My good friend at work is about to be my supervisor. How do we do this?

August 28, 2019 8:25 AM

My dear friend whom I met at work, who has turned into someone I socialize with outside of work, is about to become my supervisor. She mentioned this to her supervisor who said there’s no reason why we can’t still be friends. But I think both of us are nervous. Everyone knows we are close and we don’t want to imply any favoritism. How do we make this work?
posted by girlmightlive to Work & Money (11 answers total)

My fellow engineer and sometime drinking buddy became my manager last year. Best I can tell, your friend has the hard part.

Being absolutely deadpan honest with each other both in private meetings and in the company of coworkers is the best way to stave off any grumbling.

(It may help that I'm ten years his senior, so my experience vs his authority balance out.)
posted by notsnot at 8:33 AM on August 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

If they're good at their job, it shouldn't be too difficult to maintain a friendship outside work, just avoid asking favors or for treatment from them that you wouldn't ask of another supervisor and expect they would follow the same set of rules with you. Depending on the workplace it might not even be especially notable to anyone. I've worked in places where some of the supervisors and workers would hang out after hours and it didn't raise any issues. But if there's any workplace tension or your friend isn't very good at the job it could be more difficult as criticisms might need to be raised or unfair expectation or workplace disruption over alleged or real favoritism could create conflict.

In the latter cases, the friendship might be tested or the situation made difficult, but maintaining a professional distance while at work is the best option for trying to stay ahead of the problem. Keep good relationships with your other co-workers and make sure they get proper credit and aren't taking on duties that should fall to you, if your friend inadvertently does play favorites, and that should hopefully let your co-workers know you aren't cutting them off or otherwise taking advantage of the situation.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:00 AM on August 28, 2019

I've seen this work out fine many times over the years. Far worse would be if you had brought him over from another company -- in this case everyone knows both of you in the first place.

The way that you avoid the appearance of favoritism is, well, to be constantly aware of the potential for the appearance of favoritism. Make it a point to avoid the appearance in public, and keep in touch with the other team members to find out if they're feeling like you're giving preferential treatment to your friend.

For your own part, make sure you do everything by the book when it comes to your friend at work.

I wouldn't worry about it too much though. Since people know both of you already and know the history of the situation no one is going to kick up too much fuss unless you start flagrantly showing favoritism.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:06 AM on August 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

(whups, I got that backwards. Your friend is going to be the manager. It all applies though.)
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:08 AM on August 28, 2019

This happened to me, except I am the manager. My friend doesn't appreciate getting feedback on their writing or presentations, because they see it as a lack of trust. I know this, because they told me. Unfortunately, English is not their first language, and the work needs to be polished before it can leave our group. It's not a comfortable situation, and they terminated the friendship. I hope things go better for you!
posted by pizzazz at 11:21 AM on August 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

My very best friend in the world and I have traded off being coworkers and each others' supervisors for about 25 years now, and I just hired a really great friend I used to work with (and we hang out all the time together) as a direct employee of mine. It's possible to do, but you do have to draw distinct lines around what's work and what's personal. It can be difficult at first, but as long as those boundaries are strong and respected by both people, it can be really fun to work for and/or with your friends.
posted by xingcat at 11:39 AM on August 28, 2019

My boss became one of my best friends. Like he hangs out with my family, my kids have accidentally called him dad, and my parents invited him to Christmas.

It is occasionally fraught because people at work think of me as his "favorite" but in reality I was his only direct report. It's a bit harder now because we were both promoted at the same time, and now he has a team, and I am (legit, I swear) the strongest team member.

For us, we both work very very hard at making sure it's separate - I am very careful (probably too much so) to not take advantage of his friendship and he is very careful not to give me special treatment/demand weird things. We have periodic "meta-talks" about this subject, checking in to make sure we aren't doing things strangely or inappropriately and that neither of us feel taken advantage of. There have been times where we both did feel that way and talking about it was awkward but helpful.

Mostly we make each other better employees. I'd walk through fire for him, because I know he would for me.
posted by dpx.mfx at 12:40 PM on August 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

I got burned by a situation like this (as the supervisor) and am now extremely wary of it.

At first it seemed great! Working with friends is fun! Plus, the employee-supervisor transition was lonely -- the emotional labor of keeping the team happy and motivated was now part of my job, so it felt inappropriate for me to rely on the team at large for emotional support the way I had in the past. This made my one outside-of-work friendship on the team feel more important than it did before, and made me reluctant to scale it back.

HOWEVER, this later left me in a super unpleasant position when the company had to do a round of layoffs and my responsibility to avoid favoritism and do what was best for the team at large was in direct conflict with my friend's interests. The friendship didn't survive, and I felt deep pain over it (comparable in intensity to my most serious romantic breakups). Looking back, I also see that even though I'd been trying to avoid favoritism all along, there were cases where I'd avoided or softened direct critical feedback to this person because of dynamics in our friendship, and that was unfair to them and ended up backfiring for both of us later.

So: In addition to maintaining a professional distance while at work, I'd also suggest agreeing never to have work conversations outside of work. Especially not if you're going out for drinks/getting drunk together. It's inevitably going to affect team dynamics and create favoritism if one person frequently has the boss's ear on work topics in informal, intimate ways.

I'd also have a talk up-front with your friend where you get on the same page about how you're going to handle negative feedback, performance appraisals, possible layoffs, etc, so that if shitty stuff does come up, at least no one will be surprised/horrified with how it's handled on a process level. I would go deeper than just "we'll never let company business come between us!" and really dig into the details of how you're going to compartmentalize and make sure everyone's being treated fairly.
posted by introcosm at 1:00 PM on August 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

I hired a friend/former coworker, and, so far (five years), it's going really well. I'm on the boss side, but I have the advantage of her being a total superstar at her job (as are the rest of my team, luckily). We operate pretty independently as subject matter experts in a large company, so there's not a whole lot of politics or opportunities for disgruntled coworkers.

I had also hired a friend of another member of my team, and he did not work out. It was pretty much all on him and his work ethic, but their friendship did not survive and I think she feels pretty burned by that situation (I don't think negatively AT ALL of her for recommending him).
posted by Pax at 5:26 PM on August 28, 2019

Anecdote: I was a good friend with my office manager, because we were on the same wavelength about just getting stuff done whilst shite rained down upon us. So a lot depends on the personal and structural dynamics involved.
posted by ovvl at 6:55 PM on August 28, 2019

The first episode of the Ask a Manager podcast addressed this exact situation. Here's the transcript.
posted by SisterHavana at 7:18 PM on August 28, 2019