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our guests today are Nancy Rothbart who's the chair of the management department at Wharton and Julianna
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polymer a doctoral candidate at Wharton whose research focuses on organizational
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behavior we're going to talk with them today about their paper which is titled
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friends without benefits understanding the dark side of workplace friendships Julianne and Nancy thank you so much for
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joining us at knowledge at Wharton thanks Michael thanks for having us so all of us spend such a lot of time at
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work and one would assume that having friendly relations with our co-workers is overall a good thing what led you to
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explore the dark side of workplace friendships Julianne would you like to start off in that sure yeah it's funny
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that you say that that was sort of an inspiration for thinking about the complexities because so many people
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assume that it's just sort of uniformly a good thing and so the inspiration for
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this paper came out as actually taking a course with Nancy on identity in organizations and this research would
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have tapped a sweet spot between a gap I saw in research that's been done and
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observations I made I saw in the real world so basically most of the work that talked about the way relationships
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outside of work influence your work were focused on family and there was almost no research looking at the influence of
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friendships and for me at the time I was in my mid-20s a lot of my friend you know none of my friends were married
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none of them had kids and the topic of conversation was constantly friendships and how their friendships at work were
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both really enriching and life-giving and also sort of exceedingly complex and even led some people to want to switch
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organizations at times and so for me this was fascinating and I saw an opportunity to work with Nancy to sort
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of dig into you know friendship at work more deeply and not only from this sort of it's uniformly good standpoint but
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what are some of the challenges and complexities that accompany friendship and what I think is so fascinating about
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this question is that of course we don't mean to suggest that friendship is not a
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good thing right it French that work can be really really valuable to people but what is really fascinating
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to us is that it's not this uniformly good thing where there are these complexities there are these tensions
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that arise because of a number of features of organizational life which make friendship more difficult to
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navigate in the workplace and so what we did was we started to try to explore the
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juxtaposition between some of these tensions and and with the features of organizational life and in particular
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what we looked at was the fact that friendship has this informal quality to it this voluntary nature to it it has
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aspects where really the primary goals are relational and socio-emotional and it you know it really and it really has
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a dynamic which involves communal types of exchange based norms where you know need be you know if I need you you're
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gonna you're gonna respond whereas a lot of features of organizations really
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focus on things like formal roles or you know you can't always control who you're
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put together with in a group with you you have this involuntary relationships that sometimes are necessitated there
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are lots of instrumental goals that you need to pursue not necessarily relational goals to achieve
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organizational outcomes and you have a lot of exchange based or reciprocity norms that really dominate a lot of
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times rather than need based norms and so these different features of organizational I think they sort of
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clash sometimes with friendship and so navigating how to be a good friend within an organizational context can be
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really challenging and it does it and also has implications for other aspects of the organization
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so those were the things that we really were curious to explore more deeply what
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are some insights that turned up as you did went about your research yeah absolutely so so one of the insights was
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kind of what needs you just described which is that sort of the defining features of friendship can be
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fundamentally in conflict with with the defining features of organizational life
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and that sort of struck us as you know you see more and more organizations famously you know being proponents of
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friendship and encouraging friendship and bringing you know foosball tables in and all these sort of things that are
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supposed to bring people closer and as Nancy said you know we think that that's
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a good thing and more and more sort of an inevitable aspect of organizations and you know it's not it's no longer is
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it okay to just assume that you'll show up to work and leave and and not relate
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with people in most instances and so you know what one one insight basically can't you know that came up is just that
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we need to think about how to manage these relationships more effectively given their inevitability I don't know
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if you want and you know a couple of other things one of the things that's really fascinating to us is that while
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friendship can have really a lot of individual benefits to people too much friendship can also lead to distraction
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in the workplace it can lead to needing to engage with other people in a way that can be emotionally taxing to you if
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it's too deep at one point we had a line in the paper in too deep right so sometimes you you kind of go into a
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relationship and you get caught up in some of the dynamics and it can be really distracting to you another
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another insight that we had was that when you are really close friends with people that can sometimes make it
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difficult to make hard decisions and there's a lot of research which shows that in group decision-making
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of situations interacting with people who are really similar to you and who you like a lot that makes it hard
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sometimes to raise those hard questions and to deliberate really carefully and to not just kind of come to a quick and
