Personal Relationships and Workplace Politics

Entire books have been written on how to navigate workplace politics. I expect those kinds of books are more popular with psychopaths and sociopaths than the rest of us just trying to do our best job, but in any case, I’m sure they all do a better job than I will here.

However, I believe that politics is just another word for human interaction. And that means that any time you have two or more human beings in the same place, you have politics.

I’m also currently witnessing some fireworks right now, up close. So, however unsophisticated my thoughts may be, I have a few.

In this particular installment on the topic, I want to focus on the politics that come from having two people in the workplace who have a strong personal relationship, and how that affects the organization. The two most common examples (and the only ones I’m aware of any company policies saying anything about) are romantic relationships and marriages.

In many companies, there are policies which limit who can have a personal relationship, based on their relationship to each other in the org chart. So, let’s start there.

This is one almost everyone knows about (and I think most corporate policies restrict). A personal relationship between peers will make it more likely that the working employee-to-employee relationship may get out of whack, which can interfere with both employees ability to do their jobs.

I have no doubt that some people are mature enough and professional enough to conduct a personal relationship without it noticeably affecting their work. But I’d wager that’s probably not a majority. And even people who are very good at separating their work and personal relationships may falter if there’s a contentious breakup.

This is another standard no-no, which is explicitly addressed by sexual harassment rules. And most of the dangers here are also fairly easy to understand.

First, the same danger exists of the personal relationship coming into the work relationship and interfering with the abilities of both people to do their jobs. Second, the superior may favor the person they have a personal relationship with - which also reduces opportunities for other employees who don’t have as close of a relationship. And third, the potential for a breakup to affect work relationships is much stronger.

While I’m not sure many people think about it, a third danger is that a personal relationship will usually influence the views of the superior about many different topics - often very dramatically.

For one, just the existence of the relationship makes the superior very likely to give greater weight to the opinions and desires of the employee they have a relationship with. Even if a superior is diligent about giving equal time to two subordinates to present their views at work, the superior is still likely to give greater weight to the views of the person they have a personal relationship with. (In fact, failing to do so may negatively affect the personal relationship).

Two (and more important), the superior and the employee have much more time together, outside of work. So, even if the superior disagrees on something, there is nothing like time with someone who has emotional leverage with you to change your mind. The superior may not even realize it happened - they may justify to themselves that they came to agree with their personal friend/relative/lover just by thinking it through on their own.

Three, there’s another more subtle danger. The existence of a strong personal relationship can (and almost always does) change the superior’s other relationships - with other employees, their own peers, and even their superiors. The fact that two people in the org are romantic partners changes how comfortable other people in the org feel about discussing one the work or behavior of one partner with the other partner.

In my experience, this kind of relationship seems to be more accepted (and more commonly out in the open). Whether that’s because it’s not explicitly covered in policies, or just not enforced as often, I don’t know.

And I’m not sure why it seems to be more accepted, because I don’t think the dangers are really any different from the dangers of relationships between peer employees. Theoretically, there’s more separation because they’re in different functions; but the work relationships they have with each other and with other management peers are just as likely to be affected.

I’d speculate (with no evidence whatsoever) that people in management positions are assumed or expected to act more professionally than employees with regards to personal relationships.

But as I said above, just because people behave professionally when the relationship is going well doesn’t mean they’ll hold that standard when things go south. And the fact that people in these positions have more decision-making power makes me question the wisdom of freely allowing these kinds of relationships.

There are other types of potentially problematic relationships as as well, such as personal relationships between employees and company vendors or partners. The dangers of these vary; and in my experience, so do the restrictions and enforcement of them.

There’s nothing we can (or should) do to stop people who work together from forming relationships.

Most people will build friendships with people they work with, and friends will usually ally together in a work setting. It’s also not uncommon for either someone to join the same company as their romantic partner, or for a romantic relationship to form among people who work together.

And like it or not, people who have a deeper relationship will often ally together when conflicts or disagreements come up in the work place; this is normal and OK. The problem comes when the personal relationship is much deeper than the work relationship.

The standard policy is to restrict how closely romantic partners or married couples can work together. This is good, but it misses some important (and not uncommon) cases.

For example, what about romantic crushes? Sexual harassment policies make some attempts to address this, but they can’t change the emotions involved, and thus the potential bias (positive or negative) on both sides.

For something even more challenging, what about exes? They aren’t romantically involved or married at the moment, but depending on the extent of the prior relationship and the character of the breakup, this could be a real problem for one or both parties.

(I’ve never seen any policies on this, but I have seen it blow up big enough for someone to get forcibly moved to an entirely different work site to separate the exes).

The problem from a business perspective is where to draw the line on any of these. Basically, you have to make some assumptions not just about what types of work relationships might be affected (e.g. peer-peer, superior-peer), but also about what level of relationship is likely to affect those relationships and what isn’t.

And I think identifying a few general principles might help here.

So, let’s see if we can extract some general principles from the seemingly ad-hoc rules that most companies adopt, and our general intuition about these things.

The main thing most policies against personal relationships in the workplace seem to be targeted at is restricting relationships that may affect the decisions of the people involved, at least in a work capacity.

This is why restrictions on relationships between superiors and those that report to them are so strong; the superior has decision-making power over both the employee they have a relationship with, and other that employee’s peers.

A second principle is that personal feelings may interfere with work behavior.

So, a couple that works in the same team might find it difficult to work together effectively if they just had a personal argument, or are going through a break-up. This can affect any work relationship where the two people have to work together.

There’s a third principle involved, though I think it sometimes gets short shrift: personal relationships also tend to influence the relationships that both parties have with other people in the organization.

