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You know your business needs to change, but you’re caught in the emotional and relational dynamics that are holding you back. Welcome to Noble Metal, the podcast that helps you forge a new kind of leadership. Host Phillip Weiss, a seasoned executive coach and organizational consultant, reveals how to become a more resilient, deliberate, and less-anxious leader.
Through powerful insights based on Bowen Theory and systems thinking, you’ll learn to navigate complex workplace relationships, manage challenging strategic issues, and lead your team to sustainable change. Get the clarity and tools you need to forge a new path for your business.
Ep18
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Series Setup
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[00:00:00]
Phillip Weiss: Welcome to Noble Metal, where we explore leadership ~in--~ at work and in life through the lens of Bowen family systems theory. Two episodes ago, I kicked off a little four-part series. The broad title and the broad concept in the first episode is titled Relationship Quality. ~I~ I think that's a phrase we don't think about a lot, but I love it.
I like thinking about that. What is the [00:01:00] quality of my relationships? So then the next episode, we talked about leading upward, thinking out of, of it mostly from a work perspective. What is it, that dynamic with my boss? Today, we are gonna explore the peer dynamic, and then in the last one, the fourth one, we'll take a look at that sort of classic relationship of boss managing down to direct reports.
But before I go any further, I wanna ask these questions: how do you want to be in important relationships? Maybe a little more pointed, who do you want to be in these important relationships? ~As O-~ as Oscar Wilde put it, it's not so much what we do as who we become.
I love that, and I think there's a lot to be said in terms of the relationship dynamic.
Why Peers Matter
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Phillip Weiss: So as I think about important work relationships, I think these peer [00:02:00] relationships can be some of the most impactful and candidly, most challenging relationships we encounter. So today, specifically, we're gonna think about those who work with us shoulder to shoulder.
Not your boss, not your direct reports, but your peers, those people sitting next to you and fighting basically the same fires as you. And I want to be really specific about the angle today because I think it matters. This isn't an episode about how to build a great team in some abstract org chart sense.
This is about you. It's about how you individually are showing up, as I like to say, in relationship to each of those people around you. ~Not, you know,~ it's not like, is the team collaborative? We'll get to that at some point, but what does productive collaboration look like from you? What are you doing to make it work?
So in a sense today, every question, every concept~ is a, is like, is about a... ~it's basically a [00:03:00] mirror, you looking at yourself.
A Defining Question
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Phillip Weiss: So let's get into it I will never forget, way back in the day, mid-'90s, dating myself,- I had joined Continental Airlines, and one of my roles was working with the corporate leaders, headquarters leaders, and was having a conversation with one of them one day.
That person asked me, "Philip, so~ what do you-- which re-~ which relationship dynamic do you think is most important for your success on the job? Do you think it's your relationship to your boss, your peers, or your direct reports?" I'm almost certain that I answered boss because that was probably the most important dynamic for me at the time.
Most challenging maybe at the time. But I never forgot that question and that conversation because for, for this person, they said, "You know, for me, I think the most important relationship is my peer dynamic. ~That ~those peer encounters." Never forgot that. So why would peer relationships matter so much at work?
I mean, you don't... You're not reporting to them. They don't [00:04:00] report to you. There's no formal, ~formal ~power dynamic. So why does it matter how you personally show up with the person in the next office?
A lot of work happens in the space between the org chart lines, and you are one half of every single one of those connections. ~So the arch--~ the org chart tells us who you report to, but it doesn't tell whether you're the person who actually follows through or if you're the one who covers for a teammate when something maybe drops.
In a sense, these are all individual choices you make relationship by relationship, and I think they add up It bodes the question really, what is it like to be on the other end of a peer relationship with you? Think about your own week for just a second here. How much of what you actually got done happened because you personally showed up well for a peer or because they showed up well for you?
The quick favor, the heads up for a meeting, [00:05:00] the, "Hey, can you take a look at this before I send it out?" message. Most of us, I think if we're honest, get more real-time support from our peers than ~from anybody else--~ from anybody above us. Which means the quality of your work and your work life is to a huge degree downstream of how you personally treat these people beside you and how they are treating you Now, here's a point that I've come to believe pretty strongly when it comes to peer dynamics.
