When I was a child, my parents employed a friend, a qualified builder, to do some work on their roof. Unfortunately, it only came to light that the friend in question had no insurance after he’d set fire to the house. That was an awkward situation for everyone! Thirty years later, I still remember the builder’s adapted name: Dennis the Menace.
The story came to mind last night as I was considering the difficulties of managing friends.
Perhaps shaped by my parents’ experience, I’ve always been obsessive about distinguishing between personal and professional relationships. It’s not impossible for someone to fall into both categories but where they do, you’ll both need to clearly understand the distinction and how it will be applied. Even then, problems can still arise if both parties aren’t able to compartmentalise their relationship or don’t have a sufficiently developed emotional intelligence.
The blurring of personal and professional relationships at work is never so apparent or confusing as when people move from being one of the team to managing that team. It’s often the most difficult career transition we’ll ever be asked to make. It’s a transition that can strain friendships or previously successful working relationships to breaking point.
Here’s a question that illustrates the difficulty:
Daphne has been a member of a team for two years and within that team of ten, there are three people (Gwenda, Marjorie and Derek) with whom she’s very good friends. Not only does she socialise with them regularly, she’s included them as friends on Facebook. Other members of the team are listed as friends of Marjorie and Derek but not as friends of Daphne. Now that Daphne has been promoted and is responsible for managing the team, what should she do? Does anything need to change?
Facebook provides a modern and interesting illustration of just how tricky this change can be. For myself, I’ve made a rule that I don’t include people who work directly for me on my Facebook list of friends (though most ex-employees are on there). Whilst I enjoy socialising with the team, I think we all need some private space away from the boss.
When people are promoted from team member to team manager they will, hopefully, get lots of training. Typically they’ll learn about communication, dealing with performance issues, setting objectives, running appraisals etc. Perhaps though, we also need to ensure we’re preparing them for the more human dimensions of the change they are faced with. It’s probably not possible to provide hard and fast rules but perhaps we do need to ask questions like the one above in order to raise awareness and help individuals plan for the most difficult change of all.
Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com
