Welcome to the new manager podcast.
I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello and welcome.
I'm glad you're here. And I hope you're doing well as
we get started today. I wanted to invite you to come
and work with me. I am taking new clients in my
coaching practice and we'll have six months together to help you
be a human who works with humans.
And that means that we get to address communication skills.
Shipbuilding skills, how to give feedback all of the Imposter
syndrome that will flare up all of the things and challenges
that come up along the way, in your career as you work with
other humans. So if that is something that you
want to talk with me about go to my website, I'll put a link in
the show notes and you'll find out how to set up a consult with
me. So we can have a conversation
about what we can do together, what you can expect from
coaching and start to To create a road map of how to get you
from where you are to where you want to be.
Now, today for our topic, I wanted to talk about friends at
work and I am thinking of this because I just spent the weekend
with some very dear friends, we met when we were working
together. A few years ago, we've continued
to stay in touch to maintain this really beautiful friendship
and I was really just appreciating.
How wonderful it is to have these friendships at work,
because work is such a big part of our lives and I think it's
easy to sometimes get over focused on the work part.
And by that, I mean, you know, you are more than the work that
you do. There will be times when you are
not working. You're in transition or you are
choosing to. Be a full-time caregiver or
you've been laid off or, you know, you quit or there will be
something that is happening in your life when you're not
working. And that can be such a difficult
time because so much of our identity and our sense of value
can get wrapped up in our work. But you are so much more than
that as a human. And when we develop these
friendships through our work, that nourish us as humans.
I think it both reminds us that we are more than the job that we
do and also it becomes part of what makes our work experience
satisfying that when we have these friendships in the
workplace it's part of what makes the whole experience
something that we actually, you know, want want to do.
So I've been reflecting on friends at work.
Work and in the manager context, you know, sometimes this will
come up because there might be a question of well, do what should
I be friends with the people that I manage?
How does that work? The most simple way I want you
to think about that. Is that when you are in a
professional managerial role, meaning you have real power over
someone in terms of their performance review, perhaps?
Repay. You might be the one who
recommends them for promotions or who makes decisions about
raises or salaries. That is a relationship that
deserves a lot of respect, understanding that there is a
real power dynamic. In addition to the Friendship,
when you see and understand that, it makes it easier to both
be a great friend and also be a great manager.
So, thinking in terms of, you know what, My role and what is
my responsibility to this other person and I want to share one
example of that. I was coaching someone a few
years ago, she had been friends with a co-worker and then she
had been promoted to their manager, and she was really
struggling because she didn't ever want to have a direct
conversation about work. She was really afraid of
Confrontation, she was afraid of hurting her friend's feelings.
She, you know, avoided Added giving feedback that would help
improve this person's performance.
And so then when it came to the performance review, she said,
yeah, you know, here, all these things that you didn't meet the
expectations on you didn't do as well.
And her friend was really upset because she thought, you know,
you're my friend and you're my manager.
It's your job to tell me when I'm not on track.
And the, you know, this person, I was coaching who was the
manager, just felt so bad. And she felt so, Fused and she
didn't know how to distinguish her friendship role and her
manager role. And she just kept saying, you
know, this, this person she should know.
She should know what she's supposed to do.
She's been at this job a long time.
I shouldn't have to tell her, like she just felt so bad and
so, so uncomfortable about it. And I think a lot of us find can
find ourselves in that position without totally realizing what's
happening. But we can Feel this resistance
to having a direct conversation because it can feel like we're
criticizing or being unkind when we do that.
And so first, I just want to offer the perspective that when
we are direct we can do that with so much kindness and the
mindset is, the reason I'm being direct is because I want to be
transparent with you because I want to give you the information
that you're going to need. In order to reach the goals that
you have or, you know, it's my job.
And also as someone who cares about you, I want to make sure
that we're on the same page and that, you know, if there's
anything that we need to clear the air about or to, you know,
untangle in our understanding. Let's do that now.
So we have time to get connected on the right path together,
rather than Then have it come up as a surprise during a
performance review. So having that clarity about,
yes, there can be at this friendship element but we really
want to respect the position that we're in when we are, you
know, officially managing or officially in a like a position
of higher power and especially related to their compensation,
into their advancement and development.
So, a couple of things that I wanted to You share with you
related to this, like to the idea of friends at work and
especially if you are managing someone and you feel a
friendship towards them. Or if you were peers, and then
you get promoted and now you're no longer their peer, you're
actually their manager. So here are some things to think
about one is with friendships at work?
What makes them enjoyable is that we enjoy like we Boy this
person we enjoy working with them.
We enjoy you know like like being in this work experience
together. There's something enjoyable
about this person that is part of that.
Friendship, there's often always an admiration.
So, when I think about the friends that I spent time with
and even the ones who I've known, you know, for many years
that I worked with when I think about them, there's Element of
gosh. I so admire them I admire who
they are as people. I admired the work that they do,
I admire the way that they show up there's an element of
admiration. What's also present is a lot of
respect. I have so much respect for their
perspective, for their worldview, for their experience
for their contributions. Like I just have so much respect
for For who they are and for what they bring and number four,
there's a lot of trust and trust is that sense of I believe that
this person has my back. If I make a mistake, I trust
that they will point it out to me in a kind way.
