Being too Friendly With Your Employees

your first 90 days Mar 20, 2019

It’s a natural human instinct to want to be liked and managers are often just as needy as anyone else. Everyone wants to be the popular boss, the one who is beloved by their team and who people will do anything for.

I’m afraid it’s my job to shatter the myth right here: you CAN’T be friends with the people who report to you. Don’t even try, because I guarantee you that it will backfire at some point down the line.

Paul, the manager of a medium-sized social media company, learned this only too well. On the first day in his new job, he took his direct reports out for drinks to ‘get to know everyone.’ This seemed to go down well with his new employees, so he carried on the outings, the intimate one-on-one chats and socializing out of work. He gained two really good new friends out of it, and thought he was doing well.

That’s until his boss announced that the company was struggling and Paul would be expected to lay off half of his team. So who should he save from redundancy? The people who really merited it, or his friends? As it turned out, he saved his friends because he believed they deserved to remain but that didn’t stop the accusations of favoritism and ensuing legal action against the company. Needless to say, Paul was not very popular with his boss.

You don’t want to end up in the same pickle as Paul.  The truth of the matter is that any friendship between a manager and an employee is inherently unequal; there is a power imbalance that will inevitably raise its ugly head at some point. How would you feel having to reprimand your friend, for instance? How would they feel? Likewise, can you promise you won’t favour them subconsciously (or consciously)? Will your friends take your seriously enough if you’re their manager? By trying to be friends with members of your team, you risk one, or all, of these scenarios happening to you.

At the end of the day, your relationship with an employee is based on their job performance, and if they don’t do their job well, you may have to fire them. If you are too friendly with certain individuals, they may assume that you won’t take this step – it’s an unfair assumption to allow them to make. After all, a buddy may allow excuses, but a coach won’t. If you weren’t friends, perhaps they would have raised their game more and saved their job.

You can’t be popular with everyone, even though you might want to be. Everyone likes to be liked, and to be a part of the in-crowd. But imagine how it looks to others if you have a close friend within the team; your enjoyment of this friendship will put other people’s noses out of joint. What is the point in working hard to impress if your attention is always given to the person who meets you for drinks in the bar once a week? If you make this mistake, your credibility will be shot.

Bend over backwards NOT to show favoritism. We’re all human; it’s very likely that you will have more affection for some members of your staff than you do for others. The key is not to let it show, don’t give into the temptation. Avoid the perception that you have ‘pet employees’ or favorites among the team, as it will undermine your ability to manage people.

Develop relationships with your employees 

That’s not to say that you can’t develop relationships with your team. You can, and you should; in fact, studies show that employee retention is directly linked to the relationship between a manager and an employee. Simply put, people want to work for people they like and can approach.

You can even socialize with the team, be friendly and care about your employees; the best managers do. But just don’t try to be friends with them. It’s a fine line to tread and you need to know how to walk it. So what is the secret?

The Solution:

Many management self-help books will tell you that the secret to effective management is to treat people equally. That’s not quite the theory that I subscribe to. Here’s my mantra:

Treat people fairly, if not necessarily equally

Yes, there’s a subtle difference between the two, and I’ll explain it shortly.

Firstly, however, let me just say that the key to knowing just how ‘friendly’ to be with your staff is to know your professional boundaries. As a boss, you should care for your employees and want the best for them, but you still need to be free to do your job. That means that you should be able to reprimand them or point out issues without feeling awkward or wonder if they’ll be offended when taken to task by a ‘friend’.  The easiest and most professional way to achieve that is not to be friends in the first place.

You can be friendly, of course, but don’t seek personal one-on-one bonds with specific members of the team that result in obligation. Treat everyone the same. Your are friendly, but you are not their friend. Big difference. 

Hold on a minute, didn’t I just say that you should deal with everyone fairly but not necessarily equally? Yes I did; I’m glad you were paying attention. Let’s say then that you should treat all members of the team the same by being fair to them in recognition of what they do/ achieve.

Suppose you have two employees doing the same job, but one goes above and beyond while the other does just enough to keep you happy. Is it really fair to treat them exactly the same? I’d suggest not: paying both the same or giving equal praise and recognition may sound good in theory but it’s highly unfair. What incentive does the first worker then have to continue his or her stellar efforts? How would it encourage the second worker to up his game?

The fair thing to do would be to give the high achiever further recognition, perhaps a promotion or a pay rise, or a respected role within the company. Meanwhile, you can encourage the second worker to emulate the success of the first. This isn’t favoritism either as the rewards have been earned. That’s a great example of treating fairly rather than equally.

Some practical steps:

  • Don’t chase popularity; seek respect instead.
  • Don’t be offended if the team go for drinks and don’t invite you. As co-workers and friends, they’ll want to unwind, gossip and, yes, even potentially talk about the boss. That’s you!
  • Instead of going for drinks or socializing with selected individuals, invite the entire team and treat it as a team building exercise. Get to know everyone. If you do want to take individual people out of the office, make sure it’s not limited to the same person over and over again.
  • Treat people as individuals and recognize the effort each and every one puts in.
  • It’s perfectly acceptable to pay different salaries, based on experience, effort and results.

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