To be clear, maintaining good relationships is very important. Good relationships are the lubricant that keeps the machine running smoothly; if someone has poor social skills or doesn't make an effort to maintain good relationships, they'll cause unnecessary friction, and they'll end up wasting time and effort on a conflict when they could have solved by problem by maintaining a better relationship.
But, not every conflict is an unnecessary conflict that could have been solved by maintaining a better relationship! Sometimes people refuse to fix problems, and the only options are to apply pressure to them or let the problem go unfixed. Sometimes "lack of lubricant" isn't the reason the machine is broken.
(One way to see this is to note that Agrawal did not maintain a good relationship with Mudge. If maintaining good relationships is part of the job, did Agrawal fail at his job? Or do you think only the lower-ranked person is responsible for maintaining good relationships?)
1. A higher-ranked person (e.g. Agrawal) is screwing up in some way (e.g. not addressing security issues)
2. A lower-ranked person (e.g. Mudge) tries to get the problem fixed (e.g. addressing the security issues)
3. The higher-ranked person refuses, and it turns into a conflict
4. The lower-ranked person gets blamed for "not maintaining good relationships" or "being hard to work with" or something like that.
See this article: https://lethain.com/hard-to-work-with/
To be clear, maintaining good relationships is very important. Good relationships are the lubricant that keeps the machine running smoothly; if someone has poor social skills or doesn't make an effort to maintain good relationships, they'll cause unnecessary friction, and they'll end up wasting time and effort on a conflict when they could have solved by problem by maintaining a better relationship.
But, not every conflict is an unnecessary conflict that could have been solved by maintaining a better relationship! Sometimes people refuse to fix problems, and the only options are to apply pressure to them or let the problem go unfixed. Sometimes "lack of lubricant" isn't the reason the machine is broken.
(One way to see this is to note that Agrawal did not maintain a good relationship with Mudge. If maintaining good relationships is part of the job, did Agrawal fail at his job? Or do you think only the lower-ranked person is responsible for maintaining good relationships?)