Welcome to the new manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello and welcome. I'm glad you're here. And I hope you're doing well as we get started today. I wanted to invite you to come and work with me. I am taking new clients in my coaching practice and we'll have six months together to help you be a human who works with humans. And that means that we get to address communication skills.
Shipbuilding skills, how to give feedback all of the Imposter syndrome that will flare up all of the things and challenges that come up along the way, in your career as you work with
other humans. So if that is something that you want to talk with me about go to my website, I'll put a link in the show notes and you'll find out how to set up a consult with me. So we can have a conversation about what we can do together, what you can expect from coaching and start to To create a road map of how to get you from where you are to where you want to be.
Now, today for our topic, I wanted to talk about friends at work and I am thinking of this because I just spent the weekend with some very dear friends, we met when we were working together. A few years ago, we've continued to stay in touch to maintain this really beautiful friendship and I was really just appreciating. How wonderful it is to have these friendships at work, because work is such a big part of our lives and I think it's easy to sometimes get over focused on the work part.
And by that, I mean, you know, you are more than the work that you do. There will be times when you are not working. You're in transition or you are choosing to. Be a full-time caregiver or you've been laid off or, you know, you quit or there will be something that is happening in your life when you're not working. And that can be such a difficult time because so much of our identity and our sense of value can get wrapped up in our work. But you are so much more than
that as a human. And when we develop these friendships through our work, that nourish us as humans. I think it both reminds us that we are more than the job that we do and also it becomes part of what makes our work experience satisfying that when we have these friendships in the workplace it's part of what makes the whole experience something that we actually, you know, want want to do. So I've been reflecting on friends at work.
Work and in the manager context, you know, sometimes this will come up because there might be a question of well, do what should I be friends with the people that I manage? How does that work? The most simple way I want you to think about that. Is that when you are in a professional managerial role, meaning you have real power over someone in terms of their performance review, perhaps? Repay. You might be the one who recommends them for promotions or who makes decisions about
raises or salaries. That is a relationship that deserves a lot of respect, understanding that there is a real power dynamic. In addition to the Friendship, when you see and understand that, it makes it easier to both be a great friend and also be a great manager. So, thinking in terms of, you know what, My role and what is my responsibility to this other person and I want to share one
example of that. I was coaching someone a few years ago, she had been friends with a co-worker and then she had been promoted to their manager, and she was really struggling because she didn't ever want to have a direct conversation about work. She was really afraid of Confrontation, she was afraid of hurting her friend's feelings. She, you know, avoided Added giving feedback that would help improve this person's performance.
And so then when it came to the performance review, she said, yeah, you know, here, all these things that you didn't meet the expectations on you didn't do as well. And her friend was really upset because she thought, you know, you're my friend and you're my manager. It's your job to tell me when I'm not on track. And the, you know, this person, I was coaching who was the manager, just felt so bad. And she felt so, Fused and she didn't know how to distinguish her friendship role and her
manager role. And she just kept saying, you know, this, this person she should know. She should know what she's supposed to do. She's been at this job a long time. I shouldn't have to tell her, like she just felt so bad and so, so uncomfortable about it. And I think a lot of us find can find ourselves in that position without totally realizing what's
happening. But we can Feel this resistance to having a direct conversation because it can feel like we're criticizing or being unkind when we do that. And so first, I just want to offer the perspective that when we are direct we can do that with so much kindness and the mindset is, the reason I'm being direct is because I want to be transparent with you because I want to give you the information
that you're going to need. In order to reach the goals that you have or, you know, it's my job. And also as someone who cares about you, I want to make sure that we're on the same page and that, you know, if there's anything that we need to clear the air about or to, you know, untangle in our understanding. Let's do that now. So we have time to get connected on the right path together, rather than Then have it come up as a surprise during a
performance review. So having that clarity about, yes, there can be at this friendship element but we really want to respect the position that we're in when we are, you know, officially managing or officially in a like a position of higher power and especially related to their compensation, into their advancement and development.
So, a couple of things that I wanted to You share with you related to this, like to the idea of friends at work and especially if you are managing someone and you feel a friendship towards them. Or if you were peers, and then you get promoted and now you're no longer their peer, you're actually their manager. So here are some things to think about one is with friendships at work? What makes them enjoyable is that we enjoy like we Boy this person we enjoy working with them.
