Women at Work - Work Friendships Are Mostly Amazing and Sometimes Messy

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

Having a close friend at work feels great. You have someone to laugh with, confide in, and exchange glances with during a meeting. But we often fail to anticipate how the conflicting demands of work can occasionally strain that relationship. We talk through common tensions and how to handle them, either to maintain the friendship or to ease off of it. Guests: Nancy Rothbard and Julianna Pillemer. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at Work. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Nicole Torres. I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Amy Bernstein. It's great to have colleagues who are also friends. They can make coming to work more fun and engaging and can even make a ho-hum job more tolerable. It's a good feeling when we have someone to cheer us on, to confide in, be straight with, cry in front of. This episode, we'll talk about the joys of work friends, but we'll also discuss the challenges,

like maintaining those friendships when you become a boss or trying to tone down a relationship that's just too draining. I wrote about workplace friendships in an issue of our newsletter, or trying to tone down a relationship that's just too draining. I wrote about workplace friendships in an issue of our newsletter, and many of you emailed us about yours. We heard about colleagues who are close enough to feel like family and even celebrate holidays together. People also told us about the downsides, like the venting that was a relief in the moment, but later made them wonder if they'd shared too much information,

and the twinge of jealousy when someone's friend gets a promotion and they did it. Some friendships that start at work end when the friend stopped working at the same company. But that wasn't the case for the two women we're about to hear from. Tierra Turner and Kristen Ohm met in their 20s at their first job. Tierra and I recently worked together on an event that I was speaking at, and she mentioned that she'd been on a vacation with her longtime friend Kristen. When I heard more about their friendship, how it began, and how it survived multiple life changes, I wanted to hear more.

Here's my conversation with them. Tierra and Kristen, thank you so much for talking with me today. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Well, Tierra, I want to start with you. Will you tell me a little bit about the first time you met Kristen? I think I met her before I met her. a power tools company, sales and marketing company, which had a very kind of like type A, rah, rah, overachieving kind of environment. And so what I'd known about her was all really great things. Someone who was always hit their number and their goals. And then I met her and I'll be honest, like what I heard of her was not quite what I got in the beginning. How so? You know,

I just heard that while she certainly was an overachiever, hit her number, she and I come from very, very, very different backgrounds. I'm a city girl from the Bronx. Kristen is from a smaller place, Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania, all very different. And so the team thought that our personalities, because of our differences, they would tell me, T, she's very different than you. I don't think you're going to get along. She's going to hit the ground running and do well. But because you're so different, I don't think there's a match. But then over time, you know, obviously that's not the case. So Kristen, did you hear a lot about Tiara before you actually met her?

I did. And what I knew of Tiara was that she was a high performer. She was top talent. And I also knew that she had really strong relationships throughout the organization. She had a lot of mentors and sponsors, you know, a lot of people in her corner. So I probably had questions because I knew she was super well-respected. But I also had a perception of her that she was tough and would we mesh. Right.

So what was the first time that you all felt like oh wow i actually could be friends with this person i don't know that any particular situation sticks out now because we're talking probably like what 15 years ago probably but because the environment was so it was fast paced it was rough rough and tough. It was very challenging. And with that type of culture, my word, if you can get some allies and some alliances, it just makes it a lot easier. And so I felt like we always had each other's back. Her comments were never they were always supportive. They were never she wasn't trying to poke holes in the argument. Even if my information wasn't 100% clear, you know, we just started to have each other's back and support

each other. So I remember that she would be a person that I could go to and bounce something off before a meeting or, and based on her responses, I felt like her intentions were good. You know, like we were kind of in this together. It was like, we call it the shark tank. You know, like you're in the shark tank and you're working hard together. And so there was a lot of support on a daily basis, a lot of support in meetings, helping each other with presentations, helping each other figure out how to navigate, you know, the win. And then over time, I think we cultivated that support for one another. From the beginning before, I think like a friendship was truly established, which

takes, you know, years to come. Right. I would just build slightly to say, because her reputation preceded her, I had a lot of respect for her. So I often turned to her being the newbie on the team. I really leaned on her in the beginning to help me figure out how to do the role. And I think through that process is how we really started to trust each other professionally because she allowed me to ask questions. Do you remember a time where you looked at the other person and thought, wow, this person's more than a colleague to me now. This person's really my friend. I like the story that you tell about your wedding. Yeah. So years later, goodness, maybe so 2005, I got married. I think we were working on brand maybe 2002, 2003. Yeah. So it's about three years later. Yeah. So three years later. So three years later, after we had started working together,

I got married. And Kristen's best friend was getting married on the same day and um she was like stressing I can't make how can I how can I miss both of your weddings I mean stressing out and um you know I was just like listen you know we worked together I saw her every day and she helped me. So, you know, I like you work in and like you're getting married. So you're kind of working and doing your personal stuff at the job anyway. So she was helping me plan my wedding. So I felt like she was already involved.

