It is no news that hiring right now is incredibly difficult. Labor shortages are widespread, young workers are expecting higher starting wages, and after employers hire and train a new employee, the risk that they will jump ship for a better paying job is rising fast. The cost of turnover is high, but it has always been higher than many employers realize and it’s probably bad for your firm’s bottom line.

How can employers do a better job hiring and keeping young workers? To find out we talked with workforce development professionals — people who help employers find workers and young adults find employers. We asked them what employers should do to promote good hires, ones that last. These professionals see and appreciate both sides of the hiring process and were able to tell us what works and what fails in the hiring process for young workers. Our research focused on young workers filling the core production tasks in many types of jobs, including factories, health care, and administrative service firms. For all types of jobs our focus was on what employers can do to find and keep new entry-level employees.

To attract and keep their core production people, many firms are raising wages, some are switching to full-time benefited positions, and some are even offering signing bonuses. These are essential, but what we learned is that what is more important to get young workers to stick around are the social aspects of hiring, especially those having to do with developing mutual respect and trust. These are particular challenges for workers of color, who often expect to encounter discrimination.

Our goal is to help employers examine their hiring and training practices, increase the speed at which new hires become productive team members, and reduce the high dollar and emotional costs of turnover from failed hires. We learned ten lessons in our research to help employers hire successfully. The workforce specialists we interviewed developed these insights by observing the typical mistakes employers make, sometimes over and over again. Here’s how you can correct them:

1. Create career jobs.

We’re in an era of increased expectations for good jobs. A good job is not simply one that pays a little above the minimum wage; these are everywhere and plentiful. Good jobs promise a future and make young people feel valued. Career jobs pay living wages, have predictable hours, visible skill and wage progression, and most importantly foster respectful relationships with supervisors and co-workers. Bad jobs communicate that the employer does not care whether employees stay or go.

2. Communicate opportunities for career progression.

Young people may have had multiple short-term, dead-end jobs before you hire them. It is important to recognize that what employers might see as a training period — with the goal that this will be a long-term relationship — for young workers might feel too much like the jobs that they have had in the past. What may seem obvious to the employer can be a mystery to a young employee. If you see this hire as the beginning of a long-term relationship, make that clear from the start. If you do not make this clear, young workers may leave prematurely for a job they see themselves growing in.

3. Build positive relationships prior to hiring.

If you are having trouble building a high-quality applicant pool, outreach prior to hiring can help. Young workers often need to be able to imagine themselves in your workplace, doing your jobs, working with your people. Mock interviews can communicate what employer’s value, prior to the (often stressful) real interview. Workplace tours and job shadowing are effective in helping candidates see themselves in a role, although if everyone already at work is white or male, tours and job shadowing might be signals to many potential hires that they do not belong. The same goes for websites and training videos: If no one looks like me, I may simply assume that I am not welcome. Since the workforce of the future will increasingly be people of color, employers need to think about what signals they are sending to workers of color.

4. Ensure a positive first day reception.

Everyone gets nervous, but young workers are often particularly uncomfortable entering a new workplace. One of the biggest mistakes employers make is assuming that new workers are ready to work and will figure things out. This may be true for those who stick around, but it is also a signal that you don’t care, and that will lead some to leave. The extreme version of this is when a new employee shows up for work and everyone seems surprised to see them. From the employer’s point of view, this may indicate poor communication between HR and department supervisors. From the new employee’s viewpoint, this is a sign that you do not care. First impressions are crucial to retention. Introductions to coworkers, supervisors, support staff and the boss are vitally important.

5. Assign new hires a mentor.

Employees need to learn both job skills and the informal culture of the workplace. If you leave it to chance, some employees will figure things out, some may get lucky and be adopted by a more senior colleague, and others will struggle. One tendency is to think that the strugglers are lazy or dumb. More often, they simply have not been adequately mentored and need help figuring things out. Mentors can provide information and integration into the social life of the workplace. Assigned mentors are particularly important for young workers of color who are often overlooked or ignored by older supervisors until they “prove” themselves. Many firms have well-developed mentor systems for their managerial and professional workforces but leave onboarding of lower level workers to chance. This is a mistake, especially since these people are often your core production workers.

