Collaborating with the enemy: stretch collaboration and employee engagement
Reframing “collaborating with the enemy” inside organizations
When employees hear the phrase “collaborating with the enemy,” many immediately think about betrayal at work. In organizational life the so‑called enemy is usually a colleague, a manager, or another department whose priorities clash with yours and whose decisions you do not agree with. Learning how to work with such people is central to employee engagement because disengaged people do not simply withdraw from tasks, they often start quietly enemyfying colleagues and leaders.
The expression gained visibility through the work of Adam Kahane, whose book on stretch collaboration challenges conventional collaboration models that assume people agree with each other and share the same goals. In many companies people do not agree with the strategy, do not agree with resource allocation, and do not agree with how leaders communicate, yet they still need to cooperate to keep the organization functioning. When leaders ignore this reality and insist on black‑and‑white narratives about who is right or wrong, they unintentionally fuel what some practitioners call the enemyfying syndrome, where working with colleagues becomes a step game of blame instead of a joint effort to solve problems.
Inside a team, collaborating with perceived opponents usually means engaging with people you do not trust yet, or with people you once trusted but now see as obstacles. This can happen when a restructuring changes reporting lines, when a project group is formed with enemyfying personalities, or when a merger forces people to work with competitors turned colleagues. Employee engagement suffers when people feel forced to cooperate with enemy figures without any support to embrace conflict constructively or to rebuild psychological safety with trust and transparency.
Values, mission, and the hidden cost of enemyfying colleagues
Employee engagement research consistently shows that people engage more deeply when their personal values align with the organizational mission. Yet in many workplaces the official values on the wall do not match the daily experience of working with colleagues, especially when conflict is handled through avoidance or black‑and‑white judgments. When employees see leaders enemyfying critics instead of engaging with them, they quickly learn that raising tough questions in practice is career risk, not constructive dialogue.
Adam Kahane argues that stretch collaboration requires us to work with people we do not agree with, while still holding on to what matters most to us. This is where values and mission either support or undermine engagement, because a credible mission gives people a reason to collaborate with difficult colleagues in service of something larger than personal preferences. When the mission is vague or purely financial, people do not feel inspired to cooperate with enemy figures, and they retreat into silos where people do not share information, do not experiment forward, and do not stretch collaboration beyond their comfort zone.
Organizations that take their mission seriously embed it into how they design cross‑functional work with people from different units, not just into marketing slogans. They clarify what behaviors align with the mission, how conflict should be handled, and how to work with trust even when teams do not agree with each other on tactics or timelines. For a deeper view on how organizational principles shape values, mission, and engagement, many practitioners analyse cases such as those discussed in this article on how the principles of organization shape values, mission, and employee engagement, which highlights that mission statements only matter when they guide everyday collaboration.
From conventional collaboration to stretch collaboration in employee engagement
Traditional management training often promotes what Adam Kahane calls conventional collaboration, where leaders assume that people agree with the goals, agree with the plan, and agree with the metrics. In reality many employees do not agree with the priorities, do not agree with the pace of change, and do not agree with how success is measured, yet they rarely say so openly. This gap between surface‑level agreement and hidden disagreement is a major driver of disengagement because people feel they must collaborate with a system that does not listen.
Stretch collaboration, as described by Kahane in his book published by Berrett Koehler, invites people to work with others even when they see them as adversaries, and to embrace conflict as a source of learning rather than a sign of failure. In employee engagement terms this means creating spaces where working with colleagues you do not agree with is normal, where engaging with dissent is valued, and where people can experiment forward with new ways of working without fear of punishment. Instead of enemyfying those who raise uncomfortable questions, leaders treat them as partners in a shared experiment to improve how the organization lives its mission.
A frequently cited example comes from the Mont Fleur Scenarios process in early‑1990s South Africa, where business leaders, trade unionists, and political opponents worked together on future scenarios despite deep mistrust. Kahane, who facilitated the process, has described how participants gradually shifted from seeing each other as enemies to seeing each other as co‑authors of the country’s future. This kind of stretch collaboration did not remove conflict, but it channelled it into practical joint work, a pattern that modern organizations can emulate when they bring rival departments or skeptical stakeholders into the same room.
Psychological safety, trust, and the “with enemy” paradox
Psychological safety is the shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk‑taking, and it is one of the strongest predictors of employee engagement. Yet psychological safety is often misunderstood as the absence of conflict, which leads people to avoid difficult conversations and to silently enemyfy colleagues instead of collaborating with them. The paradox is that real safety grows when teams learn to work with conflict, not when they pretend that everyone always agree with each other.
In many organizations employees describe certain colleagues as a kind of with enemy, someone they must work with but do not trust, and whose motives they question. When this enemyfying syndrome spreads, people do not share critical information, do not ask for help, and do not admit mistakes, because they fear that the so‑called enemy will use this vulnerability against them. Over time this erodes engagement, as working with such people becomes emotionally exhausting and employees feel that collaboration with trust is impossible.
Addressing this paradox requires leaders to model how to collaborate with people they personally do not agree with, especially in visible cross‑functional projects. They can frame conflict as a step game in which each side makes a move, listens, and then adjusts, rather than as a black‑and‑white battle to win. When employees see senior leaders engaging with critics, inviting them into working groups, and using experiment‑forward approaches to test ideas together, they start to believe that working across enemy lines is not betrayal but a disciplined way to improve the work.
Practical tools to work with “enemy” colleagues without losing your values
Employees often ask how to work with people they experience as an enemy without compromising their own values or burning out. A first step is to clarify what matters most to you in the situation, such as fairness, transparency, or impact, and to separate these values from your judgments about the other person. This mental shift helps you collaborate with the problem rather than enemyfying the person, which is essential for sustaining engagement over time.