I plan my own wedding. Right. So everything down to what phone calls I would accept, what was going down. Just broadzilla, just unnecessary right everything down to the capabilities that help us at work help us in our personal lives yes yeah that's true so um when i was getting ready i remember telling my mom that i wasn't going to accept any calls because i wanted to have my brain clear i wanted things to go smoothly i wanted to keep the space open and free but But then Kristen

called me and I looked at the phone and I answered it. And my mom was like, I thought no calls. And I was like, but it's Kristen. And then at that moment, and I was like, oh my goodness, like on my wedding day, I'm going to take a call from someone, you know? And then that's when I realized like, she's my friend. And a piece that I love is in my wedding album, the photographer captured me talking on the phone with her. So she was still there with me. Yeah. That's great. And so that was 2005. It's now 14 years later. And I'm curious, how has your friendship evolved? So you how long did you work together as colleagues and friends? When did you leave? 2007. Yeah, she left 2007. And I left in 2011. So I was there a couple of years after her. But our friendships, because of the change in career choices, it truly did evolve on a personal level. And I would say, Amy, the big thing that drove that was life.

You know, now, 14 years later, Tiara and I are both single moms. And neither of us wanted or asked to be single mothers, but we are. And so it has been through the course of the events that have happened in our lives. She's been always been my girl, you know, there was a period of time where we maybe like fell off the grid for for a little but um five years ago when uh when my relationship ended uh she called me um out of the blue and she said what is going on what is going on with you because i can see on social media something is going on and um you know she just and we pick right back up where we left off yeah you know it know, it's it's like it's like I never lost her.

Yeah. We just kind of picked up and she was there for me. My husband passed and she was there for me at that time as well. Even though we weren't in the same city, even though things had changed and, you know, I had children. But she totally was there for me for that. And then when I noticed something wasn't right for her, I just say, all right, I had children. But she totally was there for me for that. And then when I noticed something wasn't right for her, I just say, all right, let's get back together. All right. All right. I want to go back to 2007. Is that when you left here? Yes.

So when you left in 2007, Kristen, how was that for you when you knew she was leaving the job and you were going to stay? I was, it was at a point where I knew that she needed to make some personal choices. And I was, first of all, I was fully supportive of the personal choices that she needed to make because she needed to find a balance in her life and she needed to find her soul again, right? And go back to Philly where her family was and to have that support that she needed in her life. And so I was fully supportive of that for her personally. Professionally, you know, I lost my confidant, just for a time where, you know, that ability to bounce things off of her or to show her something or ask her a question or seek her advice, you know, those types of things at work went away for a little. Yeah. And was it different now that you didn't have a shared work experience I think

it was more um carefree as if like that was a component to our friendship that we didn't have to worry about not that it was a burden but at the time that we picked back up there were more important things to talk about for each other to support each other than that. And so I think we were able to talk about what like matters in life and just help each other put things in perspective. Did you ever have any fights at work? I'm not recalling a fight. When I think of a fight, I think of, you know, we're like yelling at each other and, you know, not speaking. I don't think we have ever had that experience, but we've certainly had times at work where we had to deal with different situations and both really kind of come to the table and be open-minded about how we

were going to work through the various tasks or projects that needed accomplished. You could also imagine that being friends, you were worried about having difficult conversations because you didn't want it to bleed over into the social friendship or you might even avoid conflict in your social friendship so it didn't bleed into work. Did you not find that? I never felt that way. If I know that your intentions are pure

and I know that there is a level or boundary that you won't cross, right? Like, you know how like siblings are kind of equated to siblings. Siblings like arguing, they fuss and fight. But at the end of the day, most of the time they still love each other, right? We're still siblings. So there's some things that I won't say, right, that I know will intentionally hurt you or I won't hit below the belt. So I think because the foundation was already there, again, I feel the same way that she does where you can be more honest, but delicately deliver, right, what you're trying to say and go from there and it builds. Right. Were there downsides? Were there any downsides to being friends at work for you all? Yes, she lived too far away. probably around, you know, the relationships that she had.

