4 ms·

If they're flirting with someone who they can fire, or hit with a damaging performance review? (Or an unjustly flattering one, for that matter.) Absolutely I'd

by Steuard 11y ago

If they're flirting with someone who they can fire, or hit with a damaging performance review? (Or an unjustly flattering one, for that matter.) Absolutely I'd tell them to knock it off. The possibility of things sometimes going right in that sort of situation isn't worth the cost.

ElComradio 11y ago
If this was your friends who worked out, would you feel happy for them or scold them for setting a bad example for everyone else?
- Steuard 11y ago
  I agree that once it has worked out for folks, it's hard to say, "You shouldn't have done that." But aren't there still costs? Everyone else in the company now gets to wonder whether the lower-ranking person's raises and promotions are due to merit or just because they're in a relationship with the boss. Beyond that, the bigger issue to my eye is that it doesn't always work out. If your boss flirts with you and you aren't interested, that puts you in an awkward position. What if saying no makes them upset with you, or just negatively colors their perception of your work in the future? (Human beings being what we are, it's hard for a negative feeling about someone in one context to be entirely compartmentalized away from our judgement about them in another.) Also, whether it works out or not: If romantic attachments between supervisors and subordinates are an accepted part of the culture of this workplace, what are the odds that the boss's attraction to you factored into your hire? Are your colleagues aware that the boss is attracted to you? Does that undermine their confidence that you got your position based on talent? Does it undermine your confidence that you got the position for the right reasons? (Might the boss think that you owe them some sort of sexual payoff for the job? There's a comforting thought as you try to do your job.) I'm not saying that any of those suspicions or worries are justified in most cases! I'm sure that most people do a decent job of separating their work responsibilities and their personal lives, even in these sorts of circumstances. But a culture that accepts supervisor-employee relationships invites this class of concerns in a way that a culture that prohibits them would not. (And maybe my thoughts here really are influenced by thinking about this in a grad student context: Ph.D. advisors have a truly astounding amount of power over their students' futures.)
  - ElComradio 11y ago
    All of these scenarios are possible but often they are presented as a certainty. This speaks more towards fears and feelings; I'd be interested to see studies that claim most office romances turn out badly. People are being trained to make these leaps even if there are no facts to back them up. You might _feel_ your boss is treating you differently because she asked you out, but should we all adjust behavior to accommodate _potential_ negative impressions in a lowest-common-denominator kind of way (You seem to agree that we should not...)? These discussions tend to assume the absolute worst outcome regardless of incidence. Some quick googling suggests 30% of office romances lead to marriage. Even if that stat is wildly inaccurate, it still feels bizarre to tell so many people they should have taken one for the team (not had a relationship).
    - Steuard 11y ago
      It feels to me like you're conflating general "office romances" with the more narrow "supervisor/employee romances". I've been focused entirely on the latter (which fits the main topic here: senior faculty members pursuing sexual or romantic relationships with students, often in their own labs). My reason for preferring an outright ban on supervisor/employee relationships is that they can have nasty effects on the entire workplace culture, that they can be exploitative or feel exploitative, and that based on many reports neither of these effects is particularly rare. Good leadership can't only be fair, it has to also cultivate a belief among employees that it is fair. Is there a cost to this in lost opportunities for positive relationships? Absolutely. But even the highest-level executive won't have more than a few thousand people declared "off limits" to them by this: surely that's a drop in the bucket compared to the total population of the cities or communities where they live.
      - ElComradio 11y ago
        I understand; even in the case of "power imbalance" relationships, I'm still asking the question: What is the evidence these are primarily negative relationships for the participants? When you read about these, the authors almost exclusively present it as the person in the dominant position somehow taking advantage of the other. Are you equal, though, in your condemnation of e.g. the flirty student successfully seducing her professor? This happens. Is your message to her that she has no idea what she is doing, and that she's setting back gender equality by doing so? The answer is usually dodged because admitting the situation happens (both participants being into it) pollutes the desired narrative- That one partner has no agency by dint of the power imbalance. re: your 2nd paragraph, can you provide some links? You present it as common knowledge. What's the actual incidence of negative outcomes? If it's, say, 15%, that means 85% have positive outcomes, and you want to tell those people to go pound sand. I find that unreasonable.
- rayiner 11y ago
  At best you get a relationship with an improper power dynamic embedded in it. I can't imagine any workplace would even allow that to continue.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  I would ask why the hell you're presenting such a rare and convoluted scenario as something that we should be treating like the norm.

by Steuard 11y ago

ElComradio 11y ago

If this was your friends who worked out, would you feel happy for them or scold them for setting a bad example for everyone else?

