When Your Pal Becomes Your Boss
Three people from the same small office were all up for a single promotion. Peers and co-workers, the three inhabited that nebulous land far past acquaintance but somewhere short of soul mate.
The new job would turn one of these three equals into the others’ boss. And the only thing certain beyond that one fact was what the decision would do to the office dynamic: change it completely, and not necessarily for the best.
Jeff was considered the biggest flight risk; no promotion, and he’d be gone. Rhonda had the broadest experience and thought she was a shoo-in. Cynthia had seniority, but not much more.
In reality--and this is reality, massaged a bit to protect the players--Jeff got the job.
Rhonda adapted. Cynthia stormed into Jeff’s office with a chip on her shoulder and a diatribe: “It’s unfair! It’s sexist! And I won’t talk to you again unless it’s about business!”
Can this workplace be saved? Sort of, or at least enough to get the job done. What this case shows, though, is the bad side of a good and common decision: promoting from within. While it happens all the time, its consequences are rarely discussed, even though they raise major issues in terms of corporate management, office politics and interpersonal relationships.
What exactly happens when your pal becomes your boss?
In the abstract, it’s a positive step for both a company and its workers, a sign that working for the firm can offer a future.
And “if the individual who’s promoted is respected among the peers and is viewed as bringing added value, it will usually work its way out--unless someone has their own agenda,” says Cathy Balin, executive vice president at the Los Angeles executive search firm Bench International.
But no matter whether it’s a smooth transition or a rocky one, when a peer becomes a boss an office changes for everyone involved, and most of the relationships in it change too.
Sometimes such an event echoes the worst part of dysfunctional family life: sibling rivalry run amok. Sometimes workers involved in the switch must be reassigned. Sometimes the friendship dies. Sometimes the work relationship sours. Sometimes all of the above happens.
“When a friend becomes the boss, there can be very powerful forces on both parties,” says Gordon Patterson, director of individual leadership practices at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C. “For some people it causes a redefinition or reexamination of what friendship is, what it was with this person and what ought it to be.”
For the person who was passed over in favor of his friend, there can be feelings of anger, perhaps a sense of unfairness. There can also be a sense of failure, of “Where did I go wrong? What did I do wrong?”
The employee “has to get rid of tremendous amounts of jealousy, because it’s really the old-fashioned sibling rivalry model,” says Adele Scheele, director of the career center at Cal State Northridge. “The other one is the favored one, not you. Unless you get clear of that, old sabotaging tricks take place.” For the new boss, there can be a form of survivor’s guilt, of timidity in filling big new shoes. Conversely, the just-promoted manager can err in the opposite direction, depending on her sense of entitlement. She can say, “Well, I’m in a new chair; it gives me certain responsibilities,” Patterson notes. She can say, “I’ve got to be directive, tough, objective.”
But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can be promoted and supervise your friends. You can stay in your old job and deal happily with your new boss--aka your old pal. Here are a few key strategies that can help keep a changed workplace collegial.
DON’T: Talk--the wrong way. When a person gets plucked from the ranks and promoted to supervisor, that new manager is privy to a whole wealth of information about the workplace. And a new taboo is born: Don’t share it with your friends.
Also, water-cooler gossip about office mates--often a staple between co-workers who are pals--has got to be out of bounds when one person is promoted. For the new manager, “that’s off-limits, and I need to tell my friend the way I conceptualize my responsibilities,” says Patterson.
He recommends a conversation that goes something like this, prompted by the new boss: “I want to honor my responsibilities, as well as honor the friendship. I simply cannot be as free and open in sharing. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be your friend. But I need to acknowledge that there are some boundaries and parameters that I have to impose upon myself.”
DO: Talk--the right way. Keeping lines of communication open between workers and managers is always important to an operation that functions well. But it’s crucial when the dynamic changes and you end up supervising your friends and former peers.
And the first conversation that needs to occur is about that very change itself. “The new manager needs to sit down and have an expectations exchange with the subordinate,” says Beverly Kaye, president of Beverly Kaye & Associates in Sherman Oaks.
The new boss should point out the changed relationship and say, “Here are my concerns. Here are my expectations. What are yours?” Kaye instructs. “I bet that doesn’t go on enough. It’s incumbent on the boss or a good, savvy employee, who says, ‘Our relationship has just shifted. Can we talk about how we can maintain both the friendship and the work relationship?’ ”
DON’T: Fall into the compassion trap, keeping bad news from friends because it’s so awkward to say. “Most managers want to avoid saying anything negative,” says Eric Herzog, president of Quest Consulting & Training in Pacific Palisades.