And so I always knew that there were sponsors and mentors that she had had. And maybe I was a little jealous of some of those at the time in my 23-year-old self, you know, because I knew that Tiara had the support within the organization. And you kind of always wonder, do I have that same support? Am I getting the same acknowledgement and recognition? So there were times where in those situations, you know, I had to separate myself just a little. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. And that's interesting because there's research that shows that one of the downsides of relationships, friendships at work is that they can be emotionally draining.

And it sounds like that jealousy was was somewhat draining for you. Kristen, is that fair to say? I would say at times. It wasn't a big thing in our friendship. But certainly when it came time for Tiara to get promoted or when we had a sales leader who truly adored Tiara and he would come back to our little area. And he wouldn't't say hi to everyone but he would make a beeline for her and he would chat with her and you know it would happen but I would then you know I would then sort of have to set it aside and say you know they have a good relationship and I'm happy for her about that relationship and just learn to view it as a blessing to her and not not be jealous of it in a way that made me feel like I was less than right and I I think there probably was times where maybe we were having fun

right we were having um you know a lot of times huddling in the cube or chatting in the cube because we were sharing and telling stories that, you know, I do recall us having to say, all right, we better get back to work now. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah.

So other people, we might have annoyed other people. Right. Because we were having too much fun. And I think we had to keep ourselves in check a little bit because we could have, we could have probably spent all afternoon just being girlfriends. Yeah. And we're young twenties. So things are flying out of our mouths that probably shouldn't fly out of our mouths. Yeah. girlfriends. Yeah. And we're young 20s. So things are flying out of our mouths

that probably shouldn't fly out of our mouth. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So looking back now, is there anything you would have wished you had done differently in terms of how you managed your friendship at work? I think for me, now Tiara plays a role in my professional life where she's a thinking partner for me. She also challenges what I say now. Um, you know, if I make a statement, she'll, she'll say, okay, this is what I'm hearing you say. Is this really what you meant? Or you're encountering this difficult situation with, with this individual in your current working environment. Is that them or is that you? She can ask me questions now and probe now on a way more efficient level versus before I felt maybe it was more surface.

I could say that. And now I feel like we're able to just dig in. I could say that. I think I saw her as my competition. And so it took us time to build the relationship and not see her as a competitor, but see her as a ally. And so I feel like there was like lost time. I think that hindsight being 2020 and looking back, at the time I was a more driven and laser focused so I didn't seek more of her other than like a friend meaning you know I'm so laser focused on work or my goals there is a lot more other things to her professionally that I could have tapped into. You know, I think there's always an opportunity to continue to dig a little bit deeper to understand a little a different aspect of somebody else.

Right. I just want to thank you both so much for joining us. This has been such a fun conversation for me. Awesome. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for letting me see my friend. I am tickled that we gave you the opportunity to see each other in person. That's fantastic. Yes. Thank you. Absolutely.

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I loved the wedding story. The wedding story is so great. I think it's such a true test of when your work friend becomes a regular friend when you get invited to their wedding. So we just heard a lot about the upsides of having a work friend from Kristen and Tiara. And now we're going to hear more about the challenges as well as how to minimize them or at least just manage them. We really try to take a holistic look at friendship to say, you know, beyond the sort of feel-good element of it. And there's certainly a lot of really great elements of being in a friendship. How does this affect kind of what happens outside of those boundaries? That's Juliana Pillimer, a professor at NYU Stern.

