How to Work With Anyone - by Deb Liu - Perspectives

Early in your career, you can usually move teams if a relationship is not working. But as you become more senior, those choices vanish. Once you are in an N-of-one role or join a board, you do not get to choose your investors, board members, or C-suite peers. The group narrows, and your control over who you work with becomes nonexistent. At that point, the ability to make it work becomes existential - if you cannot succeed there, there is nowhere else to go.

Most difficult relationships are not about bad people. They are about rational actors responding to pressures and fears you cannot see from the outside. One example from the piece: someone seemed actively hostile until the author learned they had been passed over for promotion specifically because of a poor working relationship with the author's team. From their perspective, the author's team was not a collaborator but an obstacle to their next step. Once that became clear, the approach shifted from managing conflict to saying "Let's get you there together" and having an honest conversation about mutual success. The relationship changed immediately - not because anyone changed their personality, but because incentives finally aligned.

The practical tactics are straightforward but powerful. Start by understanding what people value - what are they trying to accomplish, how are they measured, where do they want to go next. Find common ground, even if it seems small - shared university, same hometown, kids the same age. These details shift someone from abstract counterpart to familiar person standing on common ground. Make other people look good, and be specific about it. When one team hit a major milestone, they celebrated internally but failed to thank the platform teams whose work made it possible. Those teams did not see the success as theirs because no one made that connection explicit. The next time, they included those teams in the celebration and publicly acknowledged their contributions. The difference in engagement was immediate.

Credit is infinitely divisible and praise costs nothing. But the deeper insight is about posture. When people sit across from each other, they fall into debate mode. When they sit at an angle, they have a conversation. When they sit on the same side, they are looking at the future together. The same dynamic exists emotionally - if people feel they are across from you, they prepare to defend. If they feel you are beside them, they begin to build. As your career progresses, technical excellence becomes table stakes. The ability to work with almost anyone quietly becomes one of the most decisive skills you can develop.