompetent and un-professional, you could try building your relationships with all the other members of his team, and isolating him. It may be that his dominance and aggression has made things difficult for them so they do not feel loyalty to him, and would be quite willing to work in a peer-to-peer collaboration with you and not follow his lead. However they are much more likely to be supportive of him and stifling hostility to you and your team, either because they think he is in the right, or because they have to work with him will prefer to back him up in the interests of keeping their working environment with him in it livable. For you working with him and them is temporary.
Also, they probably preferred the website the way they were already doing it because it was the least amount of work for them - so his team is likely resistant even without his nastiness, because they just wanna get the website up; their goal is not best-website-for-fans, but best-website-for-development-team-manager. This often happens, that companies produce products worse and worse for the consumer while keeping their managers happy with lower production cost and time. They are not competing with other websites because only company X owns the rights to the music they are putting up, so they have no competition and no need to please the fans. Who cares about the fans? Either they come to this website or they have don't get the music.
So then a mixture of techniques may mitigate things - privately warn your own team that he is being rough to work with and that you have their backs if he gets hostile - that if they make a mistake and he calls them out on it, you regard that as him behaving badly, and assume that a certain number of mistakes are part of the process of developing a good product, but that in the interests of not making things worse, they should at the moment absorb his hostility meekly, and then if they need to vent, come complain to you, where you will be sympathetic. You can even go so far as to throw some small distractions at him, so that he can attack the decoys. It is a lot less unsettling for the team if you can steer him into expressing his hostility in predictable locations at predictable times.
The big question is how long do you have to work with this guy? If it is just another six weeks, then just rolling with it and making eye contact with each other when he acts badly is your best bet. Consider that their team leader uses the technique of refusing to listen - so you may need to refuse to listen to him. Let him say what he wants and then go and do what was agreed on to the best of your ability. Try to limit the amount of time he can spend being nasty to members of your team. If he is e-mailing the members of your team and his messages are disturbing them, then instruct them not to open his e-mails until a specific time and to always forward them to you. Your team can be too busy to see him casually, so arrange to only see him during time limited meetings - say a twelve to one lunch meeting in the board room, and the members of your team have another meeting without him starting at one. Then you can control the atmosphere at the meeting, to make it much lighter and more relaxed, if you can control the agenda - throw everything at him that he you think he might rant at, so that he has a full chance to scold mistakes and put down things that are not his aesthetic choice. Encourage him to express his annoyance, while your team all sits there smiling, nodding agreeably and munching on muffins. Make him feel heard. "I'm glad you brought that up." Try to find anything in his complaints that you can work with later and change as a concession to him, that won't make the website worse. The other things that he can't change and isn't willing to let go of can be dealt with when they come up outside of the meeting by making your voice more gentle and either reminding him that he already said this at the meeting and why is he bringing it up again when it is all settled, or suggesting that they are such an important concern that they should be addressed at another formal meeting, not right now. The main thing is to see if you can steer his hostile times to limited and predictable places.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:48 AM on March 3, 2018 [1 favorite]
Since this fellow has already revealed himself to be incompetent and un-professional, you could try building your relationships with all the other members of his team, and isolating him. It may be that his dominance and aggression has made things difficult for them so they do not feel loyalty to him, and would be quite willing to work in a peer-to-peer collaboration with you and not follow his lead. However they are much more likely to be supportive of him and stifling hostility to you and your team, either because they think he is in the right, or because they have to work with him will prefer to back him up in the interests of keeping their working environment with him in it livable. For you working with him and them is temporary.
Also, they probably preferred the website the way they were already doing it because it was the least amount of work for them - so his team is likely resistant even without his nastiness, because they just wanna get the website up; their goal is not best-website-for-fans, but best-website-for-development-team-manager. This often happens, that companies produce products worse and worse for the consumer while keeping their managers happy with lower production cost and time. They are not competing with other websites because only company X owns the rights to the music they are putting up, so they have no competition and no need to please the fans. Who cares about the fans? Either they come to this website or they have don't get the music.
So then a mixture of techniques may mitigate things - privately warn your own team that he is being rough to work with and that you have their backs if he gets hostile - that if they make a mistake and he calls them out on it, you regard that as him behaving badly, and assume that a certain number of mistakes are part of the process of developing a good product, but that in the interests of not making things worse, they should at the moment absorb his hostility meekly, and then if they need to vent, come complain to you, where you will be sympathetic. You can even go so far as to throw some small distractions at him, so that he can attack the decoys. It is a lot less unsettling for the team if you can steer him into expressing his hostility in predictable locations at predictable times.
The big question is how long do you have to work with this guy? If it is just another six weeks, then just rolling with it and making eye contact with each other when he acts badly is your best bet. Consider that their team leader uses the technique of refusing to listen - so you may need to refuse to listen to him. Let him say what he wants and then go and do what was agreed on to the best of your ability. Try to limit the amount of time he can spend being nasty to members of your team. If he is e-mailing the members of your team and his messages are disturbing them, then instruct them not to open his e-mails until a specific time and to always forward them to you. Your team can be too busy to see him casually, so arrange to only see him during time limited meetings - say a twelve to one lunch meeting in the board room, and the members of your team have another meeting without him starting at one. Then you can control the atmosphere at the meeting, to make it much lighter and more relaxed, if you can control the agenda - throw everything at him that he you think he might rant at, so that he has a full chance to scold mistakes and put down things that are not his aesthetic choice. Encourage him to express his annoyance, while your team all sits there smiling, nodding agreeably and munching on muffins. Make him feel heard. "I'm glad you brought that up." Try to find anything in his complaints that you can work with later and change as a concession to him, that won't make the website worse. The other things that he can't change and isn't willing to let go of can be dealt with when they come up outside of the meeting by making your voice more gentle and either reminding him that he already said this at the meeting and why is he bringing it up again when it is all settled, or suggesting that they are such an important concern that they should be addressed at another formal meeting, not right now. The main thing is to see if you can steer his hostile times to limited and predictable places.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:48 AM on March 3, 2018 [1 favorite]
"Another technique is to label it every time he does something hostile, and announce, "Poor Xteam Leader is still upset about the changes," - basically rub his face in it, patiently being "comforting". This will probably blow up in your face and increase the hostility level until it is impossible for everyone to work together, but if the hostility has already made things impossible you have nothing to lose, and you can actually use this technique with some compassion."
Really, really don't recommend this... But agree with what warriorqueen said.. I think that's about all you can do in this situation :( Hang in there, you can produce a good product and then move on with your life!! It won't last forever!
posted by dubhemerak3000 at 8:44 AM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
Really, really don't recommend this... But agree with what warriorqueen said.. I think that's about all you can do in this situation :( Hang in there, you can produce a good product and then move on with your life!! It won't last forever!
posted by dubhemerak3000 at 8:44 AM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
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Good on you for agitating for your team's creativity.
The problem is that X's team leader now treats us with open disdain.
Yeah. That's the cost of winning the previous battle. He's making you pay for getting your way.
I want to improve our working relationship. ... How do I get them to be more collaborative and positive toward us?
You can't. And trying may even aggravate their disdain. Just be glad for getting your way in creative design and continue to behave professionally. Ignore their rudeness and grind them down with confident kindness.
posted by Thella at 10:39 PM on March 2, 2018 [8 favorites]