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I'm gonna echo a number of other folks here and also disagree. Maintaining a strong personal relationship with staff doesn't preclude giving tough feedback; on

I'm gonna echo a number of other folks here and also disagree. Maintaining a strong personal relationship with staff doesn't preclude giving tough feedback; on the contrary, it supports it by creating a base of trust that you can rely on when things get difficult. Even letting someone go can be done with compassion, and that is supported by a strong relationship.

thetron 3y ago
I agree with you. Whenever I've been in seriously challenging situations at work, having real, deep, personal relationships with my team made it far easier to have difficult conversations. Forging real bonds gives you a foundation that you can actually build a strong team on top of: you can have tough conversations from a position of empathy and compassion; and if you need people to just "get it done", it's much easier to ask a friend to do you a solid and just get the work over the line.
- jmye 3y ago
  > it's much easier to ask a friend to do you a solid and just get the work over the line. Not just that, but people are willing to go above and beyond for empathetic leaders without being asked/cajoled/whatever. Yeah, the article is right that laying off your friends, who likely did nothing wrong, sucks, but I think everything else can be done more or as effectively if you take time to build a better relationship with your team.
  - kerkeslager 3y ago
    In a lot of situations (not every situation) I think the right thing to do is refuse to lay people off. If people above me want to lay someone off, they can look that person in the eye while they do it--I refuse to do harm to others on your behalf because you can't deal with seeing the harm you're causing. "I was just following orders" isn't an excuse for the kind of person I want to be. Another possibility in situations where it is possible, might be approaching your team and saying, "I've been ordered to lay off one person from this team. None of you deserve to be laid off. I want to discuss if there is anyone who has other opportunities available and how we can help that person land on their feet, and I want to be clear that I can be the one to go if that's the best option." Of course, either of these decisions happens in a context that has to be considered. For example if you have kids who will legitimately go hungry if you don't lay people off and get fired, you have to balance your responsibility to your coworkers with your responsibility to your kids. There are no silver bullets.
    - jmye 3y ago
      I think that part of my salary and title is being the one to sit with my team and let them know they’ve been laid off, and why. It sucks, but it’s the job. If you don’t want to do it, you shouldn’t be a manager. If you don’t think it should be allowed, you should go work in government or run for office. If you don’t think it should be done, you should start your own company and never make any mistakes and perfectly predict everyone else’s mistakes.
      - kerkeslager 3y ago
        Nice straw man. This isn't about never making mistakes, it's about taking responsibility for your mistakes when (not if) you make them. If you really have no choice but to lay people off, then you can do it yourself, to their face, with a clear conscience. People at the top of organizations make the decision to lay people off, but it's middle and lower management that delivers the news. That's not right, and it's part of a pattern in corporations of upper management taking the profits and credit from success, and taking none of the costs or blame for failure. If that's what you want to do, you can do it without me.
kartoshechka 3y ago
moreover, because I'm working in a relatively big org I know whatever "tough" decision to be made very likely comes from upper management, so no real reason to get mad at your direct manager
- patchymcnoodles 3y ago
  I agree, but as someone who is from top management it also happened several times, that middle management does push the responsibility on upper management, because people tend to believe so. And so the manager doesn't have to deal with bad feelings towards themselves. As higher you go on the ladder, as more likely people think everything is your mistake (that is partially true, but not everything).
  - reportgunner 3y ago
    How does the middle management get the responsibility to push on upper management other than upper management giving them the responsibility though ?
  - kerkeslager 3y ago
    We live in a world where the average CEO is paid 70x the median pay of their employees, and some CEOs are paid 300x the median pay of their employees[1]. If that's proportional to responsibility, then the 1.42% (or 0.33%) that is the employee's responsibility is negligible. And if that isn't proportional to responsibility, then CEOs should be paid more proportionately to their responsibility. What I hear in this post is people taking orders of magnitude more credit for successes but whining when they're held equally responsible for failures. [1] https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/ceo-pay https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/ceo-pay
t1mmen 3y ago
I agree with your disagreement. OP says: > And worst of all, as is happening to the friend I mentioned, you will have to lay-off people who don’t deserve it, just because the company says so. > > Good luck doing that if everyone in your team is your buddy. I learned it the hard way, the first time I had to fire someone. Having had to do this a few to times, my perspective remains that I want to build strong, personal bonds with my team. Doesn’t matter where I sit in the hierarchy, people that connect and communicate well just work better together. It absolutely fucking sucks having to fire good colleagues and workplace friends, but that’s a feature, not a bug. It should feel bad! That’s part of the human experience. If you make yourself mute to these emotions, you’re doing yourself a disservice in the long run.
- darkwater 3y ago
  > It absolutely fucking sucks having to fire good colleagues and workplace friends, but that’s a feature, not a bug. It should feel bad! That’s part of the human experience. If you make yourself mute to these emotions, you’re doing yourself a disservice in the long run. I understand your point and view, but I don't agree. I don't agree because, as a manager myself, it's already hard enough to do this even if I don't have any special relationship with the person. If I had it, it would become stress and mental health issues. So if true personal friendships are allowed, either the kind of person like the one I am should never get into management or we have to endure this extra pain that ends up affecting our personal lives.
  - kerkeslager 3y ago
    > I understand your point and view, but I don't agree. I don't agree because, as a manager myself, it's already hard enough to do this even if I don't have any special relationship with the person. If I had it, it would become stress and mental health issues. It's not healthy to dissociate yourself so you can do harm to others. Doing harm to other people should be hard and if it's not hard, that is a mental health issue. The society we live in is fucked up, and being well-adjusted to a sick society isn't a measure of health. That doesn't mean you never do harm to others: sometimes all your options harm someone, and the best option is the one that does the least harm. But in those situations you can have a clear conscience if you do your best to minimize the damage within the options you have. > So if true personal friendships are allowed, either the kind of person like the one I am should never get into management or we have to endure this extra pain that ends up affecting our personal lives. Good people aren't ideal capitalist robots, and ideal capitalist robots aren't good people. That doesn't mean good people can't ever be in positions of power, but it's certainly more difficult to get there without making ethical compromises.
marcinzm 3y ago
Trust is like a line of credit. You build it up so you can use it to have someone feel supported even when you give them strong feedback. So they don't take it personally or get angry but understand that you're trying to help them.

