I remember it like it was yesterday.
I was thirteen years old with a steady after-school gig – babysitting for a delightful pair of siblings, aged 6 and 8. They loved me and rightly so, if I do say so myself. I was their favorite playmate. I was non-stop fun. They gave me good reports to their parents and I thought I had job security forever.
Until one day.
The kids and I were playing tag outside the house when both of them suddenly ran inside and, declaring it “home base”, locked me out. Despite my pleadings – both friendly and as authoritatively as I could muster – they wouldn’t let me in. This stalemate continued for what seemed like hours, until their parents got home.
When order was restored and the kids were otherwise occupied, the kids’ dad took me quietly aside, paid me what he owed me, and fired me. I can still hear his words:
“Our kids love you as a playmate, but they don’t respect your authority, so we can’t trust you with them anymore.”
Ouch.
I’d like to be able to say that that difficult lesson, once learned, stuck with me to the point that I never had to wrestle with it again. But I can’t. My sense is that collaborative leaders struggle with this issue every day as they continually seek to find the optimal center point on the friend/boss teeter-totter.
The Friend/Boss Teeter-Totter
It’s easy to think of the polar ends of the friend/boss teeter-totter of leadership. On the “friend” side is the popular leader, the life-of-the-party leader, the one-of-the-guys leader, the compassionate and empathetic leader, the us-against-the-world leader. On the “boss” side is the authoritarian leader, the my-way-or-the-highway leader, the intimidating leader, the “no excuses” leader, the results matter/people are tools leader.
Which side feels more natural to you? Which side is the right side? Because the answer, of course, is neither. And both.
If you think you’re the only one who struggles with this issue, you’re not. Sports team coaches, for example, are publicly fired each season for BOTH inciting player animus and revolt for their impersonal and authoritarian leadership style AND for engendering player apathy and complacency via their failure to actively confront difficult issues. Neither end of the friend/boss teeter-totter is the right one.
In fact, the organization doesn’t really hit its stride until the leader painstakingly searches out and finds the appropriate balance between these two seemingly polar opposite attributes of leadership and figures out that they are actually complimentary and not opposed to one another.
All of the aspects of effective leadership discussed in this blog and elsewhere can fall apart if the people we lead don’t know both that a) they are loved, respected and valued as individuals, and b) they are expected to produce excellent work and follow the organization’s guidelines and rules. It’s not either/or. It’s a both/and.
Radical Candor
Being friendly with those you lead is necessary and important. Being their best friend is not. Being friendly creates rapport. Being a friend clouds judgment. Being firm and direct with those you lead is necessary and important. Discipline and negative feedback are occasionally required. Treating them harshly is not. Hostility destroys trust.
New York Times bestselling author Kim Scott outlines this strategic balance in her 2017 book Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. Scott frames the two ends of the teeter-totter as “caring personally” vs. “challenging directly.” Radical candor, Scott says, is “guidance and feedback that’s both kind and clear, specific and sincere.”1
A leader who embraces the complementary aspect of this perceived dichotomy recognizes both the need to care deeply for the best interests of those they lead and the necessity of being able to provide difficult feedback and make unpopular decisions as circumstances warrant. Although these elements seem incompatible, your team will come to appreciate both your support and your honesty – without concern that your friendships may cause you to either play favorites or shy away from difficult conversations of evaluation and discipline.
Be a friendly boss. It’s hard, complicated and required.
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1. Scott K., (2017). Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. : St. Martin's Press.