When she was still a student at Wharton working under Nancy Rothbard, a professor there, she and Nancy wrote a paper on this holistic look. It's called Friends Without Benefits, Understanding the Dark Sides of Workplace Friendship. Nicole and I talked to both of them about it. Nancy and Juliana, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks. We're delighted to be here. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks. We're delighted to be here. Thank you so much. So we've heard from our listeners and we listened to Tiara and to Kristen. And one of the themes, one of the threads that's run through a lot of this is where, you know, work friendship separates from, and I'm using quotes here, real friendship. Where are the boundaries there in

your research? So that's a really interesting question because there's a lot of things that set workplace friendships apart from other types of friendships. And I would, I also want to say that work friendships can be real friendships also, right? They're just – they're slightly different. And some of the key differentiators are that the relationships we have with people at work, they are sometimes voluntary and sometimes they're not voluntary, right? In other types of friendships, you really have a complete choice, right, over whether you associate with this person or not, oftentimes. Whereas in workplace friendships, there's a lot of, I've got to see this person every day, whether I like them or not. A second one is the expectations about work are often very formal. Whereas in friendship relationships, there's an assumption that there's an informality that is really central to that relationship.

And the key goals are not instrumental goals. They're not task-oriented. They're more socio-emotional. last thing that differentiates workplace friendships from other types of friendships is that there is also this norm about how we interact with one another that is, again, in the workplace a little bit more exchange-based and less communal. So you've done research looking at the consequences of workplace friendships specifically. I would just love to hear you talk about what you found in studying workplace friendships. Like what is the good that comes from that

and what is the bad, if there's any? There, and first of all, I think, you know, we're always very careful to say that we don't think friendships are bad. We sort of came at this research thinking, well, friendships are really inevitable at work. And I think, so Nancy brought up a lot of these kind of tensions that can occur when a friendship comes up against these sort of requirements of what it means to be a good employee. And so, you know, when we talk a lot about that, you know, when you are in a meeting

and you want to support your friend, but you sort of, you guys disagree. What are the ways in which that can play out, right? That where you have to consider sort of this friendship versus your role as an employee. That's just one example. I think another thing that sometimes people don't think about is the impact of a friend, you know, we're all a little bit, for lack of a better word, selfish or self-centered, right? You think about, oh, wow, I feel really great in this friendship. It's so great to have this emotional support. But we talk about the way that that friendship can affect people outside of the boundaries of that relationship and make them feel really excluded and left out. Yeah. And I would just add, there's a couple of key outcomes that we look at. One is the

individual outcomes. So if I'm in a friendship with somebody at work, there are some really positive things that happen for me individually. I feel less lonely. I feel more connected. I have a lot more socio-emotional support and all those are all really good things that happen at work but it can also lead to the risk of me being distracted from my tasks at work if I'm having to if I'm getting a lot of socio-emotional support from my friend I'm probably having to reciprocate that socio-emotional support and that might be distracting at certain key moments when I might need to be focusing on other parts of my job. A second piece that is related to what

Juliana talked about earlier is that when I am friends with somebody in my work group, that means I feel really uncomfortable disagreeing with them, even when it's necessary for the betterment of the organization, right, for us to really hash out the details of a problem or hash out divergent viewpoints. Can you give us some practical advice for how you handle, how do you manage conflicts, you know, the potential distraction? How do you deal with feeling like you can't disagree with someone at work because you're their friend? How do you handle these tensions that you talked about? What are some effective strategies for managing them so you preserve your friendships, but you also don't feel like you're giving up something at work. Yeah, I think this awareness that downsides can occur, I think, on an individual level, just having those conversations very early on in the friendship, even before conflict can arise, can help to mitigate some of those threats. What that would look like could be, you know, Juliana and I, you know, talking about how I'm there for her, but I also really need my space sometimes to focus because that's how I need to work or something. So setting almost like a contract or an expectation with your friend up front about what your priorities are and what you need to be able to get your work done effectively as well. One thing that also is really important if you are in a hierarchical friendship

is to be really transparent about how the decision-making processes are being made, right? So Juliana was my doctoral student and we're friends. And so there's a hierarchical divide there, right? And so how do we navigate that, right? How do I make sure that the other PhD students who know that we're friendly, how do they not think that I'm favoring Juliana, right? Those are the kinds of things that definitely were on my mind and I think on her mind as we were writing this paper. So how did you navigate that hierarchical difference? How did you make sure that none of your other students felt like you were playing favorites?

I don't know. How did I? Was I successful, Juliana? I think, I don't know if you're I don't know. I mean, it's impossible. I think, I think we think we were successful, but it would really be the other people who would have to tell us. So what I would say is, I think I kept to very high standards of expectation about the work that she was producing. I think the other thing is that she had another, I had a co-advisor that was advising her on her dissertation. So that really helped, I think, too, to make sure that people knew that it wasn't just me who was evaluating her. So let me share. One of our listeners sent us this question, and I'd love to share it with you and get your thoughts.

