I’ve recently been enjoying Boss Class, a new podcast series by the ever-wonderful The Economist. I highly recommend getting the subscription to hear this series and all the other content they have; my other favourite is Drum Tower which focuses on China and East Asia (no, this is not a paid partnership but genuine praise). I digress in paragraph one already. Good job.
Boss class is a seven-part series searching for the secrets to being a better manager. I may have to write separate blog posts plunging into the topics of each episode, but this one is inspired by a passing remark the show’s host, the soothing-voiced Andrew Palmer, made in Episode 4: “When companies talk about their employees as family, be suspicious. Relatives don’t get written warnings for poor performance.”
This made me think. How does a work community resemble to a family? Depends on the community, and on the family. I think many Finns still at least semi-subscribe to ‘you shouldn’t mix business and pleasure,’ which seems to have been a stronger guideline for the generations before me. I’ve always felt it’s difficult to make friends post-education which is a huge shame in my case, because the majority of my friends are scattered all around the world, several time zones and expensive flights away. I’ve lived abroad in three different countries and encountered the same phenomenon in all of them: locals aren’t that keen to make new friends. There’s many reasons to this, and many exceptions (putting my hand up as the latter), but I suspect the two main reasons are that one, locals, by the time you get to university, have already a fairly established group of friends and/or a social life that doesn’t require much more individuals, and two, that foreigners, especially exchange students, tend to stay for a semester or two and then leave, so why make the effort?
I am led to believe that this ‘don’t mix business with pleasure’ axiom does not hold in all cultures, including the English-speaking ones where the English version phrase surely comes from (although I think that in the English vernacular it refers more to getting it on with a coworker – definitely not what I am angling at here, although each to their own). One Japanese acquaintance once reminisced nostalgically on her time as part of a research team in the US. “We’d work from 9am to 9pm, had lunch and dinner together, and often we went for drinks after. We really liked each other. And I felt I got my social dose at work.”
How jealous I was! I wasn’t part of any community at the time, so I latched on to her every word. I liked the idea of a full day’s work coupled with socializing, so that I get both my intellectual, financial and social needs fulfilled all in one. I don’t much like splitting my day into several sections, like work, meeting up with friends, exercising, running errands, and trying to relax if any time if left over, so this sounded ideal.
That naturally requires a job and colleagues you like. I’ve come across one of those popular choice-triangles, where you get to choose two out of three: good pay, interesting work, nice colleagues. Tough choice! And mostly situational – if you’re well-off financially and/or deciding to take a breather, forgoing a good pay isn’t that bad. I would question how you can put up with a nice pay and intriguing work if your colleagues drive you insane, but I’m keen to hear if you’ve ever been in such a situation and how you dealt with it.
Getting a bit sidetracked here, so I’m just bending the tracks back a couple paragraphs to why I am led to believe that in the US, for instance, people actually like to hang out with their colleagues. The reason is, as always, television. So many TV shows from the US focus on a group of colleagues intermingling in their private life, too, with few or no other friends or relatives ever appearing on screen. Love interests come and go, but usually they end up with their colleague who you’ve been rooting for for ten seasons already. The other type of set up is a group of friends (like Friends) that hangs out together all the time, has no outside intruder-friends and only accepts as minor characters the fleeting love interests and cooky family members.
I don’t know if Americans relate to this – does your social circle include current colleagues? On that note, former colleagues can become friends in Finland, too, but that isn’t easy, either. I would say I have one former colleague I am friends with, out of maybe ten I would have liked to have become friends with. I understand not buddying up with close team members or your boss because if you or they act up at work, it’s difficult to handle that if you need to protect a friendship.
Which takes us back to where we started from, so why a work community probably shouldn’t be described as a family, in the good or the bad. There’s a degree of decorum that we must have at the workplace: no matter how irritating that one colleague is with their loud voice, you simply cannot tell them to shut up. On the other hand, bad behaviour does not need to be tolerated and lovingly understood as much as in a family. I believe in being your own self at work, as much as anywhere else, but that doesn’t mean that you can take it out on your colleagues. Not that your family should be your spittoon, either, but employment generally aims at creating value and for the collaboration needed for that, you should be able to set aside your pet peeves. I don’t really know what families aim at, perhaps offering the mental and emotional support you need to be at work?
So no, colleagues are not family. They probably shouldn’t be. But could they be friends? Are you friends with your current or former colleagues?
Sidetracked 