\t\t\t\tMy women staff will come to me and say, \u201cHow\u2019s your boyfriend?\u201d They feel like a relationship with me should be all access, and I don\u2019t want to set up a situation where I\u2019m becoming this kind of friend with them\u2014not just a friend but an intimate friend. We tell all. Then all of a sudden I\u2019ve got to be the person who says, \u201cGet that done. Get it done tonight.\u201d Then that\u2019s a betrayal of womanhood to assert my authority when it\u2019s going to cost them something.<\/blockquote>\n\n\nIn chapter 2, we considered the negative consequences for female bosses when they are too distant or aloof and do not meet the relational expectations of their female staff. Letitia, a white technology manager in her forties, explained the dilemma that Penny faces as the boss: \u201cIt\u2019s as though they expect you to subordinate the boss-subordinate relationship to the woman-friend relationship. They would not ask that of a man.\u201d\nWhat is the answer? Both scholars and about 25 percent of the women in this study propose that women learn to make a distinction between being friends and being friendly with women at work, especially when they are the boss. I would go a step further and say that it does not need to be an either\/or option\u2014that we can be both friends and friendly as the boss, but we need to be able to name whether we are the boss or a friend in any given interaction, with a clear understanding of how the relational rules or expectations are different in each situation. Kathy, a technology manager, explained how this approach works for her:\n\n\n
I do have two women I was friends with before I was promoted to management. I think we do a wonderful job of saying, \u201cAll right, this is a professional conversation.\u201d If it\u2019s a professional conversation, they know there are some things I cannot talk about. And if it\u2019s not a professional conversation anymore, we are also clear with each other about that.<\/blockquote>\n\n\nWhen Kathy says the women are clear about when they are having a professional conversation and when they are not, this means that she and her friends have specified where the boundaries are for each of them in a professional conversation. In other words, they have specified what they can and cannot talk about in their professional roles so that the expectations are clear. More details about a tool to accomplish this type of successful boundary management will be described later in this chapter. But before we go there, let\u2019s take a look at a type of boundary confusion that can be particularly destructive if not handled well: when a friend becomes your boss.\n \nAn excerpt from my book,\u00a0New Rules for Women<\/em>, available at Amazon (http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0982056982\/<\/a>).]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[169,207,222,418,612,634],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts","category-excerpt","tag-emotions","tag-feminine-values","tag-friendship-rules","tag-new-rules","tag-women","tag-workplace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}