thetron 3y ago

I agree with you. Whenever I've been in seriously challenging situations at work, having real, deep, personal relationships with my team made it far easier to have difficult conversations. Forging real bonds gives you a foundation that you can actually build a strong team on top of: you can have tough conversations from a position of empathy and compassion; and if you need people to just "get it done", it's much easier to ask a friend to do you a solid and just get the work over the line.

jmye 3y ago
> it's much easier to ask a friend to do you a solid and just get the work over the line. Not just that, but people are willing to go above and beyond for empathetic leaders without being asked/cajoled/whatever. Yeah, the article is right that laying off your friends, who likely did nothing wrong, sucks, but I think everything else can be done more or as effectively if you take time to build a better relationship with your team.
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  In a lot of situations (not every situation) I think the right thing to do is refuse to lay people off. If people above me want to lay someone off, they can look that person in the eye while they do it--I refuse to do harm to others on your behalf because you can't deal with seeing the harm you're causing. "I was just following orders" isn't an excuse for the kind of person I want to be. Another possibility in situations where it is possible, might be approaching your team and saying, "I've been ordered to lay off one person from this team. None of you deserve to be laid off. I want to discuss if there is anyone who has other opportunities available and how we can help that person land on their feet, and I want to be clear that I can be the one to go if that's the best option." Of course, either of these decisions happens in a context that has to be considered. For example if you have kids who will legitimately go hungry if you don't lay people off and get fired, you have to balance your responsibility to your coworkers with your responsibility to your kids. There are no silver bullets.
  - jmye 3y ago
    I think that part of my salary and title is being the one to sit with my team and let them know they’ve been laid off, and why. It sucks, but it’s the job. If you don’t want to do it, you shouldn’t be a manager. If you don’t think it should be allowed, you should go work in government or run for office. If you don’t think it should be done, you should start your own company and never make any mistakes and perfectly predict everyone else’s mistakes.
    - kerkeslager 3y ago
      Nice straw man. This isn't about never making mistakes, it's about taking responsibility for your mistakes when (not if) you make them. If you really have no choice but to lay people off, then you can do it yourself, to their face, with a clear conscience. People at the top of organizations make the decision to lay people off, but it's middle and lower management that delivers the news. That's not right, and it's part of a pattern in corporations of upper management taking the profits and credit from success, and taking none of the costs or blame for failure. If that's what you want to do, you can do it without me.

