If you’ve read any of my blog entries, you know that one of my core tenants of leadership is that a leader has no greater goal or responsibility than helping the members of their team achieve their goals. This obviously requires getting to know each team member well in order to understand what their goals are. It’s natural to build empathy and become close to your team members as you get to know them, as you make their dreams and desires the purpose of your day, as you enable them to grow beyond their current role and abilities, but how close is too close.
I will say that that empathy is absolutely necessary to be an effective leader. It will motivate you and help you push through the hard times, but it can be a double-edged sword if you lose perspective and a professional distance. Employees who feel that you are more buddy than boss may be tempted to push the boundaries trusting that their friend wouldn’t punish them, that their special relationship means the rules don’t apply to them.
This attitude can be as destructive to the morale of a team as almost any other team dysfunction. If any team members are perceived to be receiving special treatment and avoiding punishment for bad behavior, then team members who are doing everything right won’t be motivated to follow the rules either. The choice then becomes to allow discipline to slip across the entire team, or to punish your friend and risk losing a good employee. The only good way out of this situation is to never allow it to arise in the first place.
This can be harder than it sounds. Building a positive relationship with your team members, establishing trust, participating in team building exercises are all valuable activities, and are designed to bring the team closer. How does a leader who has organized and participated in team lunches, after work socials, and holiday parties with their team keep a professional distance? For people like myself, who are naturally social and build relationships easily, this is a real danger.
Maintaining Authority
I believe that, like all leadership activities, one should start with one’s goals in mind. What are you looking to achieve and what are you trying to avoid through these social activities? You want your team to see you as a person, to trust you, to believe that you have their best interests at heart. At the same time, it is critical that you maintain their respect, be someone for them to emulate, model behaviors you would like to see in your team, and above all maintain authority.
I’m not talking about the authority given you by your position at the company: formal authority. I see formal authority as a tool of last resort when all other avenues have failed. Using formal authority is an admission of failure, and should be avoided whenever possible. Leadership, when done properly, makes formal authority unnecessary in almost all situations.
The authority that I mean is informal. It’s the authority granted to you by your team in the way they listen to you not because you’re the boss, but because they respect your opinion. Informal authority gives a leader’s voice weight in a way that formal authority never can. Informal authority is what allows you to correct your employee’s behavior through a simple side conversation instead of an HR-approved Performance Improvement Plan. It’s this authority that must be guarded at all costs.
Create Space
One way to maintain professional distance is to decline invitations to lunch. Lunch is when people vent their frustrations, complain about their work, and, sometimes, their boss. This venting can be healthy and necessary for an employee, and they can’t do it if you’re always there. Give them space to talk to each other about what’s bothering them, and if you’re running a strong, healthy team, then the other team members will talk the employee through the problem for you.
It’s good to not have to solve everyone’s problems, and if anything really important is said, you’ll probably hear about it anyway. Eating lunch with the boss might be fun and not overly stressful sometimes, but it’s definitely a different experience than a lunch that’s just with peers. It’s still a team building exercise, just one you don’t have to always participate in. This will set the expectation that you will join sometimes, but not always, thus leaving room for different conversations to occur at different times.
Always at Work
When you do choose to join your team for a social event, it’s critical that you be cognizant of your behavior. I tend to be very informal with my team both in the office and out, but I would never allow myself to get drunk, tell inappropriate jokes, or display any behavior that would undermine my authority. The easiest way to ensure this is to think that if you are with anyone from you company, anywhere, ever, then you are at work. If you can’t say it or do it at work, then you can’t say it or do it if you are with someone from work.
For me, this is a rule that leaves no room for compromise. It can be difficult sometimes to remember to behave differently in some social situations than others depending on who you’re with, but as I wrote earlier, the consequences of a misstep that could compromise your informal authority could be disastrous. If you feel that treating all social situations with coworkers as a work event is excessive or not something that you can trust yourself to do, then I would strongly advise you to avoid these situations altogether. It is far better to remain a distant leader than one who is too close to the team.
You know you’re striking the right balance when your team comes to you with problems, and actively polices each other without your intervention. That speaks to a healthy team dynamic that needs to be carefully nurtured. The leader sets the example, models the company’s culture, and is responsible for cultivating a healthy team dynamic. Leadership takes discipline, empathy, and moderation, and a strategic leader would never put their team or their position at risk for a night of socializing.