For example, if two management peers have a relationship, and one of them makes a mistake, their other management peers may not feel they have the freedom to bring that up with either of the peers in the relationship. Or a peer may think they have an ally in a management peer, only to find that person abandon support for them because the issue at hand affects the peer they have a personal relationship with in some way.

(Incidentally, I think may also be a general principle that betrayals rarely happen in isolation. Many betrayals seem to be facilitated by a third party convincing someone to turn on or abandon someone else).

Other principles that come into play (across all three of the above) are the closeness of the work relationship. When people with a personal relationship often work directly with each other, that’s zero levels of separation.

When they don’t work directly, but both work directly with one or more other people, that’s one level of separation. For example, if the partners work in separate teams, but both those teams are managed by the same person, that’s one level of separation.

When they don’t work directly with each other, but different people they each work directly with do work with each other, that’s two levels of separation. For example, if they each work in different teams with different managers, and those managers work directly with each other, then that’s two levels of separation.

The general rule is, the less separation there is, the more danger there is.

And, thinking about it a little more, I think level of separation basically covers the dangers of relationships affecting both work behavior and relationships with others in the company. So, if we account for level of separation, we can probably mostly ignore those other two.

So, how do we actually decide which restrictions make sense and which don’t? Let’s start with what the prevailing wisdom is.

As I said above, restrictions on personal relationships between employees, and between employees and superiors, are fairly common. I think these make sense, and I think the standard policies most orgs use work well enough that they don’t need changing (though in some orgs they might need more enforcement).

Restrictions on relations between management peers is something that seems (based on my limited sample) to get less attention. At least, I haven’t seen a policy on it before, and I’ve seen many cases where relationships of this type were open.

However, I have heard that many people who buy or invest in startups believe that it’s not a good idea for a company to have a spouse or relative of one of the company founders in a key position.

I used to disagree with this - if that person is very good at their job, why shouldn’t they stay in that position? But my views on this have changed.

Let’s go back to the principles above. The issue with having personal relationships between members of an org isn’t about the abilities of the people involved. It’s about how that relationship affects the work that gets done (by them and others), and how it affects those people’s work relationships with other people in the org.

So, it’s got nothing to do with skill and ability. It’s all about workplace politics.

When management peers in a company have a strong personal relationship, it sets up a potential mine field that every other management peer at the company has to navigate.

I’m going to use the principles outlined above to propose a more objective way to try and identify when personal relationships should be restricted (or limited, or at least discouraged). This is experimental.

• Personal Relationship Danger = Number of people in the relationship with decision-making power - level of separation

• If this number is greater than or equal to 0, then the relationship should be prohibited

Let’s see if this works with the cases we’ve talked about so far.

• Employee peers: 0 - 0 = 0 (prohibited - or maybe just limited)

• Superior and junior: 1 - 0 = 1 (prohibited)

• Management peers: 2 - 0 = 2 (prohibited)

• Peers in separate teams, managed by different managers: 0 - 2 = -2 (no limitations)

• Peers in separate teams, managed by the same manager: 0 - 1 = -1 (no limitations)

• Spouse of company founder in senior leadership position: 2 - 0 = 2 (prohibited)

• Spouse of company founder in junior leadership position (not reporting directly): 2 - 1 = 1 (prohibited)

• Spouse of company founder as an employee: 1 - 2 = -1 (no limitations)

That’s close, and gets close to what the current standard practices are. But I feel like having partners in different teams managed by the same manager should be restricted, but that’s not how it works out here.

So, I may be missing something. Or I may just be too much of a prude.

In any case, I’m don’t have my head far enough up my rear to expect any org to adopt something like this for actual policy. This is more to try and understand what our ideas about this are actually trying to prevent, and then potentially use it as a guideline for how to set policies (which can be written in terms non-geeks can understand).

What personal relationships are “safe”?

The only strong personal relationships that I think are (almost) fully prophylactic are those where the people involved don’t work with their partner directly AND don’t work directly with anyone else who works with their partner.

In other words, two levels of separation. Or possibly a relationship with one level of separation, where the person who has direct connection with both has no decision-making power (a chain of 3 peers).

But overall, it’s not really about being totally safe. It’s about balancing the needs of the employees with the needs of the company.

An org could restrict all personal relationships among all org members, no matter where in the org chart they are. This would protect the org from potential issues with relationships, but might discourage some high quality people from joining the org, and might prompt some high-quality, experienced org members to leave the org when they develop personal feelings for another org member.

So, every org needs to make what’s ultimately a cost-benefit decision about where to draw the line to make that balance.

What about the employees personal choice - Shouldn’t they be allowed to date or marry who they want?

Of course. And they are allowed to.

But they might need to change their work situation to do it. Because we need to recognize that if two people working for the same org have a strong personal relationship, that necessarily affects the other people in that org as well.

Is it fair (or good for the business) that person A has to work harder to be recognized or have their ideas heard than person B does - just because B has a non-work relationship with someone else in the company?

Person B obviously has some choice about being in that relationship; but person A is also affected by it, even though they have no say in it at all.

Also keep in mind that there are more people outside the relationship than in it. So, while we can have concern over the freedom of the two people who chose to be in the relationship, they’re actually a minority.

So, to be truly compassionate, we should probably have more concern about how the relationship affects the three or five or twenty people outside the relationship who didn’t have any choice about it.

What about family owned businesses?

Yes, different rules apply for family-owned businesses. And I’d say these different rules actually apply to any org which has a strong connection to some external membership org. (Yes, I think you can consider a family to be a membership organization of a sort).

But the same may also be true of a company which has strong ties to some university or non-profit organization, or even a firm that grew out of a core team of founders or old-timers with pre-existing ties.

However, as any org grows - even a family-owned one - some limits on who can work with whom usually get implemented. And that makes sense, because the downsides to the org and other employees don’t change just because the relationships are familial rather than romantic.