Try to keep the boundaries between personal and professional life.

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Editor’s note: Would you like to be friends with your boss? My answer is: No. Managers and managers have an inherent contradiction: employees want to make more money to live, and bosses want to squeeze labor at the lowest cost. You can have friendly interaction with the boss, but do n’t treat the boss as a friend, because it is easy to mix life and work, and the boss will often “overkill” in order to show his fairness in the company, in the open decision As a result, employees who are close to them are not treated properly. This article is translated from Medium, author Jennifer R. Bernstein, the original title is “Do n’t Befriend Your Boss”, I hope to inspire you.

On a Friday afternoon, the long day is over, and the long week is finally over. You’re planning to go home and order a takeaway. At this moment, your boss leans over the office cubicle and asks you to go to work and have a drink in the bowling nearby shop.

Why do I advise you not to be friends with your boss? < / p>

Your heart is beginning to struggle. For one thing, you don’t want to go. Because you are too tired, the sofa at home is calling you. If you go to chat with the boss and make a flatter of the boss, you cannot go home to rest. On the other hand, you really like your boss, and being a good friend with your boss seems to be conducive to career development. Will you try to build friendships with your boss?

I have struggled with this uncertainty before, and in fact, research has shown that many people have had this experience.

In a 2018 survey from Olivet Nazarene University, researchers surveyed 3,000 full-time workers in 21 industries and found areas between business relations and friendship in the strictest sense Very extensive: Nearly 70% of the employees surveyed have the personal phone number of their boss. A quarter of them have spent leisure time with their boss and visited their home, and 60% have seen the other half of the boss. And most importantly, nearly 30% said their boss had solicited their opinions on personal issues.

Old Dominion UniversityOverall, Debra Major, a professor of organizational psychology who studies personal relationships in the workplace, said that in general, supervisors and subordinates are more familiar now than before. She said: “There is no doubt that the line between personal and professional life is becoming increasingly blurred. This result may be technology-driven. To some extent, the popularity of smartphones, and in recent years, connected software such as Slack The rise means that employees can contact the boss at any time, which blurs the line between work and life. “

Why do I advise you not to want to be friends with your boss? But there are other reasons at work. Given the social and economic environment of millennial employees, they will put more personal energy into their work. In an age where wages can’t keep up with the cost of living, student loan debt has swelled out of control, jobs are becoming more and more jobless, and employees’ instincts are doing their best to serve the boss so as not to endanger livelihoods.

This sense of insecurity in the workplace makes employees afraid to draw a line with their bosses or managers, especially in industries with less formal office atmospheres, such as technology and non-profit industries. These realistic conditions, coupled with the similar slogan of “do what you love to do and love what you do” that floods the workplace, have created a generation of employees who are eager to please the boss and try not to let the boss down.

Of course, getting along well with your boss is also good. After all, if we spend five (or more) of our seven days with our boss and maintain a good relationship, the job will be much better.

Meijie said: “Through the literature review, we found that maintaining a good relationship with the boss is traditionally a good thing. Because this can provide you with greater flexibility, more resources and opportunities. But when you When you have a close relationship with your boss, you need to be alert to work-family conflicts and maintain a work-life balance.

Why do I advise you not to want to be friends with your boss? Sometimes, being friendly with your boss can be counterproductive. For example, a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2018 found that in order to make them appear neutral, regulators tend to simultaneously prejudice those they prefer, at least in public decision-making. That’s it. If an employee is a friend of the boss, the boss will be more reluctant to give the bonus to the employee who deserves it. But the premise is that others can know their decision, and his decision is transparent. In other words, in order to be fair, the boss over-corrects prejudice.

However, it is understandable that the boss wants to be good to employees. For some managers, this may mean establishing a more open and informal relationship with their subordinates. In part, this may be to satisfy employees’ desire for active participation in management. A recent Gallup survey showed that millennials especially want more from their jobs, not just salaries. They want to get development from managers, actively participate in company management, and get more feedback from their superiors so that they can know what they can do to meet their expectations.

Why do I advise you not to want to be friends with your boss? Therefore, both managers and employees have the expectation that managers and managers The relationship shifts to a friendship-like relationship, or at least lets the other person interpret the signal. I once had a manager actively participate in a party of subordinates, and everyone else in the party was a lower-level employee in the office. We couldn’t refuse, but everyone felt embarrassed, and no one had fun playing that day.

The truth is that, with very few exceptions, true friendship cannot cross the power divide. Friendship is an intimate relationship between equal choices. Anyone who controls your salary is not an equal relationship with you. In a structured power relationship in a capitalist workplace, managers and workers always have inherent contradictions: one is trying to make enough money to live, and the other is trying to squeeze profits from employees at the lowest cost.

It is difficult to draw a clear line between work and friendship, but there is evidence that it may be wise to draw a line, and this isCan be done. Many people go to work just to do their own job, to maintain neutral or friendly interactions with their own bosses, without accepting or proactively showing friendship, and try to keep the boundaries of personal and professional life. Don’t worry too much about the feeling of injury. You are here to make a living, and everyone else is to make a living, including your boss.

Translator: Jane

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