Some years ago, I was in session with a newish client. This leader was expressing their frustration with a peer. This off-screen co-worker—I’ll call him Jacob—had been a frequent topic in our first few coaching sessions. Jacob and this leader were like oil and water, and the two seemed to spar about everything. I was beginning to feel like I knew Jacob better than I knew my client. As a coach, I wondered if Jacob had become a denial-of-service attack on my client’s growth and development, preventing us from getting to all the other work we could do together.

Wanting a new angle to work with, I asked this leader, “What’s a good metaphor for what it’s like to be in a relationship with Jacob?” My client immediately made a face that I took to be one of disgust. They scrunched their nose, widened their eyes, and flared their lips. They looked up at the ceiling and went silent for a few beats. I was waiting for colorful metaphors, but when they eventually spoke, I learned their reaction wasn’t disgust but surprise. And it wasn’t the metaphor they were concentrating on, but my turn of phrase. “Wow, I’ve never thought of it that way.” They chuckled, then continued, “I guess I am in a relationship with Jacob, but I’ve never considered that. That’s a different way of thinking of it.”

This shift in perspective helped my client begin to appreciate that they and Jacob weren’t just passing ships. They were in a real life human relationship, and the relationship needed to be effective and enduring, especially given the stylistic and personality differences between the two participants. This helped the leader shift from wanting to change Jacob—something they couldn’t control—to taking responsibility for changing the relationship—something they could.

There was power to that “in a relationship” phrasing, and I’ve kept that question in my toolbox. For some reason, we reserve that phrase for romantic partners, family, or close friendships. But each of us is in scores of relationships—with co-founders, bosses, peers, direct reports, customers, and investors. Since these relationships are formed—or even involuntarily forced—by necessity, we don’t think of them as what they are: relationships.

When I began my coaching training many years ago, I was taught the importance of intentionally co-creating the coach-client relationship from the get-go. In our first coaching session, we spend a lot of time talking about not just what we were going to work on together but designing how we were going to be together. This design work is never done, and one of the goals of this intentional conversation is to open the door to revisiting this conversation as our individual needs and the needs of the relationship change. It says, “We’re both invested in making this relationship work and open to conversations about how we maintain that.”

I wished I’d been designing alliances at every stage of my career. Ever since, I’ve been looking for a less wonky coach-speak way of bringing this into the workplace. One helpful tool I’ve written about is the personal user manual. But while those can be effective, they tend to be too static and one-directional for designing and nurturing individual relationships.

Michael Bungay Stanier has granted my wish with a book called How to Work with (Almost) Everyone.

Bungay Stanier (who goes by “MBS”) is a maestro at converting tricky and nuanced concepts into simple frameworks, and this book is no exception. At the heart of his method is the “keynote conversation,” the initial discussion—like a designed alliance in coaching—where two people discuss how they will work together.

MBS provides five foundational questions to guide that conversation:

• The Amplify Question: What’s your best?
• The Steady Question: What are your practices and preferences?
• The Good Date Question: What can you learn from successful past relationships?
• The Bad Date Question: What can you learn from frustrating past relationships?
• The Repair Question: How will you fix it when things go wrong?

The book goes deep into what’s behind each of those and what to do with what you’ve learned, along with tons of practical suggestions for how to keep the relationship alive, repair it as needed, and even when to end it if necessary. I can’t recommend it more highly.