kartoshechka 3y ago

moreover, because I'm working in a relatively big org I know whatever "tough" decision to be made very likely comes from upper management, so no real reason to get mad at your direct manager

patchymcnoodles 3y ago
I agree, but as someone who is from top management it also happened several times, that middle management does push the responsibility on upper management, because people tend to believe so. And so the manager doesn't have to deal with bad feelings towards themselves. As higher you go on the ladder, as more likely people think everything is your mistake (that is partially true, but not everything).
- reportgunner 3y ago
  How does the middle management get the responsibility to push on upper management other than upper management giving them the responsibility though ?
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  We live in a world where the average CEO is paid 70x the median pay of their employees, and some CEOs are paid 300x the median pay of their employees[1]. If that's proportional to responsibility, then the 1.42% (or 0.33%) that is the employee's responsibility is negligible. And if that isn't proportional to responsibility, then CEOs should be paid more proportionately to their responsibility. What I hear in this post is people taking orders of magnitude more credit for successes but whining when they're held equally responsible for failures. [1] https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/ceo-pay https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/ceo-pay

t1mmen 3y ago

I agree with your disagreement. OP says: > And worst of all, as is happening to the friend I mentioned, you will have to lay-off people who don’t deserve it, just because the company says so. > > Good luck doing that if everyone in your team is your buddy. I learned it the hard way, the first time I had to fire someone. Having had to do this a few to times, my perspective remains that I want to build strong, personal bonds with my team. Doesn’t matter where I sit in the hierarchy, people that connect and communicate well just work better together. It absolutely fucking sucks having to fire good colleagues and workplace friends, but that’s a feature, not a bug. It should feel bad! That’s part of the human experience. If you make yourself mute to these emotions, you’re doing yourself a disservice in the long run.

darkwater 3y ago
> It absolutely fucking sucks having to fire good colleagues and workplace friends, but that’s a feature, not a bug. It should feel bad! That’s part of the human experience. If you make yourself mute to these emotions, you’re doing yourself a disservice in the long run. I understand your point and view, but I don't agree. I don't agree because, as a manager myself, it's already hard enough to do this even if I don't have any special relationship with the person. If I had it, it would become stress and mental health issues. So if true personal friendships are allowed, either the kind of person like the one I am should never get into management or we have to endure this extra pain that ends up affecting our personal lives.
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  > I understand your point and view, but I don't agree. I don't agree because, as a manager myself, it's already hard enough to do this even if I don't have any special relationship with the person. If I had it, it would become stress and mental health issues. It's not healthy to dissociate yourself so you can do harm to others. Doing harm to other people should be hard and if it's not hard, that is a mental health issue. The society we live in is fucked up, and being well-adjusted to a sick society isn't a measure of health. That doesn't mean you never do harm to others: sometimes all your options harm someone, and the best option is the one that does the least harm. But in those situations you can have a clear conscience if you do your best to minimize the damage within the options you have. > So if true personal friendships are allowed, either the kind of person like the one I am should never get into management or we have to endure this extra pain that ends up affecting our personal lives. Good people aren't ideal capitalist robots, and ideal capitalist robots aren't good people. That doesn't mean good people can't ever be in positions of power, but it's certainly more difficult to get there without making ethical compromises.

marcinzm 3y ago

Trust is like a line of credit. You build it up so you can use it to have someone feel supported even when you give them strong feedback. So they don't take it personally or get angry but understand that you're trying to help them.