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easy decision but to really slog through some some tough stuff and so you know those kinds of challenges can occur as
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well so what might be an example yeah for conflict of a conflict so you know if you're if you're in a group and
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you're you're trying to make a hard decision about you know perhaps where to
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allocate you know some of your budget or or what have you and you know different
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people might have different pieces of information or they may have different perspectives on it but if they're
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friends it can be really hard to go against somebody who's advocating really
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strongly for one particular position because they might get mad at you and so you know you might hold back even though
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you believe there's another direction that might be better for the organization you might not want to
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offend a friend you don't want it you don't want to step on their toes and so
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sometimes that causes us to pull back and not really hash things out so that we can really see which of these options
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might be better and so there is there is quite a bit of research that shows that
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people do pull back in those kinds of circumstances and so having these really close bonds can be really challenging
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now what we also argue in this paper is that when you're really close with people truly truly close so if you're
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you know at an extreme you know level of friendship that gets ameliorated a little bit because you know you can you
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fight with your family you fight with your friends and you can make up with them and it's okay it's the it's sort of
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the middle ground where you're kind of friends with people but your relationship isn't so secure that you
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know it can withstand the fight that you pull back and so you know there's a
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little bit of a caveat there so there's a there's a curvilinear effect that we
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described that we think is really important to consider and there's another category
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of challenges that we also highlight in the paper which is that sometimes when there's the there are a lot of close
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friendship relationships in an organization that becomes visible to other people and if if there are certain
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relationships that are certain people who are close and other people who are not close then the people who are on the
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outside looking in it can get really upset and so it's the classic clique type of situation where you know what
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Giuliana and I described the high school cafeteria right it's the classic you
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know you know you want to be in the in-group and you're not and kind of see them around the table and that's really
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upsetting and so sometimes strong friendships can have this really really inadvertent negative effect not on the
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people within the friendship but on the other people in the organization who feel excluded yeah yeah I think just to
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sum up what what Nancy beautifully describes you know so it's a part of art one of our core insights was when
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friendships are considered to be sort of uniformly positive it's often from the
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perspective of an individual and does this feel really great you know - it feels awesome to connect with people it
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probably makes you want to show up to work you know it makes things fun but you really need to consider these sort
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of other levels of analysis you know where might not be great for group outcomes it might not be getting great
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for organizational outcomes so really taking a more holistic look at the impact of what might seem like a great
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individual relationship and that can cascade in sort of negative ways and what people need to do is they need to
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really think about this carefully so you know if you're in this really close
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friendship you need to be aware of the impact that's having on other people right and you need to be aware that
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other people might be feeling excluded or you might you know need to think about being more deliberately inclusive
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of other people things like that are really important to keep in mind because you know a lot
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of times you're in this bubble of the friendship and you're just not aware of
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the impact it's having on these other organizational outcomes how you see the
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role of Technology in all this because technology seems to have has the effect of blurring the boundaries to some
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extent between personal and professional relationships so for example there are you know a number of my colleagues who
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are also my friends on social media now is this necessarily a good thing or a bad thing or both you've clearly read
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our paper and I know our research and know the things that are on our minds so this is something that is so so
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centrally on our minds because it's it's really all around us and we think it's
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changing the dynamic of how people are interacting at work and so this was a very big theme for us as we explored
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this question and so I'm gonna turn it to Julianna to give some thoughts and
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then all I'll show ya so it's interesting how you said blurring the boundaries because we thought a lot
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about this and that's sort of the language that people usually use when they when they talk about the the
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blurring of professional and personal boundaries and when we really thought about sort of what the correct analogy
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was we came up with this idea of boundary transparency right where social media sort of provides this window into
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your personal life you know whether it's with your kids or you know the stuff
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you're doing on the weekend or you know god forbid someone wants to go back and
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look at what you're doing ten years ago you know in your photos so it's this
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really something that didn't exist maybe five or ten years ago in terms of just
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this one click connecting with with a colleague that almost seems mindless for many people and it really it really is
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the sort of floodgate of disclosure in this different form in this multimedia form that can really bring you closer
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but also maybe lead to some discoveries that that you kind of wish you didn't