They won't hide it. I believe that they will help me
whether that means help me to correct it.
Or, you know, if I need an extra set of hands, In a project like
they'll be right by me and they'll be with it or what I'm
thinking, specifically, when I was doing the team coaching few
years ago and all these different companies, sometimes
we would be staffed together. We go into an organization and
some, some kind something would go wrong.
Like we didn't have the right number of rooms for the, you
know, training. We were going to do or some
there would be some Technology issue where our technology was
not working with their technology and so we'd have to
Pivot very quickly and make a decision about what we were
going to do that day. If the plan that we had wasn't
going to work. And so that element of trust,
you know, if I was the lead coach and I made a decision,
we're going to go in this direction.
I could trust that they would pivot right with me, be right on
board and we just make it work. If they were the one who is lead
coach for the day, I would trust their judgment call and whatever
they decided to do. It was like, yes, we'll make
this work. I, you know, I trust you to
decide we're in this together and we have our genuine.
Like we have this genuine desire for everyone to do.
Well, here and the other thing with like this combination of
trust and respect and Admiration and enjoyment.
Another big part of that for me was understanding.
We can all have really different personalities and kind of
different ways of working but it's seen as something of value.
So, for example, you know, I'm a very introverted person and so,
you know, one of the energies that I tend to bring into the
room is one, that is going to be really safe for introverts.
Really calming, really grounding?
That's one of my superpowers. And one of my friends has really
different energy. Really big energy really
sparkling really outgoing and one of the reasons we work so
well together is that our Styles complement each other
brilliantly and so there was never any feeling of competition
or feeling not appreciated. Because we had different styles
like the element of enjoyment and admiration and respect and
Trust included our different styles and our unique energies
and the qualities that we brought to our team and to the
work that we did together. And so when I think about
friendships at work, I really think it's like gold when you
can find and create a nurturing. Your relationships that feel
good like that. Where you feel?
You know, every time I go to work, I am working with people
that I enjoy, who I admire, who I respect, who I trust and with
whom. I feel all of that in return.
It's wonderful when we have that, we don't always, but my
hope is that you have someone or a few folks like that in your
work. And that you can actually create
and cultivate that intentionally.
So that is what I really wanted to share with you today.
The sense that friends at work is part of what makes our work
life. So rewarding that when you're a
manager, one of the important perspectives to hold is to
understand your role and responsibilities to your team as
that manager. Even while you hold a friendship
towards them, we still want to have that Clarity.
Like, what is my role as your manager?
What are my responsibilities to you, like specifically as a
manager, separate from being a friend, and actually, the other
thing I wanted to share with respect to friendships at work,
and this might seem really obvious to you, but I'm going to
say it anyways, because I remember early in my career with
such a new thing, which is You know, throughout our early life.
So you know, from age zero till like age, 21, 22.
If we are growing up in a, you know, in a school system where
you move through different grades, based on age, when you
think about that, so many of our friendships are based around
being the same age as other people and one of the
interesting things that happens when Move into an adult work.
Environment is. For now, meeting people of so
many different ages and in terms of our professional life and our
work life, this is so great to have friendships with people who
are different ages than you, who are at different stages of their
career than you because there's so much to learn about your your
industry, your organization about yourself.
You can learn so much when you have friendships with people who
are different ages than you. And what I found is that that
can be kind of a weird thing to do at first because I think
we're so conditioned. As you know, younger people to
be very deferential to our elders or at least, that's kind
of how it was for me. So maybe you can relate to that
too and it can sometimes feel a little bit weird when we And
ourselves as peers with people who are much older or much
younger. And so the element of
self-awareness that we want to bring is that, you know, knowing
for ourselves, am I comfortable with this?
And if not, why that's something we can start to investigate.
But there's so much value when we cultivate friendships with
people of different ages of different generations.
And I found To as a coach and facilitator with some of the
groups that I have worked with. It can be really interesting
when we have folks who are of different ages in an industry
talking about and sharing stories of their experience in
that industry. There's so much that you can
learn from that. So I wanted to just give a
little specific note around that too.
Is that as you think about your friends at work and the
friendships that you cultivate Pay attention to, and value the
friendships that you build with people who are of different ages
than you as well. Because they're all going to
have such unique perspectives, stories, information, and
understanding to share. And remember that also goes both
ways, which means that you no matter what your age is and no
matter what you're, you know, how much You've spent in that
organization. You also have a valuable
perspective and worldview to share as well with people who
are both younger and older than you are.
So that is what I wanted to share with you today.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and I'll talk to
you next time if you know it's time to level up but you feel
your perfectionism Self Doubt and uncertainty getting in the
way then come work with me. We'll have six months of
one-on-one coaching and it all starts by going to my website,
chemicalguys.com coaching and joining my waitlist talk to you
soon.