In the last month, two of my clients have worked on a similar issue - how to maintain (or even develop) a good working relationship with their colleagues at peer or more senior level within the organisation when their roles occasionally bring them into conflict.
In both cases, we explored using a "two-chair" approach (ie looking at the relationship by sitting in each person's chair and also observing both chairs from an objective viewpoint). What emerged (in each case) was that my client was keeping back their true position (thoughts and emotions) because they felt to express them would be "inappropriate to our roles in the organisation". But as a consequence the other party was not seeing them as a person at all, and was responding in kind. So my clients' frustration that the other people could not see that they were good guys just doing their job was not surprising. These were meetings of roles, not people!
The moral of the story is that if you want people to see you, you have to show yourself and recognise any relationship has to be personal. Yet how often do we, particularly when we try to be "professional", act as if we are the job and hide behind our roles?