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know and absolutely I think that what we fought what we feel is really critical as an insight about social
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and technology visa vie friendship at work is that it's it's amplifying a lot
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of these dark sides because it's I mean it's also amplifying the the positives
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right it's allowing us to connect to people in ways that and more deeply right but that also leads to this
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inadvertent some some inadvertent challenges that we've already been discussing and highlight some of them so
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for example when you're connected to somebody on social media that affords you a window into their into their
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personal life but it also makes it more difficult for you to tailor some of those disclosures in a way that is more
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targeted to the person you're talking to so if I post my pictures from my vacation on social media and I'm
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connected with people at work they all know that I was in France on spring break
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and you know that I have my kids there and they've you know they might have seen you know my my kids in some
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not-so-great situations right or are they you know they might have they met and they and they they'll be aware right
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that I wasn't working for the last week and that might be okay you know but maybe somebody was really annoyed at me
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because they needed me for something and I would they think I was just lalala off
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in France you know and on vacation and they really needed me for something so you know and that's like a very very
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bland kind of example of what people might post right you know people also post opinions and those opinions may not
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be shared by everyone and so you know these kinds of disclosures on social media and through the kinds of
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technologies that we have available the connection technologies we have available are really making it more
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difficult to navigate friendships in more one-on-one ways because you have this broad this broad
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disclosure - or this disclosure to a broad or group of people that's not as targeted yeah yeah and we I'll just say
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one more thing you know we really know Nancy mentioned that they that social media sir - amplified the specific
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Darkseid's that we came up with for example we you know she discussed how the high school cafeteria right and you
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can see in person you know the cleats that are forming and and where you stand and social media is is a whole new you
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know people are posting photos you know I've certainly I've experienced I'm sure
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you guys have experienced oh you know these co-workers went and hung out without me and and that might be you
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know that might be a surprising thing you might not have even seen that cleek sort of in person in the office so
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that's an example of how social media can really amplify some of these existing Darkseid's that have always
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been there but but sort of give them new new light new life and again I think that it's it's not always a bad thing so
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we want to emphasize that right so sometimes when you see you have a window into somebody's personal life you get to
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know them more as a person and you have more context for what's going on with
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them you know you may understand that you know they were slow to respond an email but they've just posted that they
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had you know I you know their their family member was ill right and so you know you may have much more insight and
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you can kind of you can you can give them a break because you have more understanding of what's going on in
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their life so you know there can be really positive things to this - and we don't mean to suggest that it's all
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negative so be based on everything you've said so far how do you think manager should enhance the benefits
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which are many of workplace friendships while managing the downside what would you be revised to them that
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is a great question you want to start sure yeah so you know some of the stuff we've already discussed is you know we
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think first just managers and leaders having awareness of these that these challenges can even
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arise you know I think that that that's kind of the first step to you know okay
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if you're if you're you know the CEO of some startup and you really want to you
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know create this collegial culture and that's wonderful you know you might want
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to also put some things in place to ensure that these dark cents don't occur
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so you know perhaps every people maybe don't choose their own teams but you have sort of people from different
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different areas of the organization on teams to guard against challenges with decision making or you know for example
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I know like the design firm IDEO one thing that they do is they have sort of cross-functional lunches or events once
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a week where you really encourage people who won't usually be interacting with
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each other might not be as similar to ensure that you're not getting that sort
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of click silo effect so again yeah we're not saying you shouldn't encourage
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friendship but but an awareness of the dark sides and how to sort of guard against them structurally within the
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organization is a really great thing that managers can do so it's also really
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important for individuals to set boundaries and so thinking about how they how they interact with their
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friends sometimes it's really important to set expectations so you know you might be very close friends with
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somebody but we have expectations that when we're in a meeting we are gonna challenge each other and
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we're gonna talk about this explicitly up front so that you know I'm not you
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know I'm not doing this to because because I'm annoyed at you I'm doing
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this because this is what our job is a second a second thing that you might want to really think about from an
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individual perspective in terms of setting some boundaries is thinking about you you might be great friends
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with somebody but maybe you set times to catch up with them about various things
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rather than then having them interrupt you when you're trying to get your own
