Don t Fake Friendship

Don't Fake Friendship

As you can see, top executives can care about their employees without purporting to become close friends with them. More important, the worst thing you can do is to pretend you are close to your employees—a mistake many executives make. People can detect phony acts of ingratiation. If you are insincere, you will make mistakes that give you away.

I remember, for example, when Senator Danforth interviewed President Clinton in connection with his investigation into the Waco tragedy. At the time, President Clinton was in the middle of Ken Starr's independent counsel investigation and was understandably wary of yet another investigator looking into his conduct. But the president tried to defuse the situation with calculating ingratiation. During the interview Senator Danforth naturally addressed President Clinton as "Mr. President." However, throughout the interview President Clinton referred to Senator Danforth as "John" in a tone of voice that suggested that they had been friends for years. In fact, the president's first words were, "John! Nice to talk to you." The problem was that no one who knows Senator Danforth calls him John. Everyone calls him Jack. The whole exchange was colored negatively by the repeated references to "John." Senator Danforth never said anything about it, but several of his staffers who were present felt that the calculated effort at ingratiation did not help the president at all.

The lowest-risk, highest-yield leveraging of relationships with subordinates, therefore, involves setting up a basic hierarchical structure in which everyone has a realistic sense of his or her importance to the organization. That must be supplemented with genuine, sincere efforts by the people at the top to get to know about the lives and priorities of those working for them. While everyone is not equal, everyone must know how much his or her contributions mean to the organization. Finally, top managers have to be willing to go the extra mile to help subordinates in the organization to improve their professional and personal standing. If you tell people "I appreciate you and the sacrifices you make, and I will help you improve your professional life," you do not have to adopt the phony pretense that everyone is at an equal position in the organization.

In sum, employees have a right to expect that you care about their lives. While you do not have to pretend that a roadie is as important to the enterprise as the singer-songwriter, and you do not have your workers over for dinner every month, you should appreciate that your needs and requirements affect, alter, and sometimes disrupt their lives. The very least they can expect is that you get to know the names of their spouses and kids, you go out of your way to talk to them when they are around, and you help them along with their careers and personal crises when you have the opportunity.