From time to time this column includes nuggets of management wisdom its author, a mostly retired Management professor, is moved to share. Today's example is triggered by some work turned in recently by students in my online class.
My students have often said they want to be a friend to the people they supervise. My response to this sentiment is never popular: you must not do this. There is nothing wrong with being friendly to those of your subordinates who do their jobs, hopefully most of them. However, being friendly is not the same as being a friend.
Being friendly is smiling and saying "good morning" or asking "how was your weekend?" Being friendly might occasionally include going to lunch with the group. Generally, it means being pleasant, which managers should be unless employees have done something seriously wrong.
On the other hand, being someones friend means being on their side, defending them, hanging out with them, "having their back." Managers cannot always be on the employee's side; the job requires managers to be on the company's side. Sometimes the two will coincide, other times they won't. Suppose you have to discipline subordinates or tell them that they will be let go, laid off...not a nice thought. Now suppose they are your good friends...can you do it?
It is easier to maintain a certain emotional distance from employees with whom one has not formerly been a coworker and possible friend. For that reason, many larger firms make a practice of not promoting a member of a group to become the new supervisor of that group.