One practical technique is to map the interests of each group involved in the conflict, including your own, your counterpart, and the wider organization. By writing down what each side needs to achieve in their work, you can identify areas where you actually agree with the other person and where you simply prioritize different things. This exercise often reveals that people do not disagree on the mission itself but on how to implement it, which opens the door to stretch collaboration instead of a black‑and‑white standoff.
Another tool is to propose small experiment‑forward steps rather than demanding full agreement before moving. You might say that you are willing to collaborate with your counterpart on a limited pilot, to work with a mixed team for a defined period, or to test a new process with clear feedback loops and with trust‑based check‑ins. These small experiments reduce the emotional intensity of working with an enemy figure and give both sides data about what actually works, which can gradually transform the experience from a threat into a professional skill.
For individuals who want a simple starting point, a short three‑step playbook can help: first, name the shared goal you both care about; second, agree on one small joint action you can take this month; third, schedule a brief review to discuss what you learned, not who was right. Repeating this cycle builds a track record of cooperation that slowly weakens enemyfying narratives.
Hybrid work, cross functional teams, and the future of “enemy” collaboration
The rise of hybrid work has changed how employees experience both collaboration and conflict, because many tensions now play out through screens rather than in shared meeting rooms. In distributed teams people do not always see the human context behind tough emails or delayed responses, which makes it easier to enemyfy colleagues and to interpret every disagreement in black‑and‑white terms. When engagement surveys show declining trust, leaders need to ask not only what is wrong with the workload but also what is happening in the invisible relationships between teams.
Cross‑functional projects, agile squads, and matrix structures mean that employees must constantly work with people outside their home équipe, often with people they barely know. In such settings the phrase collaborating with the enemy can describe the feeling of joining a project led by a department that previously blocked your initiatives or cut your budget. To keep engagement high, organizations need rituals and norms that help people collaborate with new colleagues quickly, such as shared kick‑off sessions, explicit agreements on how to work with each other, and regular retrospectives that embrace conflict as data rather than as personal attacks.
Some companies are experimenting with structured dialogue formats and peer learning circles to help employees practice stretch collaboration in low‑risk settings before applying it to high‑stakes projects. Others are rethinking how hybrid schedules affect belonging, asking whether employees can still build trust when they only work with colleagues in person a few days per week, as explored in analyses of the 3 2 hybrid work model and its impact on belonging. Across these experiments the core lesson is consistent, people engage more deeply when they see leaders collaborate with critics, work with dissenting voices, and treat working with former enemies not as a failure of loyalty but as a mature way to serve the mission.
Key statistics on conflict, collaboration, and engagement
- Research from Gallup’s 2017 State of the American Workplace report (State of the American Workplace, Gallup, 2017) found that employees who strongly agree with the statement “At work, my opinions seem to count” are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work, highlighting how engaging with dissenting voices directly supports performance and retention.
- A study by Google’s Project Aristotle, summarized in 2015–2016 internal research and in a 2016 re:Work case study, found that psychological safety was the single most important factor in high‑performing teams, which reinforces the idea that teams must be able to embrace conflict and work with disagreement without enemyfying colleagues.
- Data from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s 2020 report on workplace conflict (Managing Conflict in the Modern Workplace, CIPD, 2020) indicates that UK managers spend an estimated around four hours per week dealing with disagreements, suggesting that learning to collaborate with perceived enemies is not only a cultural issue but also a productivity imperative.
- Surveys by the Society for Human Resource Management, including a 2019 study on toxic workplace cultures (The High Cost of a Toxic Workplace Culture, SHRM, 2019), show that nearly one in five employees have left a job in the previous five years due to a negative relationship with a manager or colleague, underlining how enemyfying relationships directly undermine engagement and increase turnover costs.
FAQ about collaborating with the enemy in workplace culture
What does “collaborating with the enemy” mean in a corporate context ?
In organizations “collaborating with the enemy” usually refers to working with colleagues, managers, or departments you do not trust, do not agree with, or even actively dislike, while still needing to achieve shared goals. It is less about literal enemies and more about how we handle conflict, power differences, and value clashes inside the same company. Understanding this dynamic is essential for designing engagement strategies that help people work with each other despite deep disagreements.
How does enemyfying colleagues affect employee engagement ?
Enemyfying colleagues turns everyday collaboration into a constant source of stress, because people start interpreting neutral actions as hostile and avoid asking for help or sharing information. This erodes psychological safety, which is a key driver of engagement, learning, and innovation in teams. Over time employees in such environments often disengage emotionally or leave the organization, even when pay and benefits are competitive.
Can conflict ever be positive for workplace culture ?
Constructive conflict can be highly positive when teams have norms that allow people to challenge ideas without attacking each other personally. In such cultures employees feel free to raise risks, question assumptions, and propose alternatives, which improves decision quality and innovation. The key is to embrace conflict as a shared problem‑solving process rather than a black‑and‑white battle between enemies.
What is stretch collaboration and how does it relate to engagement ?
Stretch collaboration, a concept popularized by Adam Kahane, is the practice of working with people you do not agree with, do not like, or do not trust, while still moving forward together. It accepts that disagreement and power imbalances are normal in complex systems, and it focuses on experimenting forward with practical steps instead of waiting for full consensus. When organizations adopt this mindset, employees feel more respected and involved, which strengthens engagement even in difficult situations.
How can leaders model healthy collaboration with perceived enemies ?
Leaders can model healthy collaboration by publicly engaging with critics, inviting them into working groups, and showing how to negotiate trade‑offs without enemyfying anyone. They can narrate their own learning process, explaining when they changed their mind after listening to another group and how this served the mission. Such visible behaviors send a strong signal that learning to collaborate across enemy lines is a valued capability, not a sign of weakness or disloyalty.