She says, in my current job, I learned the hard way of being a manager and befriending an employee. I grew extremely close to an employee, opened up personally as well as professionally, and built her up to rise the corporate ladder with me. I had her back when others didn't and fought for her. I even welcomed her into my home. She ended up putting in her two weeks notice via email to me and I was crushed. I learned quickly that in a new managerial role, I could not get too close to my employees and had to take the emotion out of it. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, it just made me think of there's actually research that we haven't done, but that looks at sort of the emotional help given by managers and how they view it as kind of this like really putting themselves out there.

And employees sometimes can view it the manager was doing her job in mentoring her and it was sort of in her right then to do what was best for her, speaking of the employee, from a career perspective, right? So this gets at the really interesting hierarchical dynamics, but also exactly what we talk about where there's a fuzzy boundary between when you start to have friendships at work, there is a lot of uncertainty around where that role ends and where your role as employee or mentor begins. So, you know, I would probably encourage the writer to say, you know, perhaps adjust your expectations or try to engage in some understanding from this employee's perspective that he or she might not just not have thought that this was a friendship, right? Or not been sure about the nature of that relationship. So there's just always that uncertainty around relational definitions when it occurs at work.

So we also got some questions from listeners about not having friends at work and even losing friends at work. So Kristen and Tiara had to work through one of them leaving, so they no longer work together. And I'm just wondering if you can talk to us about coping with loneliness, whether it's because you don't have friends at work that you're close to or whether it's because someone, a close friend of yours at your job has left and all of a sudden now you're alone and you don't have that workplace friend. How do you deal with that? Yeah, so our colleague Sigal Bar-Said actually has a paper on loneliness at work. And one of the things that she finds is that a key predictor that reduces loneliness at work is having at least one friend at work. You don't have to have a lot of friends at work, but having somebody that you feel connected to, you know, deeply on some, you know, additional level.

Now, what happens when that person leaves, really, it's actually probably really important that you have more than one friend at work, so that you can guard against that loneliness really hitting you at that point. Yeah, I mean, and then if, you know, if there's not that opportunity at work, just being sure that, you know, you have the support around you in your life to kind of cope with that. I think there's always going to be a challenge for people who want to find these close relationships at work, because there might be someone who they think is really great, who just doesn't value it as much or thinks, yeah, of course, when I leave, I'm not going to stay in touch with you. So I think people are spending more and more time at work and it's really easy

to get your whole identity wrapped up in work and just being sure that you maintain some of yourself that's outside of that domain is really important. Psychologists call this self-complexity, right? But if you put all of your eggs in this work basket from a relational standpoint, from an identity standpoint, I think that loneliness is going to hit you a lot harder. So one thing we want to ask you about is what happens when a work friendship goes off the rails? You're too distracted or it's too emotionally draining. You know, those things are actually getting in the way of your job and you kind of need to cut this friendship off. Have you ever experienced that? And what do you do? Where I've seen that happen has been where there's sort of like a hierarchical difference that has arisen where people were more peers and then one of them is promoted and the other person has a really hard time dealing with that.

And they can't leave necessarily, right? And so the way people deal with it is through a lot of silence. Cold war. Simmering, which is the cousin of ghosting. Yeah. I think, you know, reflecting my own, I think, I think I've had experiences where I meet someone who, in my case, you know, the most recent example is being a PhD student. You meet another student, maybe in a different department, and feel this immediate sense of like, we're really similar and this is going to be great. And I think you have to be – and so it wasn't that I had to break up with the person, but it was this feeling of, uh-oh.

Like we have different expectations for how much we're going to talk or spend time with each other. Where it's kind of awkward to say to someone like, no, I want to see you once a month and you want to see me once a week. And I'm not going to hang out with you every Wednesday. You know, I've had that before. And so, Juliana, how did you handle that? How did you avoid the cold war? I had to. I think I disappointed that person.

