Being easy to work with is often praised as a strength. In reality, it can quietly become a professional risk.
The skill at stake here is constructive resistance: knowing when to slow things down, question decisions, and introduce friction at the right moment.
People who are always agreeable reduce short-term tension, but they often increase long-term cost. Problems go unchallenged. Weak ideas pass through untested. Teams move fast, but in the wrong direction.
High-functioning organizations do not eliminate friction. They manage it. They create space where disagreement is not personal, and resistance is not interpreted as negativity.
Being difficult in the right way means asking the question everyone is avoiding, naming the risk no one wants to own, and refusing to optimize for comfort.
The most valuable collaborators are not the smoothest ones. They are the ones who protect the work, even when it makes things uncomfortable.
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