Working with a lot of start-up managers, people are often faced with letting go of friendships, among other challenges. After all, one often grows up to be a leader from one’s own team, and one may find oneself faced with a dilemma: whether to maintain friendly relations with a colleague with whom one used to “set the world to rights” during coffee breaks, or suddenly become a bitch and choose one’s words carefully.
Leadership and friendship require different roles and expectations. They can co-exist, but still require a conscious and mutually respectful attitude towards the different roles.
Here are some thoughts that might help in this situation:
– ๐ต๐ถ๐ฏ๐ฏ๐ช๐ด๐ต๐ข ๐ฎ๐ถ๐ถ๐ต๐ถ๐ด๐ต: your job position has changed and with it comes responsibility to the team and the organisation. Recognise this, both to yourself and to your colleagues. But the role has changed, as a person you are still the same. It is because of your personality that you were chosen to lead, and people are likely to rally around you. But each role has different responsibilities and expectations. You need to be clear about these in such situations.
– ๐ฑ๐ช๐ช๐ณ๐ช๐ฅ๐ฆ ๐ด๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ช๐ด๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฌ๐ถ๐ด: working in a team with old friends can risk friendship overshadowing professionalism. A clear distinction between professional and personal can help maintain fairness and avoid confusion. For example, perhaps clearly saying at a wine evening with friends that please let’s not talk about work matters because the whole team is not present, or expressing that unfortunately I can’t talk about these matters at the moment, or other clear language.
– รต๐ช๐จ๐ญ๐ถ๐ด๐ฆ ๐ด๐ช๐ญ๐ฎ๐ข๐ด ๐ฑ๐ช๐ฅ๐ข๐ฎ๐ช๐ฏ๐ฆ: a friend may be loyal, but a leader must be fair and loyal to the whole group. Maybe a simple rule – we only talk about other people when those people are in the room. We only talk about other people’s issues in a leader-subordinate relationship when they are present. This means that decisions and conversations are also based on organisational goals, not friendship.
– ๐ฌ๐ข๐ฐ๐ต๐ข “๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ช๐ฆ ๐ท๐ด ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ข๐ฅ” ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต๐ข๐ญ๐ช๐ต๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ต: Leadership is about uniting a group, not separating it. Avoid ‘cursing’ a team or organisation, which may have been part of a friendship in the past. Leadership is about inspiring and solving problems, not creating new ones.
– ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ช๐ข ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ข๐ข๐ต๐ช๐ข๐ต ๐ซ๐ข ๐ญ๐ถ๐จ๐ถ๐ฑ๐ช๐ฅ๐ข๐ฎ๐ช๐ด๐ต: friendship and leadership are not mutually exclusive when empathy and respect are mutual. A true friend understands and accepts when you, as a leader, have to make tough decisions.
– and it may be worth consciously declining one or other role (e.g. that of a leader) in more complex friendships or family relationships where it is already foreseeable that the problem will not be resolved.
Driver, have you been in this situation? How did you balance the role of friend and leader? Share your experience – it might help someone else in a similar situation today.
You can also listen to the 132nd episode of the “Leadership without Leadership” podcast, where we talk about this topic.
