How Leaders Can Repair Strained Reporting Relationships
Updated: Sep 22
Kate Zappitelli is an executive team alignment expert and ICF-accredited coach. As Chair of the Alignment Institute powered by Karrikins Group, she helps leaders and leadership teams turn agreement into alignment so strategy becomes action.
When I start coaching a new client, I often learn that one of their direct reporting relationships is strained. It can be someone they report to, or it can be someone who reports to them. Either way, the cost of unhealthy reporting relationships is high. It impacts morale, culture, progress on shared goals, and, in the worst cases, can stall a company’s growth or drive people to leave the organization.
Reporting relationships can be hard to navigate. Positional power influences the way people react and respond to each other. Management and communication styles differ. Expectations are not necessarily clarified and reinforced. Assumptions are not openly expressed. In some cases, trust has been broken, and there is an undercurrent of resentment or frustration that hasn’t been dealt with directly.
In most cases, managers and their direct reports don’t spend time talking about how they want to work together. Instead, they often get increasingly frustrated, lash out at each other over email, avoid each other, or tell other people how bad the relationship is.
Avoiding these conversations is understandable. It can be difficult to tell a manager that their communication leaves you feeling dismissed or to tell a direct report that their work is not meeting expectations.
Being intentional and spending time figuring out how to have a productive working relationship is good for people and for the organization. It can be helpful to partner with someone who is neutral and who can facilitate the conversation, but regardless of whether you have support, there are practical ways you can begin improving the relationship.
3 practical ways to improve reporting relationships
1. Define roles and expectations
When I’ve facilitated conversations between managers and their direct reports or between peer leaders who are struggling, I start by asking them what they believe about the roles they play and what they expect from each other.
Roles are defined through a combination of technical job descriptions and “in real life” necessities. Areas of confusion, concern, or friction typically include decision rights, span of control, prioritization, interaction style, routines, and assumptions. Gaining a shared understanding of how roles are defined and experienced is an important first step in clarifying what you expect from each other.
During one conversation about roles, it became clear that the direct report believed their job was to wait for tasks to be assigned, after which they would complete each task exactly as stated and send it back to their manager with full confidence that they were meeting expectations. In contrast, the manager expected the direct report to proactively look for assignments, anticipate the next step, and schedule follow-up conversations with other team members to complete the tasks. Clearly, both people had very different views on what the role entailed, and their unstated assumptions created friction and frustration.
Asking questions such as, “What do you look for in someone who is great at this role? What kind of initiative makes people successful in this role? What can we stop, start, or transition about the role to help us do better together?” can help shift the energy toward a more collaborative experience of working together. Sharing assumptions and expectations is time well spent, and it needs to go both ways, both people need to share their thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions about the role they have and the role the other person has.
2. Identify habits that no longer serve
Not only can roles and expectations be unclear, but bad habits can also hold people back from working together productively. With another client I worked with, the manager and their direct report had a habit of only sending emails back and forth instead of having conversations. This habit led to misinterpretations, email overload, and inefficiencies. The manager spent a lot of time responding to emails that could have been resolved in a 15-minute phone call. This habit was frustrating for the manager and the direct report because they both felt like their time was wasted and that the work was not being accomplished in a timely manner.
Identifying that this habit was blocking productivity helped both people come up with a better solution for their communication. They determined that a weekly check-in call was needed for high-priority projects and that if a topic warranted a conversation, a 15-minute call would be scheduled.
As the direct report, it takes courage to be vulnerable when it may feel like your job is on the line. As the manager, it takes courage to have honest conversations with your direct report when you may feel like their work output is not meeting your expectations. As a leader, it may be challenging to hear feedback that your actions are having a negative impact. When the relationship is strained, both people spend energy managing tension instead of advancing the work. Asking questions such as, “Which recurring interaction creates the most friction? What communication channel, cadence, or meeting norm should we change?” will begin to shift how each person shows up.
Our habits define us. When we can identify the habits that no longer serve us in our working relationships, we can pivot and find new ways of working together.
3. Recognize you have choices
As the saying goes, it takes two to tango. Like any relationship, both people need to be engaged and willing to change how they are showing up for the relationship to improve.
As an individual, you always have choices. You can continue to be frustrated. You can look in the mirror and reflect on how you are showing up and what you need to do differently. You can ask for support from someone who is neutral. You can schedule time with your colleague to directly address the challenge.
Not everyone wants to have these kinds of conversations because it can feel easier to sweep issues under the rug and hope they go away. Often, when issues are avoided, they get bigger. As we like to say at Karrikins Group, ambiguity protects the status quo. When things are left unsaid, change is unlikely. Ask yourself, “What is one behavior I can change this week, regardless of what the other person does?”
Recognizing that you are not a victim of circumstances and that you have choices in how you work with your colleagues requires radical personal accountability for your own actions. Taking control and being motivated to address your challenges directly takes courage and hard work. There is no magic fairy dust, it takes a willingness to share what is holding you back, time to have potentially hard conversations, and the fortitude to show up every day and try again. I know it can be hard, but it is possible to find a path forward together in most cases. It just doesn’t happen because people aren’t willing to have hard conversations, they’d rather be unhappy than take a risk. But when you step into that courageous space, you unlock the potential for yourself and your colleague. If the conversations prove to be unsuccessful, then you know you need to think about changing your situation.
Productive reporting relationships require diligence
Productive reporting relationships do not happen by accident. They are built through clear expectations, intentional habits, and the willingness to address tension before it becomes entrenched.
If one of your key working relationships feels strained, do not wait for the next missed deadline, difficult email, or escalation. Start with one conversation: What do we each need in order to work well together?
If you want a partner to help facilitate a challenging conversation and unlock the full potential of your reporting relationship, I would love to connect. Book a call today.
Read more from Kate Zappitelli
Kate Zappitelli, Alignment Institute Chair & Principal Consultant
Kate Zappitelli helps frustrated leaders who know they can do more, better with their teams if they are aligned to work together. As a Principal at Karrikins Group and Chair of the Alignment Institute, she partners with leaders and leadership teams on alignment, transformation, strategy, and culture. Our proven methodologies and frameworks are grounded in social science, expertise, and first-hand experiences to help teams get unstuck. Our mission is to make 'how' matter.