Steuard 11y ago
I agree that once it has worked out for folks, it's hard to say, "You shouldn't have done that." But aren't there still costs? Everyone else in the company now gets to wonder whether the lower-ranking person's raises and promotions are due to merit or just because they're in a relationship with the boss. Beyond that, the bigger issue to my eye is that it doesn't always work out. If your boss flirts with you and you aren't interested, that puts you in an awkward position. What if saying no makes them upset with you, or just negatively colors their perception of your work in the future? (Human beings being what we are, it's hard for a negative feeling about someone in one context to be entirely compartmentalized away from our judgement about them in another.) Also, whether it works out or not: If romantic attachments between supervisors and subordinates are an accepted part of the culture of this workplace, what are the odds that the boss's attraction to you factored into your hire? Are your colleagues aware that the boss is attracted to you? Does that undermine their confidence that you got your position based on talent? Does it undermine your confidence that you got the position for the right reasons? (Might the boss think that you owe them some sort of sexual payoff for the job? There's a comforting thought as you try to do your job.) I'm not saying that any of those suspicions or worries are justified in most cases! I'm sure that most people do a decent job of separating their work responsibilities and their personal lives, even in these sorts of circumstances. But a culture that accepts supervisor-employee relationships invites this class of concerns in a way that a culture that prohibits them would not. (And maybe my thoughts here really are influenced by thinking about this in a grad student context: Ph.D. advisors have a truly astounding amount of power over their students' futures.)
- ElComradio 11y ago
  All of these scenarios are possible but often they are presented as a certainty. This speaks more towards fears and feelings; I'd be interested to see studies that claim most office romances turn out badly. People are being trained to make these leaps even if there are no facts to back them up. You might _feel_ your boss is treating you differently because she asked you out, but should we all adjust behavior to accommodate _potential_ negative impressions in a lowest-common-denominator kind of way (You seem to agree that we should not...)? These discussions tend to assume the absolute worst outcome regardless of incidence. Some quick googling suggests 30% of office romances lead to marriage. Even if that stat is wildly inaccurate, it still feels bizarre to tell so many people they should have taken one for the team (not had a relationship).
  - Steuard 11y ago
    It feels to me like you're conflating general "office romances" with the more narrow "supervisor/employee romances". I've been focused entirely on the latter (which fits the main topic here: senior faculty members pursuing sexual or romantic relationships with students, often in their own labs). My reason for preferring an outright ban on supervisor/employee relationships is that they can have nasty effects on the entire workplace culture, that they can be exploitative or feel exploitative, and that based on many reports neither of these effects is particularly rare. Good leadership can't only be fair, it has to also cultivate a belief among employees that it is fair. Is there a cost to this in lost opportunities for positive relationships? Absolutely. But even the highest-level executive won't have more than a few thousand people declared "off limits" to them by this: surely that's a drop in the bucket compared to the total population of the cities or communities where they live.
    - ElComradio 11y ago
      I understand; even in the case of "power imbalance" relationships, I'm still asking the question: What is the evidence these are primarily negative relationships for the participants? When you read about these, the authors almost exclusively present it as the person in the dominant position somehow taking advantage of the other. Are you equal, though, in your condemnation of e.g. the flirty student successfully seducing her professor? This happens. Is your message to her that she has no idea what she is doing, and that she's setting back gender equality by doing so? The answer is usually dodged because admitting the situation happens (both participants being into it) pollutes the desired narrative- That one partner has no agency by dint of the power imbalance. re: your 2nd paragraph, can you provide some links? You present it as common knowledge. What's the actual incidence of negative outcomes? If it's, say, 15%, that means 85% have positive outcomes, and you want to tell those people to go pound sand. I find that unreasonable.
rayiner 11y ago
At best you get a relationship with an improper power dynamic embedded in it. I can't imagine any workplace would even allow that to continue.
st3v3r 11y ago
I would ask why the hell you're presenting such a rare and convoluted scenario as something that we should be treating like the norm.