The Hidden Cost of Lopsided Leadership Relationships
Picture your top relationship builders—the ones everyone turns to when tensions run high. Now imagine that behind their steady smiles and calm presence, they’re running on empty.
Here’s why: they’re compensating for everyone who isn’t doing their part.
I know this firsthand. Known for being a good relationship builder, I was often brought into friction-filled projects to smooth things over. I used to think being good at building peer relationships meant making them work no matter what.
For years, I carried lopsided peer relationships without naming them. The pattern was always the same: I’d do more, they’d do less. I told myself this was just “being a good partner.” That wasn’t partnership—I was just compensating, sometimes even carrying the relationship solo.
Here’s what I didn’t realize: by carrying these relationships solo, I was enabling the very dysfunction I was trying to fix. My peers never had to develop their own relationship skills because I compensated for them. Problems stayed buried because I smoothed them over. I thought I was being helpful. I was actually enabling dysfunction to flourish.
The problem with lopsided peer relationships
Most of us can spot openly conflicted relationships. But lopsided ones fly under the radar because they “work” on the surface. One person just carries more weight. And because something is getting done, no one notices the imbalance.
But the cost isn’t just personal.
The person doing more of the work pays in energy depletion, buried resentment, chronic stress, and reduced capacity for other priorities. But the organization pays too. The less-engaged leader isn’t just failing in this one relationship—they’re likely approaching other peer relationships the same way. That means multiple colleagues are compensating for them, collaboration becomes more arduous, and the leadership team never functions at full capacity.
When one person does most of the relationship work:
Teams below get a broken model of collaboration
Problems stay hidden longer (things get smoothed over rather than surfaced)
The less-engaged peer never develops their own relationship skills
The organization is less effective when one person is stretched thin doing double the emotional labor
Organizational leadership is inherently cross-functional
Here’s what many of us miss: organizational leadership isn’t just about excelling in your functional area. It’s about making the entire organization excel. That requires working across boundaries, which means collaboration and partnership with peers.
This makes peer relationships essential, not optional. You can’t deliver on your organizational mandate without them.
Yet that’s not how everyone approaches it. On leadership teams, some leaders treat peer relationships as essential while others treat them as transactional. One person invests in the partnership, the other just shows up for meetings. That imbalance doesn’t just strain the relationship—it undermines the work itself.
When your work requires cross-functional collaboration, treating partnerships as optional creates real organizational consequences. The person doing all the relationship work compensates by accommodating, smoothing friction, and keeping things calm. Meanwhile, the less-engaged peer never develops their own partnership skills because someone else is compensating for them. This creates a ripple effect: they bring the same transactional approach to other relationships, spreading dysfunction across the organization. Cross-functional initiatives move slower. It’s harder to align on strategy. The organization becomes slower and less responsive.
So why does this pattern persist?
Part of it is individual. The person working harder often doesn’t want to “make waves” or believes it’s their job to make relationships work. The person doing less often doesn’t see themselves as failing — they think “the relationship is fine” because someone else is making it work.
But part of it is organizational. Many companies don’t invest enough in leadership development. Organizations that invest in coaching, training, and development offsites create leaders who know how to build real partnerships. Without that investment, leaders never learn the skills required for true collaboration—so they default to either over-functioning or under-functioning in relationships.
What real partnership requires
Partnership means both people invest. Both people stretch. Both people take responsibility for repair when things go sideways.
When only one person does this, it’s not partnership, it’s accommodation. And accommodation enables dysfunction rather than solving it. It’s easy to dismiss lopsided relationships as “just a problem between two people.” But it’s never just two people. Lopsided relationships don’t stay contained. These dynamics pull entire leadership teams out of balance and ripple through the organization.
Strong leadership teams require investment.
Real partnership skills don’t just appear. They’re developed through coaching, structured development programs, and creating space for leaders to practice. Yet many organizations treat leadership development as a nice-to-have rather than essential infrastructure.
When companies cut L&D budgets or skip leadership offsites, they’re not just losing development opportunities — they’re perpetuating lopsided relationships. Leaders who never learn partnership skills default to whatever pattern they know, whether that’s over-functioning or under-functioning.
If your best relationship builders seem tired, it’s worth asking: are they building relationships, or are they compensating for peers who haven’t fully engaged?
The work of organizational leadership requires partnership. Invest in developing that capability across your entire team — not just your natural relationship builders.
Thinking about investing in your leadership team’s development? The end of the year is a natural time to plan an offsite or coaching engagement for early next year. Let’s talk about what that could look like for your team.