I didn't explicitly say it. I think I just didn't agree to invitations to hang out as frequently as that person wanted to. And over time, the message was sent. And luckily, in this case, it wasn't someone who was in my department. That's a less dangerous situation, right? Because you don't have to naturally run into that person. There's not as much overlap in terms of like, who you're reporting to. I felt badly, but I think establishing there, again, there's this nebulous period where you're figuring out the boundaries of the friendship and you might go too fast at first. And so I think, yeah, I had to disappoint that person. I had to disappoint

that person and that didn't feel good. But I had to look out for my sort of like instrumental needs first, which was I can't spend that much time. What about getting a work relationship back on the rails after there's a rupture? How do you do that? That's really hard. I mean, one of the things that the trust literature talks about is that trust, so when trust is violated, it's really easy to lose trust and it's really hard to regain it. I think it takes a lot of work to rebuild a ruptured relationship. Sometimes you can do it because – out of necessity, right?

You see that person all the time. And, you know, you basically, I think you have to do is you have to lay out on the table what happened, right? And how you saw it and try to be open to what their perspective is too. Because I think that what happens when these, when any relationship goes wrong, but certainly in workplace relationships is that we we really are thinking about our own perspective on the situation and and the other person and the other person's thinking about their perspective and then we're not really giving the other person the benefit of the doubt that they that there was anything that both of us did wrong so you have to acknowledge that you had a part in it too, and be willing to acknowledge that you did, you know, you did something wrong as well. I think otherwise,

you can't, you can't restore that relationship. And I think that there usually has to be a pretty strong incentive to do so, right? Like you are going to be on a consulting team and you're going to be, you know, the next eight weeks with this person every day. And, you know, it's really hard to ghost them, you know, when you're, when you have to work with them and see them every day like that. Yeah. I think Nancy's point about kind of being real and putting it all on the table is really interesting, this idea of like how much of your, you know, quote unquote authentic self do you want to bring to work? How much of your, quote, whole self do you want to bring to work? This is a domain that I'm researching and certainly a lot of people are talking about. there's a way to sort of be boundedly authentic where you're not totally unfiltered. But I think that people really respect, even if they're not happy with, honesty.

And I think a lot of the issues can be avoided from sort of tacit misunderstandings where you kind of did something and someone interpreted it in a certain way and no one ever talked about it again. And I think the Cold War, I think that that probably happens in real-life relationships, but at work people are so focused on the norms of not wanting to cause a disruption that it actually paradoxically can cause a disruption. So I think I totally agree with Nancy's strategy of kind of owning up and checking in hey, listen, I'm really sorry about that I couldn't make it to this event that you invited me to. I really wanted to, but this is what happened. And I hope you know, blah. And it's just so like, there wasn't any opportunity for kind of that small kernel of dissatisfaction to

turn into something more. Great. Thank you so much. And thanks to both of you for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by

Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. I was actually surprised that Tiara and Kristen didn't think about the downsides more of being friends at work. Because I found the downsides that Nancy and Juliana talked about to be really compelling and true for my own friendships. Which ones in particular? Well, the one that really stood out for me was the making other people feel excluded. Yeah. And I think that that Kristen and Tiara identified it, you know, especially when they were talking about where we laughed a lot, we were loud, we probably interrupted other people's work days.

But I do wonder if other people saw what was happening and just felt left out. Yeah. Another downside that Nancy and Juliana talked about, it might be when you have friends at work, it might be harder for you to disagree with them, to say, like, I don't think that's the right move, or do something that you would have to do professionally. That seems tricky. Although I find the opposite, because I feel like when you're friends with someone, you sort of, you can be a little more honest. You don't have to sugarcoat things. I mean,

you both know I was really good friends or am really good friends with Catherine who used to be the editor of hbr.org. And when we worked together, sometimes I'd come to her with an idea and she'd go, oh, that's a bad idea. You know, very direct. And she wouldn't, I'm sure she wouldn't do that to other people she was

working with, but I felt like, oh yeah, okay, I can see how you think that's a bad idea. So she was sort of more direct as a result of our friendship, not less so. This is something I've had to deal with that I think is super tricky. A work friend shares a secret that you as a manager really shouldn't keep secret. What do you do? That is a hard one. Yeah. And I think that's where you really have to think about what hat are you wearing in that conversation?

