A handful of years ago, I went to work for a long-time friend of mine and as we were hashing out the details such as pay, vacation and working situations, he said to me, “This will be new for me, as I am not normally friends with the people that work for me.” And as our working relationship developed, I made sure that whenever possible we kept the office environment “professional,” even as we enjoyed vacations and spending time together outside the office.
What was odd for me was that I couldn’t think of a time, then or now, when I worked anywhere that I wasn’t friends with my co-workers or the people working directly for me. And not surprisingly, a recent article/survey points to this as a factor in workplace stress: http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=309307271&topic=Main
As the article points out, having friends or friendly relationships with the people around you in the office gives you the ability to bounce ideas off of each other in a non-threatening environment and to feel connected to others when things are at their most challenging. I would add to this that I believe that these friendships also enable co-workers to be more candid about their true opinions on work topics, as you can take the “personal attack” potential out of the equation and provide a more fertile ground for true collaboration.
Where it gets tricky is when you are friends with those that report directly to you, and you are responsible for making sure that their job performance is excellent and that you are displaying impartiality when it comes time to providing employee reviews and determining promotion opportunities.
One of my partners, Ash, once told a mutual friend and co-worker of ours who had recently joined the company, “Ron is a great guy and a great friend. But just know that business is business, and if you screw up, he will call you out on it and you shouldn’t count on your friendship to save you. But, he’ll probably buy you a beer when it is all over.” A very accurate assessment. Much like I want to see those around me thrive and succeed, and will go out of my way to help make that happen, I also expect that those around me will want to see me succeed and do everything that they can to make me successful. If you have these symbiotic relationships, built on mutual respect and friendship, then you are bound to be more successful than trying to go at it alone.
In the end, I try to surround myself with people that have a similar work ethic and a similar desire to succeed professionally in both my personal and professional lives, so it stands to reason that overlap will exist and I welcome it.