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work done right so setting up lunches with them or having coffee or having a certain time of the day where you do
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catch ups and so those are really important types of rules if you will that you need to adopt
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with your friends to manage that friendship so that doesn't become individually taxing to you as well now
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was there anything that surprised you as he went about to research I think that what surprised us is that there's been
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so little done on friendship at work um I mean that was that was amazing to us and we we really scoured the literature
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to find studies on this topic and you know there was one study that we found it which was very interesting that
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looked at how you know friendship was important but it had you know these costs in terms of being emotionally
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taxing to people and that was really great because that study helped us to really think about both the positives
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and the bit and the negatives of friendship at work but there were very very few studies that explicitly looked
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at friendship and it almost seemed like it was a taboo for people to to be even asking this question and that was
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fascinating to us right because friendship is really all around us at work we spend a tremendous amount of our
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time at work and and nowadays with with technology nection technology and online
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social media it's really that that line between work and and personal is becoming even more and more blurred and
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so friendship is really an inevitable part of the workplace and so the fact that they were so little that we found
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on it was a little bit surprising to us yeah and to build off of that idea you know the the work that did exist largely
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just sort of didn't dig into the complexities of of what friendship is what it entails what differentiates it
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from say a mentoring relationship or you know just a casual acquaintance so so part of the work that we did in this
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paper was to say well what are these core features that differentiate friendship from other kinds of sort of
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friendly relationships or mentoring relationships and what are the unique challenges that are eyes from from those
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features and then we touched on this a little bit but again you know there's
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been very little distinction between sort of levels of friendship right so closeness maturity status differentials
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in friendship and so we tried to touch upon that and our paper to say you know how how does for example a friendship
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between a boss and subordinate differ from a peer relationship how does a friendship that's you know you've known
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this person for 10 years differ from a friendship that's burgeoning in the first week so so we saw our core
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contribution as as also digging into those complexities and same friendships different and they're all these
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different flavors of friendship that that can really influence outcomes and to build on that a little bit I think
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what's also really important for example when you do have a friendship across
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hierarchical lines which i think is something that you know sometimes we see is you've got to really be much more
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vigilant about how it appears to other people and so thinking about being very careful about process and what's called
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procedural justice right using structures and processes and making very explicit your decision-making criteria
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becomes very very important when you have people who are friends across hierarchical lines because other people
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looking in or judging and they're usually looking at it and thinking that the person who's the subordinate is
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getting favoritism and so trying to manage that is really critical if you've
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got a friendship that crosses those hierarchical lines as an example to wind up what kind of questions for future
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research they did come up as you were going about your your studies and any thoughts on that yeah I mean you know
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building on what we just talked about there's so little research and so much
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more to be done in this area so we thought that was you know there's so many exciting avenues for future
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research you know one domain is is that you know the workplaces are really changing and a much you know this is
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true of a lot of research but kind of is built on the idea of Western educated you know predominantly white
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male cultures and and so we think a promising future direction is to think about sort of the individual and then
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organizational culture of you know the people that better in the business and and thinking about how that impacts
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outcomes of friendships so for example women might be more communal in their modes of relating and be able to sort of
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navigate this tension a little bit more effectively or perhaps not you know we don't really know or you know similarly
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cultures that are known to be more communal and their modes of relating you know Asian cultures Latin American
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cultures might have a different approach to the sort of individualistic American
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organization so we think that's a great area for future research and we also
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think that it's it would be really interesting to look at these aspects of social media and technology because we
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think that that is a really really important new way of relating that we don't understand very well and so that's
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something that fascinates both of us and also this you know this question that Giuliana is exploring this more in her
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dissertation work is you know this question of authenticity and you know how do you relate authentically to
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people and and when do they perceive you to be you know a genuine the genuine article right somebody who is is
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yourself at work and and I think that friendship and how that plays out in the workplace comes in as well in terms of
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that that question all sounds very very fascinating so hope we'll get chance to
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talk about that again in the future well auntie Giuliana thank you so much for speaking with knowledge at Wharton today
00:26:12
thank you it's been wonderful for more insight from knowledge at Wharton please visit knowledge Wharton
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