When friendship and work intersect: My tips for navigating tricky dynamics
If I asked you to think about the relationships you have with the people you work with, I bet you would think of at least a couple people you consider close friends.
We spend so much of our lives at work that it’s only natural for us to form deep friendships with our colleagues. And that’s a beautiful thing, right?
But the elephant in the room is that friendship-plus-work can be complicated: competing roles, shifting power dynamics, feedback, boundaries—it all gets harder to navigate the more you know and care about a person.
I see challenges where friendship and work intersect so often in the work that I do. Oftentimes, when I'm leading a workshop and ask people to reflect on their most difficult moments as a leader, they bring up friendship. They talk about times when they had to be both someone’s good friend and their leader (or vice versa); when they had to confront a friend who wasn’t carrying their weight on the team; or even times when they’ve had to set clear boundaries in client relationships. They share that these dynamics can be so delicate and difficult to manage.
I understand this deeply, both as a person who is often involved in conversations like the ones I just described, and because I'm lucky to have deep friendships with my team and many of my clients. I’ve learned that you can be both friends and colleagues. But to keep both sides of your relationship strong, it takes intention and thoughtfulness.
With that in mind, I want to share five ways I’ve learned to approach friendship and work.
1. Be clear about your role and what it means in the context of your relationship.
I think one of the hardest things to navigate is when two friends are on opposite sides of a power dynamic, such as when one friend reports to another or even when you become friends with a client.
One thing I know for sure is that ignoring this dynamic doesn’t work. Eventually, an issue will come up that will force it into the spotlight, so it’s more effective to proactively call it out.
For example, when I’m having a conversation with someone on my team where I need to speak to them as their leader (when I’m giving feedback, maybe, or expressing an opinion I feel strongly about), I might use language such as, “I’m putting on my leader hat right now,” or, “I’m talking about this as a business owner.” It’s equally important to do this in the opposite scenario: If someone on my team is going through something hard outside of work, I’ll say, “I’m here to listen as your friend.” I can even think of times when my team has asked me to “take off” the leader hat for a minute and talk to them as friends or vice versa.
I also use language like this with dear friends who are also my clients. I’ll say something like, “From my perspective as the facilitator,” or, “I’m going to give you my perspective as the person you hired.”
I think it’s even harder when friends have to deal with a brand-new power dynamic, such as when one friend gets promoted and the other doesn’t or when one friend becomes the leader of the other. When this happens, I always suggest that the best way forward is a proactive, open conversation. Be upfront and get curious together about what your new roles mean in both the context of your working relationship and your friendship. Talk about how, together, you will be mindful of that context, and take time to establish or at least explore the new guidelines and boundaries you may need.
Naming your role and the perspective from which you’re sharing is really helpful because it creates clarity and lessens the chance of a work dynamic damaging a friendship. It gives us permission to embrace that part of our relationship instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.
2. Give and ask for feedback with curiosity and proactiveness.
Feedback conversations in friendships can be tough. For many of us, our natural inclination may be to avoid addressing issues for fear of hurting the relationship. The better you know someone and the deeper your friendship is, the scarier it can feel to have feedback conversations because you feel like you have so much to lose if it goes wrong. That fear can keep us from having crucial conversations that keep the friendship alive.
This one hits close to home for me because I’ve found myself in this position too many times to count. When I pushed aside my feelings and avoided having a hard conversation, I ended up hurting the person and the relationship anyway. My resentment would just continue to build until it began to drive a wedge in the relationship both at work and outside of it. And that’s because if you are frustrated with someone at work, you can't just forget about it outside of working hours. That frustration will have a ripple effect, and it's coming with you every time you interact with that person, whether you want it to or not.
That’s why I live by the 24-hour rule: I do my best to address issues within 24 hours. It’s really a guideline, not a rule, because there’s some nuance here. If I’m feeling really emotional about something, I might give myself more time to think and calm down before I address it. The point of sticking to the guideline is to keep issues from festering. If I ever try to talk myself out of giving feedback because I don’t want to hurt my friend, I remind myself that avoiding the feedback is actually what will hurt our friendship. Giving the feedback gives a chance to deepen the relationship and increase trust.
