Nice Work: The power of repair 🛠️

Hi there,

How do you fix a work relationship that’s gone sideways?

This question has come up in a few different coaching calls recently, so I thought I’d write a little bit about it today. And to do that, I want to share a concept I don’t think we talk enough about at work: rupture and repair.

Rupture refers to a rift between two parties—a moment where trust and connection are lost. It’s a term you’ll often find used in couples’ therapy, or conversations about parent-child attachment. But moments of rupture aren’t special, extreme events—they happen all the time: When we say something thoughtless and hurt our partner’s feelings. When a friend finds out we talked about them behind their back. When we show up hot to a meeting and say something snippy to our teammate.

Repair is what happens afterward: Offering a hug to a partner after an argument. Apologizing to our friend. Owning up to our unkindness with our colleague.

Only…a lot of us don’t do these things—especially that last one. Instead, we tell ourselves to “keep it professional”: We fake-smile. We write tense, awkward emails. We pretend the rupture never happened.

And it makes our work lives so much harder.

Because here’s the thing: it’s normal for relationships to rupture. It’s part of being human. We don’t live in each other’s heads, we disagree, we screw up. But without repair—without actively choosing to reconnect after a rupture—we don’t really “move on” from those moments. We actually stay stuck in disconnection: mistrustful, defensive, on edge.

Not only does this make it impossible to collaborate and compromise in our work, but it’s also wildly exhausting—and more than a little lonely. Because if we start seeing anyone we’ve ever had a rupture with as a threat, pretty soon threats are all we’ll see: They’re a jerk. They never listen. They’re a narcissist. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Moving out of rupture and into repair takes work from both parties—no one person can do it alone. But what you can do is decide to be the person brave enough to start. Especially if you also happen to be in a position of power over the other person (like their manager, or a more senior colleague).

Sometimes, that means showing up with an apology when it feels more comfortable to stay silent. But other times, repair can start with simply reopening the lines of communication: “that meeting got a little tense. Can we check in? I’d love to hear about how it felt from your side.” Or it can even start with something smaller: A compliment on their work. A kind question about how their family’s doing. Anything that’s a bid for reconnection can start the process of repair.

Which means that you can even choose repair when you feel like you were the one harmed. And it doesn’t mean you let the other party off the hook for hurting your feelings or disrespecting your work. It doesn’t mean you simply keep trusting someone who’s done something untrustworthy.

It just means being open to seeing the other party’s behavior as separate from who they are as a person.

Here’s an example: let’s say you have a teammate who took credit for your idea in a meeting. You’re angry, and you’re questioning their motives. “I can’t trust them anymore,” you think. If you stay stuck in that thought pattern, the relationship is done: trust is lost, and there’s no going back.

Shifting to a repair-oriented mindset doesn’t mean letting this behavior slide. It simply means turning that statement into a question: “My teammate took credit for my idea. What would need to happen for me to trust them again?”

Perhaps all you need is a simple apology. Perhaps it’s a bit more—like a deeper reflection on how they show up in meetings, and a conversation about what would make things feel right again.

Knowing what you’d need to repair a relationship doesn’t mean it’ll work. The other party has to want repair, too. And there’s work both parties have to put in to make the actual reconnection happen.

But what it does mean is that you’re choosing to go through the world—and your work days—seeing connection as possible. And in my experience, that changes everything: my mood, my interactions, my sense of hope.

∗ ∗ ∗

I wish all this thinking about repair meant I was an expert at it. I’m not. I’ve attempted to repair a few work relationships over the years, and the results have been…mixed. Sometimes people would rather choose disconnection over reconnection.

At my lowest moments, I’ve felt ashamed of that—that it means I’m not worth repairing a relationship with. That I just didn’t matter enough to put in that work. Or perhaps worse: that there’s something so profoundly monstrous about me that the only way to deal with me is to keep a distance.

But then I remember the times when opening the door to repair has worked. I remember moments where I found myself seeing a colleague in a new light—suddenly more able to understand their perspective, even if their actions had hurt me. I remember the people I’ve moved through disconnection with—and then as we reconnected, realizing how much we’d both changed. And how much better prepared we’d become to be in a healthy relationship with one another.

Repair is still hard. It’s hard to be the one who says, “can we talk?” or “I’m sorry.” It’s vulnerable—there’s no guarantee that the other person will say yes.

But I’ll never know if I don’t give it a try.

∗ ∗ ∗

Have you ever repaired a work relationship? I’d love to hear about it. Hit reply and tell me how you did it, and what you think made it successful.

And if you have a work relationship where trust has been lost and communication’s broken down, let this be your nudge to consider: What would make repair possible for you? And what would it look like for you to be the one brave enough to start the process?

—Sara

On the reading list

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We’re Getting Women’s Ambition All Wrong

Unexamined ambition is often misdirected, used to fill some aching internal lack, tied up in a longing to please an invisible audience, to be seen as “good” girls, as worthy by the outside world. And while the larger “Is ambition feminist or not” debate rages, the conversation we may actually need to be having is smaller and more individual: What are we actually ambitious for? In many cases, it seems like the wrong things, a one-size-fits-all vision of a successful life.

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There’s plenty of room to be a kind and understanding manager without becoming a punching bag. Emotional labor can be one of the most exhausting aspects of the job. You need to learn how to identify and protect your own boundaries, especially the emotional ones.