Can You Work Well With Someone You Don’t Like?

by Pinar Koyuncu Oktar

Most of us have been there. You sit across from someone who challenges your patience, questions your ideas, or simply rubs you the wrong way. Or cross your boundaries and never apologize. Yet you still need to collaborate, share goals, and make progress together.

The truth is, you don’t need to like everyone you work with to do great work. What you need is trust, respect, and clarity.

Liking someone is emotional. Respecting someone is intentional.Research backs this up. In a Harvard Business Review article, High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It, Laura Delizonna (2017) notes that “psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, being creative, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off the types of behaviour that lead to market breakthroughs.”

When teams create that safety, they can disagree openly, challenge ideas, and still feel secure that their voice matters.

When you build respect, you can disagree without breaking connection. You can hold each other accountable without making it personal. Teams built on mutual respect and shared purpose often outperform those built only on friendship.

Of course, it helps when you enjoy each other’s company. Laughter, small celebrations, and shared stories make the workplace lighter. But connection should not depend on chemistry. Great teams know how to stay kind even when they are not close, and how to stay focused even when emotions are mixed.

You don’t have to like everyone. But you do have to value what they bring, communicate openly, and stay aligned on why you are there in the first place.

That is what turns a group of different personalities into a strong team.

So next time you find yourself paired with someone you do not naturally connect with, pause before you judge. Ask yourself: do I trust them to do their part, and do they trust me to do mine?

Because great teamwork is not built on liking everyone. It is built on believing that together, you can do meaningful work.

Research Corner

Research reinforces this point:

• Amy Edmondson’s seminal 1999 study found that when teams hold a shared belief that they can take interpersonal risks without fear, they engage more in learning behaviours and perform better. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  
  

• A meta-analysis of 112 studies (7,763 teams) found that intrateam trust relates positively to performance—including when controlling for past performance—suggesting trust is a strong predictor regardless of liking. ResearchGate

  
  

• In newer research on management teams, psychological safety’s effect on task performance came largely through behavioural integration—showing that safety enables teams to act, not just feel good. PMC