Can two people work together successfully if they have nothing whatsoever in common?

I'd been feeling guilty about upsetting my HR Manager over the hiring of my new COO, so this week I arranged for them to meet, ahead of his official start date (which is TBA later this month). I wanted it to be as informal as possible, so instead of having a meeting in the office, we went for a drink in a bar round the corner, after work on Tuesday. It's fair to say that it wasn't a resounding success.

I guess to some extent it was my fault, in that I obviously didn't make it clear enough to her what the purpose of the occasion was. In my eyes it was a nice, relaxed, 'getting to know you' type of thing - a chance for them to bond over a glass of wine and reassure her that she was still very much part of the loop. But she obviously saw it as being only one step removed from a final round interview. I'd say this was slightly odd of her, given that he's already been offered and accepted the job. But then, she's a slightly odd girl.

Anyway, the three of us had only been sitting there for a few minutes, our wine virtually untouched, when out of nowhere she says to him: 'So what are your initial impressions of our HR strategy?'

'Excuse me?' says Fixer.

Now this question couldn't have been any more pointed if she'd wrapped it in barbed wire and stuck a javelin on the end of it. She might as well have just come out and said: 'What the hell can you possibly know about our HR that I don't?'. Frankly, I've no idea how I would have answered it. I'm not sure we even have an HR strategy, or at least, not one that can be summarised in a sentence - 'Keep our best people and make them better', is, I suppose, what it basically boils down to. (I actually asked her later what answer she would have liked/ expected; she said she didn't know, but just wanted to see whether he'd given it any thought.)

'Our HR strategy. What do you think of it?' And worried though I was about the potential car-crash unfolding before my eyes, I was interested to see how Fixer would handle it.

'Well, to be honest,' he says, 'I haven't given it much thought.'

'Really?' she says, virtually recoiling in horror. If she could have got away with arching her eyebrow and putting her little finger in her mouth like Dr Evil without looking ridiculous, I'm sure she would have done.

'No, not really. My view's always been that it's very dangerous to pre-judge this stuff. The last thing people like you need is someone like me coming in and trying to impose some pre-conceived ideas that might not even be appropriate for the business. Don't you agree?'

'Oh... Yes, of course,' she says, looking flustered.

As you can imagine, this set the tone for one of the most excruciating half-hours of conversation of my adult life. She never quite recovered from being out in her place, while Fixer was obviously distinctly irritated by her general tone and demeanour. I suppose he probably expected her to be going all out to impress him, rather than exploding in a cloud of passive-aggression. And all my stumbling attempts at chit-chat foundered as it rapidly became clear that these two people had virtually nothing in common in terms of outlook, interests or character. It was like being present on one of those horribly embarrassing episodes of Blind Date, when the two people clearly hate each other.
 
The question I was asking myself on the way home (after hoovering down my Pinot Grigio and wrapping things up as rapidly as possible) was whether it's possible for two people to have a productive working relationship when they clearly have so little chemistry. Of course you're never going to like everyone you work with, and being professional means finding a way to co-exist with them. But with this kind of reporting relationship? I'm not convinced.