For the same reasons, it’s important to ask your friends at work for feedback and to do it proactively. If you sense they may be frustrated with you, for example, be curious about it and invite your friend to share how they feel, especially because you never know what you’ll learn.
Bottom line here: Make sure you actively seek out and give feedback. Withholding it will only cause damage in your working relationship and your friendship.
3. When personal life affects work, talk about it.
When friends go through something that really affects their life outside of work, such as having children, moving, dealing with illness, a loss, etc., it’s only natural—and so very human—for us to want to cut them slack and step up with more support.
But what happens when you are your friend’s leader, and their personal life is affecting how they’re showing up at work?
I know firsthand just how delicate these situations can be. I’ve worked with the people on my team an average of 12 years, a period of time that has encompassed many big life moments. Whether my teammates are entering an exciting new chapter or facing a difficult one, I’ve learned that the best approach is an open dialogue. I encourage my team to communicate with me early and often when things in their personal life affect them at work so that we can adjust expectations accordingly.
In these moments, we often talk about the challenges that might come up with balancing their new life chapter with work. We explore the additional support they might need, which tends to look like more flexibility in the short term. We also talk about how we will handle it if their quality of work suffers or if they are struggling to keep up. We get clear on the expectations we have for each other, and getting aligned on these things helps me to be able to hold my team accountable because we agreed that I would.
At the end of the day, remember that this person is your friend. You care about and want the best for them. When you know that their personal life is hard to manage, be a friend first and a leader second. Offer support and a listening ear, and at the same time, be honest about how their challenges might be affecting you, their work, and the team. A sign of a real friendship is being able to have hard conversations that build even greater trust.
4. Knowing when to turn work off.
I have a dear friend here in Houston who is also one of my clients. Any time we go out on date nights with our husbands together, we are very mindful not to talk about the sessions I do with her team. If we ever do find ourselves slipping into work mode, one of us will catch it and steer the conversation back to non-work topics. Sometimes, we allow ourselves to talk about work for a little bit, but we never let it take over the night.
I share this as a reminder to be intentional about pouring into other areas of your friendship. When you’re friends with people you work alongside, not everything you do or talk about can center on work, but you also can’t avoid it completely. But if you’re not careful, you could spend all of your outside-of-work time with your friend talking about work. To avoid that, come up with a strategy, such as a code word or time limit, for keeping work talk to a minimum outside of work (and vise versa).
5. Remember to invest in other relationships.
When you’re good friends with someone, you will naturally gravitate toward them. When you need to partner up on something or find a place to sit in the conference room, you’re more likely to seek out your closest friends, especially if you have a relationship outside of work. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, of course, but it becomes an issue when we start to neglect other important relationships with our colleagues.
Stephen Covey’s “emotional bank accounts” concept is a helpful framework for thinking about this. Imagine that you have an account with every person you work with. “Deposits” are things like spending one-on-one time together, and “withdrawals,” which naturally occur in relationships, can be things like feedback conversations. The idea is to keep the balances positive by continually making deposits so that when withdrawals occur, your relationship remains strong.
The emotional bank account balances of the people you naturally gravitate toward are probably pretty high. But what are your balances with others? Are you investing equally?
Something I do as a leader, because I'm really good friends with everyone on my team, is think about each person and what my account balance is with them. Throughout the year, I’m very mindful of and intentional about maintaining and increasing those balances. It’s important to me that my team never feels like I’m prioritizing one relationship over another.
Even when I'm facilitating, if I'm great friends with my client, I’m mindful that when I'm in the room with them and their team, I'm not just interacting with my friend; I'm spending time with everyone in the room because I'm there to build relationships with them, too.
Now, I want to ask you: What do you think about work and friendship? Where do you find the dynamic between working and friendship hardest? Where have you gotten stuck? What is a way you've learned to navigate this dynamic and remain good friends with colleagues or clients? I want to know all about it! Hit “reply” and tell me more.
It’s such a gift when friendships and work intersect. Let’s do everything we can to keep these special relationships strong!
Big hugs,