Peers Shape Reputation
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Phillip Weiss: I think that how you show up with your peers matters more the higher up you go on the corporate ladder. Not less, but more. Here's the logic. When you're early in your career, your manager sees your work directly. They're often in the room. They watch you, they read your emails, they see things that you've built and done.
But the more senior you get, the less true that becomes.
Senior leaders are, in a sense, managing so much surface area that they genuinely can't see most of what their direct reports are actually doing day to day. So what do they [00:06:00] rely on instead? In Bowen speak, they rely on triangles. They rely on what other trusted people say about you.
Executive Triangle Story
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Phillip Weiss: So let me tell you a story that illustrates this.
There's a company where two senior VPs we'll call them Executive A and Executive B, were technically peers. Same level, different functions, both reporting to a CEO. For a while, things were fine, but over time, Executive A ~led--~ let a little bit of rivalry creep in. Nothing dramatic, no blowups, just a slow sort of accumulation of things.
A missed handoff here, a little sort of credit-taking in a meeting there, a passive-aggressive comment here and there. None of it was really a policy de-decision, but it was just how Executive A chose to show up one interaction at a time. So then ~one, you know, ~one day, fast-forward, executive A is in a one-on-one with the CEO and sort of in passing drops a comment about executive B, something like, ~"Hey, I don't, ~I don't know, but I've had some trouble getting a straight ~an-~ answer [00:07:00] from that team lately."
Nothing career-ending, but just a small offhand thing But I would say it was~ was a choice.~ the choice to let a private frustration, in essence, start to leak sideways into someone else's standing instead of picking up the phone or going into Executive B's office directly. Here's the thing. The CEO doesn't have the bandwidth to independently verify what Executive A just said.
He or she can't shadow Executive B for a week to check. So the comment just sits there. It becomes a data point. And if it happens again from the same person or a different peer, or in a different meeting three months later, now it's a pattern in the CEO's head, even though nobody ever sat down and formally really evaluated B's performance.
That's collateral damage, and it traces back to one person's individual habit, in this case, of managing by frustration, by venting [00:08:00] sideways, letting something slip instead of addressing it directly with the person it actually concerned. I would argue that what Executive A did without ever naming it that way was they triangled the CEO into attention that actually belonged between the two peers.
That's the pattern. Two people avoid a direct conversation, and the anxiety doesn't disappear. It just finds a third person to move through. It's one of the most common ways I think peer tension actually travels in organizations sideways through somebody else instead of straight across or direct. So hold on to that.
We're going to come back to it here in a bit.
Choose Higher Ground
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Phillip Weiss: But before we leave these two executives, let's flip this story around. This could have been an opportunity for higher ground. Think about if Executive A had instead handled the friction directly with Executive B. A real conversation, so some, no doubt, some discomfort, but potential resolution.
Then when that executive talks to the [00:09:00] CEO, what comes out instead is something like, "Honestly, working with that team, you know, has been really solid, has been really good this year." It's not politics. That's just what happens, I think, when you personally choose to deal with tension instead of exporting it to somebody else ~Remember Senior E- Se- ~Remember, Senior leaders often build their picture of the organization largely through what individual peers say about each other in unguarded moments.
You can't control what your peers say about you, but I believe you have enormous influence over it one interaction at a time with them if how you personally show up with your peers carries that much weight, the natural next question is: What does showing up well actually look like moment to moment?
Teamwork As Habits
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Phillip Weiss: Of course, there are a lot of ways we could go with this, but I would propose that the question on the table here really might be: What [00:10:00] does it mean to be a really good team player? We're gonna explore this more in other episodes, but I wanna start here. And I don't mean teamwork as some sort of collective trait ~that,~ that a group either has or maybe doesn't have.
Today, I am meaning teamwork as a set of individual habits, , things you do or don't do in each relationship that you're part of. So two concepts that I wanna hit on now from Bowen theory that I believe really matter in the peer dynamic are, first of all, connectedness and integration and triangles.