I've written two articles about what to do when a peer becomes your boss. And one of the pieces of advice is to be very clear. We are talking right now as friends. We are talking as colleagues. And sometimes you have to be that straightforward and that direct before the conversation starts so that if something like that, something secret comes up that as a manager, you're supposed to take care of. But as a friend, you would just listen. You know which hat you're supposed to be wearing. Yeah. You know, we did these interviews. We've published a lot on friendship at work and how having friends at work is good. But now we know that research shows that

there are downsides to having friendships at work. But have you ever thought about friendship at work in that way? Like I was thinking about my own experience and I like I don't know if I would say that I had success or that I've had benefits from having friends at work for my career or that I've had, you know, serious career repercussions because I've had friends at work. I've just never thought about it in that way. Me either. No, it's never been like I need three friends at work and then I'll be happy. Right. Never. Yeah. Well, I know that if I don't have a pal at work, I will not be happy. I need someone I can really confide in. But has that, as you've gotten more senior in your career, has that gotten harder? Yeah.

I mean, is there like a smaller pool of people to choose from? Well, it's just you have to be more careful. If it's someone who's not on your level in terms of authority in the organization, then you have to be really careful about what you say. You really can't break confidences and you can't undermine other people or the organization. And it's harder to find people who, you know, just where you have the chemistry, the friendship chemistry anyway, but someone to whom you can talk freely is extra hard to find. But you can find people who maybe aren't in your part of the organization.

That makes life a lot easier. But, you know, again, it's not like a dating app thing. You don't swipe left or right. It's who you run into in a meeting who makes you laugh and who you want to go get a cup of coffee with, right? Are you worried about, you know, the signals that you might send in befriending some people? You know, as a manager, as a senior leader, some people might say you're playing favorites or, you know, doing that kind of thing. I never thought about it until it got played back to me a few years ago.

How so? Oh, of course so-and-so got the assignment. You and so-and-so are friends. Ooh. And then I realized I have to pay attention to that. Yeah. How did you respond to that? Well, at first I was, I got a little defensive, which is exactly how you build credibility.

I don't know what I said in the moment, but I ended up chewing on that for a while and realizing, A, I didn't want to lose the friendship because it's someone who matters to me. But realizing at the same time that I have to be very negative. And so putting up boundaries between yourself and that other person, I think, is really helpful. And that doesn't have to be, you know, I can't talk to you right now. It doesn't have to be harsh, right? It doesn't have to be sort of like a pushing away of the other person. But you can say, you know, I'm not available for coffee today. Let's do it tomorrow. And you just sort of start putting distance between the times that you spend together. negative or the person's coming to you with all their problems, you can gently say, I'd love to

talk about something a little more positive today. Or you can even say, I totally see that problem. Here's an opportunity I see for us, right? Just sort of gently reframing it so it's not so negative. I don't think like friend breakups are really necessary. Oh my God. Talk about setting the stage for a lifetime of awkwardness, or at least until you leave. Right. Yeah. But I think you can slowly, you know, just carefully and gently just, you know, see the person less often, try to make the conversation more positive. And even sometimes if they stop by your desk, you can switch to email, just sort of decrease the intensity of the interaction. Okay, wait, we've been talking about the downsides.

Can we talk about the upsides? Because they're so good. Because there's so many good upsides. They make work fun and they, you know, they kind of reinforce what's good about work for you. Yeah. Yeah. They get you excited about coming in each day. Like I get so much energy from friends at work because we have amazing conversations about things we're excited about.

Ideas that we have and it's just fun it's such a good break to have those throughout the day i feel like it helps me stay productive and it helps maintain my my energy and the real friends that you have the ones who are really rooting for you they can give you so much sustenance when you're feeling tired or you're kind of you know you're you're a little blue. They really can just change the channel for you in your head. Yeah. I don't come to the office all that often.

And one of my friends here, when I've been gone for a while, will leave candy on my desk. And it's just the sweetest thing. And usually I'm coming into a day full of meetings and stressed out, and then there's just like a Twix on my chair, and it makes me so happy. That's really sweet. I mean, literally. Yeah. That's our show.

I'm Nicole Torres. I'm Amy Bernstein. And I'm Amy Gallo. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Adam Buchholz, Mary Du, Rob Eckhart, Erica Truxler, and J.M. Olajars. It's not too late to register for our live event on November 12th at Harvard Business School. We're talking about conflict.

Come see us. And hang out with us. And eat snacks. Snacks? There will be snacks, confirmed. We have confirmed snacks. Do we know what snacks? No. Salty snacks or sweet snacks?

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