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January 2010
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 Happy New Year and welcome to the first newsletter of 2010. We hope you enjoy!
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.
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