Social etiquette is vastly different: 32% of workers are friends with their boss on Facebook, 19% follow each other on Instagram, and 7% on Snapchat.
Today, new technologies and social sharing have made us reachable around the clock. Before the existence of iPhones and social media, people generally knew much less about each other’s private lives, and collaborated mostly during office house when colleagues were available in-person. Navigating the boss-friend dynamic is even more difficult today than it was 15 years ago. This presents a real challenge if you are a new manager transitioning from the role of “work-friend” to the role of “boss.” When one person in a friendship moves up, the dynamic changes from that of equals to one of meritocracy. Once you are promoted into a leadership position, you will inevitably be required to make tough decisions and evaluate the people on your team fairly, whether or not those people are your friends. Close friendships also have the potential to cause friction, especially for those of us who work in hierarchal environments. And that’s a good thing because having friends at work has been proven to increase job satisfaction, performance, and even productivity.īut there is a flip side to this. Understandably, it would only make sense for some of these connections to blossom into something more personal, like friendships. That equates to almost 90,000 hours total. How many hours will you spend with your coworkers over the course of your lifetime? If your job is a typical 9 to 5, that means you’ll spend around eight hours a day, five days a week, for roughly 40 years, with the various people you work with.