And I'm especially drawing from some work Dan Paparo did in twenty eighteen on assessing family and team effectiveness.
Connectedness In Practice
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Phillip Weiss: So let's start with this idea of connectedness and interaction.
I wanna start with anot-another story from my HR past. Two very senior executives ~uh, in--~ that were making huge impacts on the organization in their different functional areas. So you had two really nice [00:11:00] guys. I mean, genuinely, I, I liked them both very much as people, but they could not make it work. They could not get along. It got so bad that they were not even speaking to each other. So I wanna pose a question. To what degree do you think people in their organizations sense this, or even the rest of the organization?
~I-- ~If you're thinking like I, I experienced anyway, the answer is absolutely. You can think of the power of that system and for those anxious reactive behaviors to ripple through like crazy. It had a huge negative impact with ultimately one of them leaving the organization So Paparo notes that connectness-- connectedness and integration at the team level is that ability to maintain, ultimately, open one-to-one relationships.
That ability, I would say, to stay in the kitchen, to stay in contact even when the heat gets up in the kitchen. [00:12:00] In a sense, connectedness isn't something that happens to you, it is something you do. It's that checking in, following up, not letting silence stretch in- into weeks with somebody who matters to you on the job.
I think it's also tolerance for differences that Paparo notes. Can people disagree with you and still feel, for lack of a better way of saying, saying it, can they still feel fully welcome or even included? That trait alone either draws people toward you or quietly teaches them to keep their distance
So here's a- another illustration. Two product leads had built their relationship almost entirely over Slack. It's fast, efficient, it's all-- it's, you know, it's like all business. It was working until a tense launch went sideways, and it collapsed into something cold within, like, two days. In all of this time before, neither one had built any reserve of connection to draw [00:13:00] on when things hit the fan.
When one finally picked up the phone instead of typing another message, it actually began to resolve. That personal touch, that personal connection that we often lose. And it's-- what's interesting, I do a lot of work with technically oriented leaders, people who are trained as either engineers or otherwise, and this, this tendency toward distancing and leveraging technology for communication, when in fact picking up that phone or walking into that person's office is probably going to have much, much more of an impact
One more thing I want to say before we move on here is that how you handle tension, and Dan speaks of this as well ~as a,~ as a high watermark of family or team functioning, is tension management. How we handle tension in the moment matters. Attacking, defending, secrecy. I could, I could probably do a whole episode on just [00:14:00] how peers keep secrets from each other or retreating.
All of these are common under pressure. None of it is useful. None. But that's not unique to peers.
Tension And Triangles
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Phillip Weiss: So let's turn to a pattern that I think is potentially more peer-specific, and that's triang-triangles. I think this is one of the most helpful concepts from Bowen, is this idea that two people in a relationship, you know, okay, as long as there's not much stress.
But as soon as any kind of stress enters the scene between these two, one or both of them will reach out to a third. It could be any-anyone. It could be a boss, a peer, a friend, a spouse, HR, an attorney. Somebody's reaching out to a third party So remember that executive story, A and B?
That was a triangle. Two peers had unresolved tension ultimately, and instead of it staying between them, it moved to their shared boss. [00:15:00] So here's the pattern. When tension shows up between you and a peer, ~it, again, ~it rarely just sits there. ~It looks for s-- ~It's almost like it's looking for somewhere to go.
I never really thought about this, but it's sort of like water rolling downhill. It kind of has to settle somewhere. In this case, a shared manager, like I said, a mu- a mutual colleague Bowen's insight is that this isn't random. ~It, it's,~ it's natural to rope in this third because three in a way feels more stable than two intention.
And here's what's interesting. It's rarely a conscious strategy, but it just feels safer in a way. And it's-- there's something about our humanness where I kinda wanna just go vent and gossip or whatever the word is to a third. It feels safer, it feels better to do that than having the direct conversation would because the direct conversation, you know, has, ~uh, ~is sort of fraught with danger So the point is fairly simple here, and I think you can check yourself against it.
