Laying the Groundwork
When I started coaching Mike, he was a senior manager with extensive product expertise at a large Fortune 100 company. For the past eighteen months, Mike had been working toward a promotion to director. His leaders gave him great feedback on his work, but the promotion remained out of reach. When Mike approached me about coaching, he was keen to accelerate his progress and land the role he had been working toward.
One of the areas we focused on in coaching was Mike’s relationships with his peers. Mike had one colleague in particular who drove him crazy. Anna was a highly analytical technical leader and frequently opposed Mike directly when he shared his ideas for improving things. They had been locked in a stalemate for months when Mike and I started working together.
In one coaching session, Mike wondered aloud what he could do to make her see his point of view on an organizational redesign. I asked him if he would be open to trying something different and walked him through an exercise I call The Action/Reaction Sequence.
The Action/Reaction Sequence works like this…
Consider a situation where you have been frustrated by another’s unwillingness to change or comply with a request. Now, ask yourself:
What am I feeling?
What am I thinking?
What is at stake for me in this?
Now, consider the other person. Ask yourself:
What might be at stake for them?
What might they be thinking?
What might they be feeling?
After walking through this sequence together, Mike realized his colleague must be feeling some of the same pressures: she probably also wanted to prove herself and demonstrate that she was an expert in her domain. When he realized this, Mike was able to see Anna in a different light. She wasn’t an adversary—like him, she was a person who wanted to get things done. This insight didn’t make the frustration go away, but it did help Mike realize that fighting Anna head-on was unlikely to produce the results he wanted.
In subsequent calls, we worked on a more subtle, patient approach for Mike to build the case for his initiatives with peers. Instead of pitching his ideas in a large forum (and inevitably battling his difficult colleague point for point on the merits of his vision), he started working behind the scenes. Mike would meet with others one-on-one or in small groups and share drafts of his proposals. He would invite feedback and adjust his plans based on what he heard. When it came time to deliver the pitch to Mike’s leaders, he had a much more solid proposal that already had his peers’ backing.
A few months later, Mike got the promotion he wanted. When he shared the good news with me, Mike credited our work together to develop his peer influence skills as a key part of his success.
Retrospectively, it was easy to see why this work had been crucial for Mike in achieving the promotion to the next level. For many leaders, especially in large organizations, the real gap in reaching the senior leadership ranks is not about technical ability—it is using influence to get things done. As Mike practiced and honed these skills throughout our coaching engagement, he demonstrated he could effectively balance multiple perspectives and make decisions for the greater organizational good without burning bridges.
If you’re struggling to see eye-to-eye with a difficult co-worker, give The Action/Reaction Sequence a try. What do you notice? Leave a comment below!
