Before You Start Collaborating with Someone, Talk About Your Work Styles
When you’re working with new people, spending time upfront to have an explicit and open conversation about each other’s work styles and preferences can prove to be one of the best time investments. This “style alignment” conversation can lay a foundation for trust and understanding and help you set agreements for how to successfully work together. Yet, many people shy away from having these conversations for two reasons. First, they worry that it will take up too much time. Second, they fear that it might make style differences more obvious and aren’t sure how to bridge those. By having open and deep conversations about style and preferences, something powerful happens. If you better understand where someone is coming from, you don’t just react to their behavior and feel annoyed by making potentially false assumptions about why someone is behaving a certain way. Instead, you can bring more compassion and less reactivity into your work relationships and maybe even preempt work conflict.
After two consecutive reorganizations, my coaching client, Kara, an experienced product group manager, found herself in a new reporting relationship with the chief product officer. Throughout her career, Kara had worked under managers with different leadership styles and, with experience, had gotten a better sense of her own over the years. While she was eager to start with her new boss, she wanted to make sure not to lose some of the unique ways she had been able to share her ideas and gain support for her teams. Kara wondered what she could do to set a strong foundation for a productive work relationship with her manager, how to effectively work together with people who may have different work styles, and reduce the likelihood of misunderstandings right from the beginning.
Like Kara, many of you may also find yourself in such a position. Whether you are a leader or an individual contributor, when you embark on a new collaboration with someone, it makes sense to align around goals, objectives and timelines, roles and responsibilities, expectations, resources, and support. But there’s another key conversation that we often forget.
When working with someone new, it is a good idea to be intentional about first taking time to talk about what’s important to you, what drives you and makes you operate at your best, and then create an open dialogue about how to best work together. When you explicitly talk about each other’s work styles and preferences before diving fully into the work, it is more likely that you will prevent misunderstandings and misalignments down the road. I like to call this type of upfront conversation the “style alignment” or “working-together-effectively” conversation.
Let’s first understand what “style” means. I’ve come to see “style” not just as your communication style and preferences, but as more all-encompassing: your personality and leadership style, your values and work preferences — all of which directly inform how you do the work and interact with others. Talking upfront about “style” should ideally invite an open and authentic reciprocal exchange: “What’s important to each of us in how we partner with each other and work together in order to operate at our best?”
For instance, if your boss shares with you that she values transparency and consistency and works at her best when she feels informed, reassured, and receives adequate info and timely updates, that’s useful information. You as her team member value autonomy, innovation, and change and work best when operating at a fast pace, as this makes you feel motivated and energized.
Now, let’s talk about “alignment.” This requires having an explicit conversation about how you can best interact and work together, and come out of that discussion with a few concrete work-agreements. Let’s go back to the previous example where the manager values transparency and being in-the-known, but you value autonomy and spontaneity. A helpful agreement might be around when and how you check-in with your manager and share updates and changes. The win-win intent is for her to feel informed and reassured, and for you to not feel micromanaged or dampened in your creativity. Clarity and alignment around style will help shape the early interactions and set both sides up for success.
Now that you understand the benefits of having a style alignment conversation, let’s look at how to have one.
A good starting point is to reflect on yourself and your work preferences so that you’ll be able to concisely articulate some key features of your style to others. Here are some reflection questions:
It’s a good idea to give the other person a heads-up so that they can also reflect and prep. Make it an agenda item and allot time for it in your next one-on-one meeting. Share your intention or the objective of this meeting in your request.
In my conversations with Kara, I could see that she felt a bit awkward and wondered how to suggest having an alignment conversation with her new manager. After some thought, she found the right framing for her. Here’s what she planned to say: “Since we’re both settling into our new work relationship, I thought it might be a good idea for us to chat about our work styles and preferences. I’ve found that taking time to align on these things upfront can really help us support each other better. How about we set aside some time in our next one-on-one to have this discussion?”
Start by having each of you share your individual reflections about your values, work preferences, “hot buttons,” etc., and their relevance for your collaboration.
Kara, for example, shared: “I value positivity and encouragement and meeting my ideas with at least some interest, before saying right away we can’t do that. I value that so much that at times I can feel easily discouraged, unless I understand the context and bigger picture of decisions.”
But sharing is just one part of the equation. The other is listening well. Approach this conversation with a genuine curiosity and willingness to learn about the other person.
While this type of open exchange is already helpful by itself and promotes shared understanding, take it one step further. Make your discussion actionable by creating some agreements — say, around communication, information sharing, or decision-making — that will guide your future behavior and create practices for how you want to work together.
Here are some questions that can help you co-create agreements:
In the case of Kara, the conversation helped her and her manager see their style differences more clearly. Her manager, valuing efficiency and doing the right thing, had a more practical, direct style. She focused on what’s not working and what needed to be acted on right away. In contrast, Kara valuing warmth and partnership had a more sociable style and needed to feel connected first and foremost. She was creative, had a sensitivity around feeling appreciated for her ideas and contributions, and not feeling immediately discouraged or shut down.
Together they co-created some agreements that would help prevent frustrations on both sides. They committed to always:
Kara felt relieved and reassured that she’d be able to keep sharing her ideas and gain support in her new reporting relationship.
Agreements are like project plans; they are only helpful if you use them. Live your agreements through your actions, point out when they support you, edit them when needed, and circle back to them in feedback conversations and debriefs.
Although you have hopefully gained more clarity on how to have a style alignment conversation, there are several things that could make you still shy away from having one. Through my experience, I’ve noticed that there are two things that hold people back. First, they worry that these conversations require a ton of upfront time investment. Second, they fear that it might make style differences more obvious and aren’t sure how to bridge those.
Know that style alignment conversations don’t have to take long — 15 or maybe 30 minutes. Of course, if you already have a thousand other things on your to-do-list, you might feel tempted to skip it. Prioritize the importance of building strong relationships and aligning around some meaningful collaboration agreements to lay the foundation for a productive partnership.
Also understand that style differences won’t increase as a result of your conversation. But you will likely be able to see them more clearly. That’s a good thing. By having open and deep conversations about style and preferences, something beautiful and powerful can happen. If you better understand where someone is coming from, you don’t just react to their behavior and feel annoyed by making potentially false assumptions about why someone is behaving a certain way. Instead, you can bring more compassion and less reactivity into your work relationships and maybe even preempt work conflict.
When you still feel yourself avoiding the conversation, reflect on one question and be honest: “Is it really a concern about losing time, or is it discomfort about having such a conversation?” If you realize it’s actually the latter, acknowledge it, and do it anyway. Discomfort shouldn’t be an excuse for having a more personal, vulnerable conversation to align around your styles. Your vulnerability will also enable psychological safety, trust, and openness in your relationships and lead to more productive outcomes.
The next time you start a new collaboration or partnership, remember: Spending time upfront to have an explicit and open conversation about each other’s work styles and preferences proves to be one of the best time investments. This style alignment can lay a foundation for trust and understanding and help you set agreements for how to successfully work together.
Leadership and managing people, Leading teams, Collaboration and teams, Managing people, Digital Article
Anke Thiele
Anke Thiele, MBA, MS Psych., MCC, is an executive coach and leadership consultant who works with senior leaders and their teams. She is the founder of The Human Link, a psychologist and certified meditation teacher, who has taught mindfulness at tech companies including Google for many years. She also works as a team coach and extended faculty at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
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