> For me, the upside is in coaching and growing talent, or finding the right chemistry to enable work otherwise not possible.
Well then that makes two of us. Watching the junior people grow is among my favorite things. I have seriously considered teaching as a profession though economic incentives are what they are.
It's very refreshing to see such a viewpoint on chemistry. I've never even seen the chemistry be considered in any staffing or team decision (at least openly), or a manager put effort into fixing a broken relationship. It feels like interpersonal chemistry is almost entirely ignored in favor of skill set or basic resource allocation.
For example, I had a coworker I simply could not get along with (and the feeling was mutual). We were on a two person team so all of my work went through that coworker. I told my boss (repeatedly, over the course of most of a year) that I would rather work with anyone else in the company, and I needed to do so at least some because I was getting burned out. His solution was to make that coworker (on our two person team) my boss, since he didn't have time to manage the relationship.
It made sense from a pure resource point of view; the relationship was showing signs of needing managing and not getting it, so by promoting a new manager, that would happen. There were two of us in a somewhat isolated area, and nobody else really had the skill set for that area, so technically we were the best match.
But it totally ignored the people chemistry - the fact that the two of us would argue for hours over the most ridiculous things (quite visibly), and both feared the other's reaction to any work we did. I don't question my coworker's competence, we were simply on opposite ends of ideological extremes on too many things for that to ever have worked. It would have been far better to have me switch roles, split my time, train someone on the skills needed, just about anything else. The actual solution, naturally, felt like a slap to the face.
Well then that makes two of us. Watching the junior people grow is among my favorite things. I have seriously considered teaching as a profession though economic incentives are what they are.
It's very refreshing to see such a viewpoint on chemistry. I've never even seen the chemistry be considered in any staffing or team decision (at least openly), or a manager put effort into fixing a broken relationship. It feels like interpersonal chemistry is almost entirely ignored in favor of skill set or basic resource allocation.
For example, I had a coworker I simply could not get along with (and the feeling was mutual). We were on a two person team so all of my work went through that coworker. I told my boss (repeatedly, over the course of most of a year) that I would rather work with anyone else in the company, and I needed to do so at least some because I was getting burned out. His solution was to make that coworker (on our two person team) my boss, since he didn't have time to manage the relationship.
It made sense from a pure resource point of view; the relationship was showing signs of needing managing and not getting it, so by promoting a new manager, that would happen. There were two of us in a somewhat isolated area, and nobody else really had the skill set for that area, so technically we were the best match.
But it totally ignored the people chemistry - the fact that the two of us would argue for hours over the most ridiculous things (quite visibly), and both feared the other's reaction to any work we did. I don't question my coworker's competence, we were simply on opposite ends of ideological extremes on too many things for that to ever have worked. It would have been far better to have me switch roles, split my time, train someone on the skills needed, just about anything else. The actual solution, naturally, felt like a slap to the face.