How to Hold Employees Accountable … When They’re Also Your Friends

Managers, especially newly-promoted managers, tell me every day about confrontations with employees who, when held accountable for their actions, turn around and protest, “But I thought we were friends!”

This is what I tell them.

Say to that employee, “Hey, next week, we are not going to pay you, but what I was wondering if you’d be willing to come in and work really hard anyway to make me look good…you know, since we are such good friends.” What do you think that employee would say? “Hey buddy, no hard feelings, but this is a job! I need to get paid for the work I do!”

And that’s what you, the manager, should say to employees who try to use your friendship as a way out of being held accountable at work. “No hard feelings, but I’m the boss.”

Often, people become friends, or at least friendly, in the course of working together. Sometimes the friendship predates the working relationship. Either way, it can be hard to separate your role as a boss from…