I [00:16:00] mean, think about a given peer dynamic right now. Are you talking to them or are you talking about them to somebody else? Again, that second one, talking to somebody else, it's just ~f-~ it's lower risk. But at the end of the day, it almost never is. It just kind of relocates or sort of redistributes in a way the risk onto whoever you triangled in.
I sometimes refer to it as anxiety dumping. I have dumped my, my anxiousness onto somebody else.
So it, it feels lower risk, but it almost never is. It just relocates or redistributes the risk. It redistributes it onto whoever you triangled in and onto the relationship, the whole relationship dynamic itself, which now has essentially this unresolved dynamic sitting in it And I think it's how peer conflict quietly becomes everybody's problem but the two people who actually own [00:17:00] it Something to think about, and I'm gonna give you a few more thoughts to think about
Sports Team Lesson
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Phillip Weiss: so as we move to a wrap, I wanna share what I think is really a powerful story from the world of sports. Right now, ~as, uh, ~as I'm speaking to you, we're in the middle of the World Cup and looking forward to the finals between Argentina and Spain. So I think a sports analogy is really good.
This story is drawing from the 1980 Olympics. Herb Brooks was assembling the U.S. hockey team from college all-stars. These individual players were used to being the best player on their team. They were used to carrying the games on their own individual skill. They were the stars. In an early exhibition game, though, one of his most talented players single-handedly beat three defenders by himself.
The coach, Brooks, benched him on the spot. His point wasn't that the goal was bad hockey, it was that it reinforced the wrong [00:18:00] instinct that the coach was trying to build. He wasn't building a team of individual stars. He was building a system where players moved the puck, read each other, and covered for one another automatically.
And he famously told them, quote, "The name on the front of the jersey is a lot more important than the one on the back." Unquote. That team of college guys went on to beat the Soviet Union, widely considered to be the best hockey team ever assembled, because the Soviets played as one connected unit, and Brooks knew that the only way to beat that was to out-connect them, not out-talent them
Differentiation With Peers
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Phillip Weiss: So where does differentiation of self come into play here? This is always top of mind, should always be top of mind when thinking Bowen theory. Differentiation, simply stated, is, is about clarity for yourself, [00:19:00] what you believe or don't believe, what you'll do or not do, what you'll say or not say in any situation.
~And in my opin- ~in my opinion, it's always in play with peers. It's in play with all ~re-~ key relationships, no doubt, but I think the stakes can get really high with the peers. So let me pose some questions. Can you be a solid team player and still be true to yourself? When you take a position that differs from a peer or you compromise for the sake of the team, is something of yours lost?
Weekly Peer Assignment
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Phillip Weiss: So as we wrap up, I want to leave you with an assignment. First, pick a specific peer right now and ask, how connected are you to that person? Real regular contact, or has it kind of gone dormant? What would it cost you maybe to reach out this week? Probably be a lot less than you think [00:20:00] Secondly, is there something you've been sitting on with a peer because saying it felt like more trouble than it was probably worth or than you think it's worth?
What has that silence actually been costing the relationship? Third, think of a peer relationship with unresolved tension right now. Have you been talking to the person or have you been talking about them to somebody else? Fourth, the next time tension shows up with a peer, can you catch it early enough to notice it before it starts automatically running the interaction for you?
Can you be more deliberate in that moment? Big, broad ask, I understand. But that challenge of noticing, can you see it? And lastly or fifthly, think of a recent team decision where you went along with it. Did you actually agree? I mean, based on principle, or did you just not want to be part of the [00:21:00] friction?
Is there a decision on the table right now where the honest thing is to say something different than where the group is going? Lastly, in your peer relationships this week, were you looking to take the shot or were you looking for an open teammate to deliver the ball or the puck?
Neither answer is a life sentence, but it's worth knowing which one is true right now. Because I can assure you, the people beside you already know the answer. They know where your head's at, whether you've asked them or not.
Closing Thanks
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Phillip Weiss: That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you've enjoyed this, please leave a review or refer the podcast on to somebody who might benefit.
I'll see you next time on Noble Metal.