Friends At Work

I recently taught a course on communication issues in the workplace and the students pointed me to a challenge I have never personally encountered. 

What do you do when friends become colleagues and your way of relating to each other is not particularly helpful in the work environment?  

and even harder...

What do you do when you are your friend's supervisor? 

My own experience is more of the-- my best friends are the people I worked closely with on projects I cared about --variety. So that pattern was always reversed. And yet I do understand the dilemma. 

We have certain roles and habits that develop in our friendships. Some of which we are pretty happy and comfortable with and are fine --outside of work. Sometimes those roles are not actually that comfortable anywhere and in the glare of the fluorescent lighting at work really take on a troubling hue. We worry about rocking the boat. We worry that saying something could risk both the work and the personal relationship.

Here are some of the ideas we came up with. They all boil down to one thing of course:

TALK ABOUT IT!

• Name the problem with the way you behave with each other. Talk about why it is problematic at work. Are you cracking inappropriate jokes in meetings? Are you ignoring each other when you should be actively collaborating? Check to see if you both experience this the same way. 

 

• Support each other to be the best you can be at work. In a good friendship, you are hyper attuned to your friend’s gifts. Tell her the potential you see in her. Help him shine and ask for help to do the same.

 

• Don’t leave things vague. One student told me he spoke to a friend/colleague and his friend response, “Yeah, fine. I get it.” Was not particularly helpful. He made sure not to leave it that way. They kept talking not only about what it might look like to behave differently with each other at work but also created some signals to use when they fell back on old patterns.

 

• Make time for the friendship outside of work. Sometimes, it is easy to get lazy and think that seeing each other all the time at work is the relationship.

 

• If you are the supervisor: tell your friend exactly what you think needs to change and talk about how you can both make it work. What do you need? What does your friend need?  

 

What is your experience with this? What has worked for you?