The age-old warning not to mix business with pleasure has plenty of relevance for today’s workers. With social media making it even trickier to determine how close to get to colleagues (to “friend” or not to “friend” your boss and co-workers on Facebook, for example), making decisions such as whether or not to take a job with someone you already have a close personal connection with can be difficult.
While friends may serve as the quickest and most convenient “in” to a company, they may represent an ultimately thornier path if the job entails actually working with, or for, a friend. No doubt there are some advantages to the arrangement as well, on both sides — so a prudent course of action is to weigh the pros and cons before making your decision. Here are some things to think about before taking on something that might be more complicated than it looks on the surface.
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Will you be annoyed when your friend doesn’t play favorites? In the world outside of work, it’s a given that our friends will favor us over others who don’t share the same bond and history. But if you plan to work with or for a friend, this is the first expectation that you must let go of. Ethically, if your friend becomes your boss, she won’t be able to treat you any differently than the others on the team — in fact, she may feel she needs to bend over backward and favor others over you to avoid any hint of preferential treatment. Think about whether you’re OK with this possibility, or if it might interfere with how you feel about your friend when you’re not at work, thus putting the friendship at risk.
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Are you prepared for the friendship to change? One consideration you should weigh in your decision is if you’ll be devastated when your connection to your friend morphs and changes. It’s doubtful that the experience of working with a friend will allow you to leave your current relationship dynamic — both in and out of work — unchanged. Interacting with each other under the constraints of workplace politics and culture — particularly if in the new roles of boss and subordinate — is a very different scenario than the friendship of equals you have presumably enjoyed to date. If the friendship is special or precious to you, think about whether you’re willing to see a different side of your pal that may damage the trust or reliability that you’ve built thus far.
Are you ready to cede the last word? In personal friendships, there may be some form of power imbalance, but you can generally rely on having an equal hand in dialogue and repartee. In the workplace, if you’re reporting to a friend, one thing is certain: You won’t be the final decision-maker. If you disagree on an issue with your friend outside of work — where to go to the movies or which restaurant to eat dinner at, for example — you might come to a compromise or agree to switch the power of selection next time. But with your boss in charge of the bottom line and responsible for the team’s decisions, you can bet that if there’s a disagreement between the two of you, you won’t emerge as the winner — this time or the next time, either.
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Will you view your friend’s actions as disloyal? Business is business, yet if it’s a friend in the role of boss, you may interpret certain choices that she makes as going against your principles. Say in your friendship prior to working together you both railed against the idea of employers who don’t let staff work from home. Now that your friend is in the driver’s seat, she may start singing a different tune, wanting you and others to have more face time in the office. Will you hold that against her and see it as a personal affront, or will you respect her choices as the leader and follow suit?
Working with or for a friend is not all bad news. On the plus side, if you can see beyond the potential differences that may arise through wearing different hats, you could have a head start on an enviable working relationship. After all, you have insight into what makes your friend/boss tick that could help you get along exceptionally well together in your new capacities. By using what you know wisely, you just might succeed in elevating your personal friendship to a new level, by becoming effective colleagues as well as buddies.
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Should You Work for a Friend? originally appeared on usnews.com