“As a supervisor or manager, you have certain responsibilities you didn’t have otherwise,” Herzog notes. “They deal with people-management issues, to coach or counsel someone. To someone you were a peer of, you may have to say, ‘You need to do this better.’ You may have never done this in the past.”
DO: Find a new peer group if you’ve been promoted away from your lunch buddies and are now the bearer of bad news. This is among the first things a new supervisor should do, most management experts advise, because everyone needs support, including the new boss.
“Once you assume responsibility, it’s no longer equal,” Scheele says. “You feel that you want to be considered one of the guys, but being promoted upends that balance and your peer group is different.”
What about the people who ignore the new imbalance and try to pretend that everything is the same? “They are not good bosses,” Scheele says.
DON’T: Undermine your new boss if you are the employee left behind, especially if--friendship or no--you figure the job should really have been yours.
Even good relationships can crack under the strain of a new workplace reality, and “it is not worth your professional position to either be perceived as a gossip or a person who has negative feelings about a colleague,” says Florence Stone, a senior editor at the American Management Assn. and author of several management books.
Venting in the office can get a person a spot at the top of a downsizing list, says Stone. She advises this posture toward peers-turned-supervisors: “Congratulate them and adjust to it mentally.”
DO: Get training if you are promoted to a managerial position. One of the biggest pitfalls a company can engineer for employees whose abilities are admired is to promote them from doing the job to supervising others and think that they will know how to do it naturally.
Companies “will take people from the ranks, try to find someone they believe to be a good supervisor, but unfortunately they don’t give them training in the difference between being a manager and being an employee,” Herzog says.
Lest such suggestions leave you never ever wanting to be promoted to supervisor, Kaye has a caveat. Sometimes, she says, being boss to your pals can actually be the best work relationship possible.
“If you know someone as a friend, it gives you more information into how to motivate them,” Kaye says. “If I only know your skill set, I cannot motivate you properly. . . . With your skills, I know how to use your competence. From your interests, I know how to give you joy and satisfaction. From your values, I know how to make you committed.”
Even Kaye, however, is surprised at how well Cathy Balin and Denise DeMan get along in their Los Angeles office. The two women met nearly 30 years ago, as students at San Diego State University.
“We met the day I was moving out of my studio apartment to the high-rent one-bedroom district,” says DeMan, now 46, and president of Bench International. “She was moving into my old apartment and was complaining how I didn’t clean the oven well enough, which I later found out was very ironic, because she didn’t cook. We’ve been best friends ever since.”
They have stood up for each other at “our various marriages, and I will not tell you how many there are,” DeMan says.
Balin, 47, is godmother to DeMan’s son. Balin delighted in DeMan’s success, as DeMan built Bench International from a small company that recruited scientists into the vibrant firm it is today.
And DeMan watched Balin revel in her job as vice president of human resources for a major health-care benefits administrator. Balin helped lead what began as a small family-owned firm into a giant with 2,000 employees and then help guide the company through two buyouts.
“It took me 11 years to get her to agree to come on board,” DeMan says. “It was the longest search I ever did.”
What she got when Balin joined the company and later became her partner was “her values, her unbelievable, innate perceptions about human beings,” DeMan says. “I had a number of people working for me who thought I was insane. They said, ‘Are you crazy? Don’t you know it’ll be disruptive to you and to us?”
The friendship grew stronger, the business thrived, and DeMan feels that she has an utterly trustworthy other half.
Balin came into the company having accomplished a great deal already in her career. That probably made it easier to be No. 2 to her best friend. “In my mind, I absolutely report to Deedee,” Balin says.
“I think the dynamic that came into play for us is that we both had undying respect for the other,” Balin says. “That does not waver. We also are quite different, so we bring different strengths to the company.”
Yes, there was some discomfort at the beginning, coming in from the outside as the boss’ best friend, but that smoothed out in time. Today, when DeMan and Balin occasionally fight, it’s always about money.
“It’s always about wanting to give the other one more than the other one wants,” says DeMan. “Sometimes we sit back and laugh. Most people fight for quite the opposite reason.”