We enjoy you know like like being in this work experience together. There's something enjoyable about this person that is part of that. Friendship, there's often always an admiration. So, when I think about the friends that I spent time with and even the ones who I've known, you know, for many years that I worked with when I think about them, there's Element of gosh. I so admire them I admire who
they are as people. I admired the work that they do, I admire the way that they show up there's an element of admiration. What's also present is a lot of respect. I have so much respect for their perspective, for their worldview, for their experience for their contributions. Like I just have so much respect for For who they are and for what they bring and number four, there's a lot of trust and trust is that sense of I believe that
this person has my back. If I make a mistake, I trust that they will point it out to me in a kind way. They won't hide it. I believe that they will help me whether that means help me to correct it. Or, you know, if I need an extra set of hands, In a project like they'll be right by me and they'll be with it or what I'm thinking, specifically, when I was doing the team coaching few years ago and all these different companies, sometimes
we would be staffed together. We go into an organization and some, some kind something would go wrong. Like we didn't have the right number of rooms for the, you know, training. We were going to do or some there would be some Technology issue where our technology was not working with their technology and so we'd have to Pivot very quickly and make a decision about what we were going to do that day. If the plan that we had wasn't
going to work. And so that element of trust, you know, if I was the lead coach and I made a decision, we're going to go in this direction. I could trust that they would pivot right with me, be right on board and we just make it work. If they were the one who is lead coach for the day, I would trust their judgment call and whatever they decided to do. It was like, yes, we'll make this work. I, you know, I trust you to decide we're in this together and we have our genuine.
Like we have this genuine desire for everyone to do. Well, here and the other thing with like this combination of trust and respect and Admiration and enjoyment. Another big part of that for me was understanding. We can all have really different personalities and kind of different ways of working but it's seen as something of value.
So, for example, you know, I'm a very introverted person and so, you know, one of the energies that I tend to bring into the room is one, that is going to be really safe for introverts. Really calming, really grounding? That's one of my superpowers. And one of my friends has really
different energy. Really big energy really sparkling really outgoing and one of the reasons we work so well together is that our Styles complement each other brilliantly and so there was never any feeling of competition or feeling not appreciated. Because we had different styles like the element of enjoyment and admiration and respect and Trust included our different styles and our unique energies and the qualities that we brought to our team and to the
work that we did together. And so when I think about friendships at work, I really think it's like gold when you can find and create a nurturing. Your relationships that feel good like that. Where you feel? You know, every time I go to work, I am working with people that I enjoy, who I admire, who I respect, who I trust and with whom. I feel all of that in return. It's wonderful when we have that, we don't always, but my hope is that you have someone or a few folks like that in your
work. And that you can actually create and cultivate that intentionally. So that is what I really wanted to share with you today. The sense that friends at work is part of what makes our work life. So rewarding that when you're a manager, one of the important perspectives to hold is to understand your role and responsibilities to your team as that manager. Even while you hold a friendship towards them, we still want to have that Clarity. Like, what is my role as your manager?
What are my responsibilities to you, like specifically as a manager, separate from being a friend, and actually, the other thing I wanted to share with respect to friendships at work, and this might seem really obvious to you, but I'm going to say it anyways, because I remember early in my career with such a new thing, which is You know, throughout our early life. So you know, from age zero till like age, 21, 22.
If we are growing up in a, you know, in a school system where you move through different grades, based on age, when you think about that, so many of our friendships are based around being the same age as other people and one of the interesting things that happens when Move into an adult work.
Environment is. For now, meeting people of so many different ages and in terms of our professional life and our work life, this is so great to have friendships with people who are different ages than you, who are at different stages of their career than you because there's so much to learn about your your industry, your organization about yourself. You can learn so much when you have friendships with people who
are different ages than you. And what I found is that that can be kind of a weird thing to do at first because I think we're so conditioned. As you know, younger people to be very deferential to our elders or at least, that's kind of how it was for me. So maybe you can relate to that too and it can sometimes feel a little bit weird when we And ourselves as peers with people who are much older or much
younger. And so the element of self-awareness that we want to bring is that, you know, knowing for ourselves, am I comfortable with this? And if not, why that's something we can start to investigate. But there's so much value when we cultivate friendships with people of different ages of different generations. And I found To as a coach and facilitator with some of the
groups that I have worked with. It can be really interesting when we have folks who are of different ages in an industry talking about and sharing stories of their experience in that industry. There's so much that you can learn from that. So I wanted to just give a little specific note around that too. Is that as you think about your friends at work and the friendships that you cultivate Pay attention to, and value the friendships that you build with people who are of different ages
than you as well. Because they're all going to have such unique perspectives, stories, information, and understanding to share. And remember that also goes both ways, which means that you no matter what your age is and no matter what you're, you know, how much You've spent in that organization. You also have a valuable perspective and worldview to share as well with people who are both younger and older than you are. So that is what I wanted to share with you today.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and I'll talk to you next time if you know it's time to level up but you feel your perfectionism Self Doubt and uncertainty getting in the way then come work with me. We'll have six months of one-on-one coaching and it all starts by going to my website, chemicalguys.com coaching and joining my waitlist talk to you soon.