How to Transform Your Career in a Challenging Workplace
Challenging team dynamics can zap your energy, slow your progress, and make even the best job feel heavy. But they can also be transformed when you approach them with intention, emotional intelligence, and strategy.
Whether you’re navigating a competitive team, dealing with difficult personalities, or just trying to build stronger relationships at work, you don’t have to go it alone or stay stuck. In this mentoring guide, we’ll explore the key skills to build and actionable steps to take to help you turn tension into teamwork and build true workplace allies.
Better Team Dynamics Start with You
Changing a challenging team environment around you starts within you. To be successful, you’ve first got to demonstrate these three core skills.
1. Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
To navigate tough team relationships, you need to be aware of your own emotions—and others'. This includes:
Managing your reactions in tense moments
Reading the room accurately
Responding with empathy instead of defensiveness
Why it matters: High EQ helps you stay centered, build trust faster, and de-escalate conflict with grace.
How it helps: When emotions are running high for ourselves or those around us, EQ means you’re aware of how you are feeling, have a sense of how others may be feeling, and can pause to assess how best to communicate and behave in that environment. Yes, it is easier said than done, but pausing, taking a breath to take in what you’re feeling and others are displaying will help you start shifting your communication, diffuse tension, and build trust.
2. Conflict Agility
It’s important to keep in mind that not all conflict is bad. When managed well, it can lead to innovation and clarity. Conflict agility means being comfortable with disagreement and able to move through it constructively.
How to show it:
Ask clarifying questions instead of making assumptions
Stay focused on solutions, not blame
Know when to speak up—and when to let go
How it helps: By asking questions, you demonstrate interest in the other’s viewpoint and hopefully through that find common ground. By not focusing on blame, you can rally around the path forward that you’ve identified together.
3. Influence Without Authority
You don’t need to be the team lead to influence team culture. Building influence means becoming someone others trust, respect, and want to collaborate with.
How to build it:
Be consistent, calm, and collaborative
Recognize others’ contributions publicly
Offer help and follow through
How it helps: We all spend a large amount of time at work. To help make that time more enjoyable, collaborative, and effective, it’s important to display behaviors that build trust. With trust, more people will want to align with you or hear what you have to say whether you’re in a leadership position or not.
So, now you have a sense of the skills that can serve you well in building allies and improving how you contribute to team dynamics. The next thing you need to do is have a plan of action for proactively making a shift in the way teams engage with each other.
4 Key Steps to Improve the Team Dynamic
Once you’ve mastered the art and science of modeling the ideal workplace behavior you want to see in others, the time to start taking external action is now. Each workplace environment is unique, so consider your own situation and review the following steps to create a plan that works for you.
1. Start With a Listening Tour
Before you try to “fix” the team, understand it. Set up casual check-ins with teammates and ask:
“What’s working well for you on this team?”
“Where do you think we could collaborate better?”
Why it works: You signal curiosity, not criticism. With insight learned during the listening tour, you can start rebuilding trust from the ground up.
2. Build Micro-Moments of Allyship
Big team shifts start with small, consistent actions like:
Offering to help meet a deadline
Celebrating someone’s win publicly
Backing up a colleague’s idea in a meeting
These gestures build relational equity that turns coworkers into allies over time. Even further, practicing these fosters a culture of cooperation.
3. Model Boundaries and Respectful Communication
If your colleagues or team struggle with overstepping, drama, or passive-aggressive behavior, model what clear, respectful communication looks like:
“Let’s keep the conversation solution-focused.”
“I’d like to finish my thought before we shift topics.”
“I appreciate the feedback—can we align on expectations moving forward?”
How it helps: It is important to have boundaries. Conflict agility means you are able to use communication like the above examples to display what is respectful, healthy communication especially when conflict arises. Boundaries don’t shut people out—they create the structure for effective, respectful collaboration.
4. Connect Over Shared Goals
Instead of focusing on differences, find common ground. You can do this by:
Reframing disagreements as opportunities to refine shared outcomes
Inviting collaboration on a task aligned to team OKRs
Volunteering for a cross-functional initiative with them
Why it works: Most people are more motivated by shared success than individual wins—they just need someone to offer up the idea or opportunity.
What If These Steps Don’t Work?
Despite your best efforts, some team dynamics are rooted in deeper organizational dysfunction or are driven by personalities unwilling to grow. If that’s the case, here’s what to do next:
Document Patterns: If behavior crosses into bullying, exclusion, or sabotage, start documenting specifics (what, when, who was present).
Seek Allyship Elsewhere: Find supportive colleagues in other departments, ERGs, or professional networks. Building your own positive circle can buffer the effects of a strained team.
Request Mediation or Manager Support: If your psychological safety is compromised, don’t wait. Speak to a manager or HR about team alignment, mediation, or conflict resolution support.
Know When to Move On: If a toxic team is holding back your growth, consider your options. You deserve to work in a culture where collaboration, respect, and inclusion are the norm—not the exception.
You Are in Control of You
You’re not powerless in the face of a challenging team. With emotional intelligence, strategic relationship-building, and intentional action, you can shift the dynamic and often bring others with you. You can control you so focusing on being the best you possible is by practicing these skills.
Building allies isn’t about being liked—it’s about being trusted, respected, and aligned toward shared goals. Start where you are, use what you have, and remember: every healthy team dynamic begins with someone who’s willing to go first.
If all your efforts prove unsuccessful, remember that you have the power to control your own destiny. Use it wisely and focus forward.
Thank you to Rachel Bonistalli for this guest post. Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn.
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