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Can You Do Business With Someone You Don't Like?
How personal feelings, trust, communication, and professionalism influence business relationships
Welcome to The Smarter Brain, a curation of thought-provoking ideas and actionable reads to help you build better habits and become more productive.
Happy reading - See you on Wednesday!
Cheers,
The Smarter Brain Team
Estimated Reading Time: 2 mins
3 Ideas for Better Habits
People vs. Problems
Roger Fisher was a Harvard Law School professor and negotiation specialist.
“Separate the people from the problem.”
Know Your Opponent
Sun Tzu was an ancient Chinese military strategist traditionally credited with The Art of War.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
Source: The Art of War
Disagree Without Conflict
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an American lawyer and jurist.
“You can disagree without being disagreeable.”
Source: My Own Words
When Your Insights Are Sharp, Your Visuals Should Match
With 50+ chart types and endless combinations, Pine BI Excel Add-In gives you instant access to beautiful, editable data visuals—without wasting hours designing from scratch. Whether you’re presenting to stakeholders or building dashboards, your charts will finally work as hard as your data.
Productivity Tools and Resources
You Have to Trust Everyone You Work With - Including the Ones You Don't Like
This article It argues that business relationships don't require personal friendship and emphasizes the distinction between liking someone and trusting them professionally.
What to Do When You Have to Work With Someone You Don't Like
Peter Bregman examines what happens when you are expected to collaborate with someone you personally dislike. The article points out that dislike can become reciprocal and interfere with cooperation, making the problem more complicated than simply trying to “ignore” the person.
Team Collaboration
Miro is a collaborative workspace where teams can work on shared boards, workshops, planning, diagrams, and projects. It can be useful when two people don't have much personal chemistry because it gives them a shared task structure to focus on.
Better Meetings
Fellow is an AI meeting assistant that helps teams create agendas, record and summarize meetings, identify decisions, and track action items. That can help keep difficult professional interactions focused on what was agreed and what needs to happen next, rather than personal friction.
What We're Reading
Workplace Newsletter - Liz Kislik’s monthly newsletter focuses on workplace relationships, interpersonal conflict, leadership, and resolving difficult situations without damaging the business relationship.
Relational Intelligence at Work Newsletter - This newsletter focuses specifically on understanding people, building stronger professional relationships, leadership, and improving how people work together. It has more than 250,000 readers.
Brain Food
Today I Learned: A 2025 study of 506 managers/senior managers in Australian SMEs found that personal conflict did not necessarily destroy the wider interorganizational relationship. However, personal conflict was associated with greater reliance on formal contracts, suggesting that when interpersonal trust is weaker, businesses may rely more heavily on formal safeguards. (Source)
Science: A large meta-analysis combining 112 independent studies and 7,763 teams found that trust within teams was positively associated with team performance. The relationship remained after accounting for other factors such as trust in the leader and previous team performance. (Source)
Have a productive rest of your week,
The Smarter Brain Team
Resource Spotlight
Managing People You Don't Like, Bias, and the Power of Difference
Monthly dispatches rooted in leadership psychology, not “culture fit” clichés-this one's about one of the hardest parts of management: working effectively with people you simply don't click with. Explore how personal preferences can quietly influence hiring, promotions, feedback, and everyday interactions-and why someone you don't naturally like may still be exactly the kind of person your team needs.
Making Money, Building Skills, and the Path to Financial Freedom
Monthly dispatches rooted in practical personal finance, not get-rich-quick promises-this one's about understanding how people actually build their way from earning their first paycheck to creating greater financial freedom. Explore a five-level framework that moves from trading time for money to developing valuable skills, selling specialized services, building larger offers, and eventually scaling through teams, outsourcing, and automation.
Trust Your Gut, Build the Right Team, and Play the Long Game
Monthly dispatches rooted in leadership experience, not textbook theory-this one's about the lessons successful CEOs wish they had understood earlier. Explore a collection of advice spanning instinct, team-building, resilience, patience, authenticity, strategic direction, and the discipline to keep moving when progress feels slow.
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