[Hot Cum Friends Inside!
Oludare Padilla
I remember the images, so different from these, that swam through my mind on my first night in prison. Hopelessness describes it best. Sorrow, self-pity, and regret stood in the way of my future, along with the steel bars that caged me in. I could not wrap my head around the fact that the next 16 years of my life would be spent in a cell so small that I could lie on my bunk and touch the toilet, sink, and desk without getting up. I was buried alive. Alive but not living.
I stop in front of the cell of one of my oldest friends. He looks at me and turns away, wishing me well without looking into my eyes. I give him information on how to get in touch with me. When I go to hand him the piece of paper, I can see he has tears in eyes that he is desperately trying to prevent from falling in my presence. He was sentenced to 40 to life. Never in the 10 years that I have known him have I ever seen him in a moment of weakness. And now it is my departure that is the cause of his vulnerability. We hug through the bars that separate us and exchange I love yous. I walk away knowing he was watching the image of me in the mirror he stuck outside his bars become smaller and smaller, until it would be the last he ever sees of me.
Being processed out takes over two hours. My anxiety and excitement about taking my first breath of freedom keeps getting interrupted by inmates who just want to say their goodbyes. The truth is, I think they just want an opportunity to touch the closest thing to freedom most of them will ever come into contact with. They are living through me. Placing themselves in my shoes for the moment they so desperately yearn for.
There is another inmate being released alongside me. Because his family has not sent any clothes for him, he is given court clothes by the facility. This consists of an oversized white dress shirt and a pair of tan slacks that are too small. Very little is said between the two of us as we wait for the officer to drive us to the train station. There is too much going on inside our minds to entertain any chitchat.
Robert Wright is a research assistant at the Center for Justice at Columbia University. In March, he was released from Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, after being incarcerated for close to 15 years on one count of assault in the first degree.
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Despite all of this, I still firmly believe that the way to go in relationships with people who work for you is to be friendly, but not friends. So I figured it's time I did a reboot on this important topic. Like anything else in leadership, every relationship you develop is different. This requires you to read the play, and apply your experience and judgment to each specific situation.
In the workplace, with the people who actually worked on my teams, it meant I did a lot of listening - particularly to my direct reports. I paid attention to what was important to each individual that I interacted with. I knew what made them tick. I knew about their aspirations, their frustrations, and their joys. I could tell when they were off their game, and I could tell when they were performing at their best.
I shared as much of myself as I could if I thought that it would help them to be better or to have a broader perspective. All of this, without crossing the line to being friends. They knew they could count on my support and guidance, and I was direct and honest in my communication. But for the most part, I wasn't their friend. Being friends is more than this, it goes beyond a friendly collegial relationship and enters another realm altogether.
That's where it gets complicated, and the playing field that the team operates on becomes skewed. The key difference in my definition between friendly and friends can be summed up in one phrase: professional distance.
Being friendly with the people you work with is really good. In fact, if you want to be a great leader, I'd say it's essential. You need a context to operate within that demonstrates that you actually care about the people who turn up each day to give their best to you and the team.
In my experience, you won't ever be able to get the best from your people unless you know them reasonably well. Otherwise, how would you know how far to stretch them? How would you be able to read the signs of stress or burnout? How would you be able to find development opportunities that are aligned with their career ambitions? Being friendly is the starting point for trust and respect.
When there's a hard conversation that needs to be held or a hard decision that needs to be made, you will rationalize even more when it comes to a friend. You will hesitate for longer - or maybe forever. You'll reject the negatives and instead give them the benefit of any doubt, in every situation.
There were three occasions in my corporate career where I had to terminate someone who I was pretty close to. I wouldn't say that any of them were close friends, but closer than I would've liked under the circumstances - we knew each other's families and we'd spent a number of social occasions together.
So if they don't perform, and you manage to steel yourself to take the necessary action, it basically heralds the end of the friendship for all involved. Then, any friends of those friends also decide that you are the devil, leaving a noticeable hole in your social calendar. And make no mistake, it falls to the leader who makes the hard decision to bear the brunt of it. Everyone looking from the outside in thinks that it's heartless to treat a friend that way, which is sort of ironic because the friend who didn't perform in that role should feel worse for not delivering and for letting their friend, the leader, down.
I've also learned that differentiating on merit naturally creates stronger relationships. Now, I sort of already knew that, but the dozens of conversations I've had on this topic in the last few years have really reinforced it. I said in the original episode that you should spend 90% of your time with your best people. If you actually manage to do that well, you will undoubtedly develop stronger relationships with your best people and you'll naturally be closer to them. So there's likely to be a strong correlation between someone who you're close to and someone who is actually delivering the goods. The secret here is to make sure you keep that professional distance, no matter what.
I've learned that there are some genuinely tricky situations. What happens, for example, if you are promoted from within your team to then lead that same team? This is a really common scenario, and it's likely you will have developed peer friendships, which are entirely appropriate. But then you are thrust into a position where you now have to lead those same people - some of whom might be friends.
The bad news is you cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube on this one. However, you can mitigate the potential negatives by putting explicit boundaries in place. It's been a number of years since I was in that position, however, even way back then, I understood the difficulties of having to lead someone who was a close friend. A really clear and explicit conversation that goes something like this should do the trick:
I also ran into this when I was leading CS Energy. There are places where a particular operational site is the main employer in the town. Everyone's kids go to the same school, their leaders' husbands play social sport together on a Wednesday night. It's almost impossible to be friendly, not friends in those circumstances.
This is why keeping professional distance is absolutely essential in these circumstances, but it can be incredibly difficult. We even used to bring in middle managers from outside of the town, just so they didn't have those deep, strong family bonds with the people they had to lead. Middle managers who take a strong line on performance in places like this are often ostracized in the community. Their wives don't get invited to social events, their kids are bullied at school - can you believe that? Forget being a CEO, these are the toughest leadership jobs around.
Think about this in the context of power dynamics at work. Although I'm the first one to fight for the rights of female agency and self-determination, this is an awfully muddy area. Social norms, particularly in the US and Australia, seem to have swung much further into the direction of protecting women from predatory behavior in the workplace. This is an incredibly welcome and long overdue change, but I'm sure there are also many workplaces where this hasn't yet taken root.
Let's think about the risks, particularly to male leaders. Comments that only a few short years ago would've been considered acceptable are now taboo. The slightest hint of what we call an unwanted advance is now a punishable offense. Perhaps this is exactly what we needed to redress the imbalance and protect the many females who don't feel as though they have the power to speak up, to push back, or to bring attention to this unacceptable behavior - all because of the power dynamics.
Many years ago, my executive assistant brought to my attention the fact that two senior leaders from different departments - one of whom was a peer to me - had coinciding travel schedules. There was no reason on God's green earth why they needed to be in the same location at the same time. She found out when reconciling the travel expenses for the group that these two - who had completely unrelated jobs - had a habit of flying to the same location at the same time, a pattern that had been established for over a year. Both were married - but not to each other - and they were having what they thought was a well concealed office affair, although many people suspected.
This was a real integrity lapse in my eyes. I don't know about you, but I would really struggle to trust anyone who's willing to fabricate reasons to travel on the company's money so that they can spend time with the object of their affections. It reeks of a self-seeking lack of integrity.
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