6. Communicate and explain expectations clearly.

Every workplace has both formal and informal rules around expected behaviors. Many people discover these rules by keeping their head down and looking around. But some rules — like no use of cell phones on the job or the importance of calling in if you cannot get to work on time — may seem self-evident to supervisors but arbitrary or unreasonable to young workers. For example, cell phones are often young workers’ most expensive possession, a lifeline to their children for parents, and central to their identities and relationships for most young people. Of course, checking phones can be dangerous in some manufacturing settings, rude to customers in many service jobs, and irritating to supervisors in general. There is nothing wrong with a rule that makes sense, but it is the employer’s job to communicate not only the rules, but why they make sense. Otherwise, you may sound like a coercive parent or teacher telling them to “just do it.” We all remember how ineffective that was when we were young.

7. Create a culture where young workers can ask questions.

Young workers are often hesitant to speak up and ask for help. They fear failure, and as a result, do not ask for help or explanations when they need it. Getting the hang of things happens sooner and more effectively when the new employee feels like asking questions is normal and that they will be treated with respect when they risk revealing ignorance. In an atmosphere of disrespect and impatience, the tendency is to hide your need for help. Allow your young workers to ask questions and be clear that it is productive to do so.

8. Understand non-work lives.

Young workers typically live different lives than more established workers. This is particularly true when your emerging labor force are people of color or immigrants. Some have children. Many must commute on mass transport. Some are in school or their children are. Successful supervisors understand that they must learn the reality of their young workers non-work lives. Children get sick, mass transport is often late and schedules sporadic, schools schedule exams or teacher work days, doctor appointment times are out of all of our control. Recognize that their life may be far different from yours. Taking the time to understand can prevent mistaking complex lives for bad work habits.

9. Foster a climate of respect and dignity for everyone.

Sometimes supervisors and coworkers who are equal opportunity bullies are excused by managers despite being the source of toxic racist encounters and sexual harassment. Managers should never treat routine bad behavior as an excuse for racism and sexism. Tolerating disrespect in any form drags morale down, reduces productivity, and encourages turnover. Workplaces characterized by dignity and respect for all employees, regardless of race, citizenship, gender, or just plain newbie ignorance are going to be much more successful in hiring and keeping young workers.

10. Create a racially equitable workplace.

Workers of color and immigrants have experienced discrimination in past jobs, schools, and public places, and are worried that they will experience it again in your workplace. A color-blind approach to race is an insult to immigrants and people of color’s lived experiences. Employers should pay attention to the basics, such as race and gender discrepancies in pay, shifts and hours, and job assignments. Additionally, building stable and respectful relationships between supervisors, coworkers and new employees from all backgrounds is key to creating a racially equitable workplace.

Think about a new hire’s first few weeks as a probationary period for both the employee and employer. Both are anxious to develop a long-term productive relationship. While employers are curious as to whether the employee will adapt to the rhythms and expectations of the workplace, new hires are gauging whether this workplace will be a respectful and encouraging place to build a career. Successful onboarding and reducing premature turnover requires communicating that you value a long-term relationship and that your workplace is a welcoming and respectful one.

This content was originally published here.

The post The Key to Retaining Young Workers? Better Onboarding. appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

Hollywood is very familiar with the risks of being overly trustful of over-hyped talent. Consider, for instance, Heaven’s Gate, an ambitious Western that was one of the most highly anticipated movies of 1981 given that its young director was Michael Cimino, the director of The Deer Hunter, which had won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor in 1978.

People expected great things from this emerging new auteur. Instead, Cimino created a disaster. The nearly-four-hour film cost $44 million to make but took in only $3.5 million at the box office. Critics also hated it, and even now, three decades later, rate it as one the worst films ever made. The Guardian called it a movie whose awfulness “defies belief.”

It doesn’t usually work this way. More often, people advance from strength to strength. As far back as the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, people have often observed that for “whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance…” This phenomenon is common enough, even in less hallowed circumstances, that sociologist Robert K. Merton dubbed it the “Matthew effect.”

In a variety of spheres, from classrooms to the stock market, the Matthew effect seems to be the rule, Cimino-style flameouts the exception. In moviemaking, video game design, and other project-based work, early successes lead people to attract more attention, win more demand, and garner more credit for their achievements, which leads in turn to another success begetting even more access to resources and talent, and eventually, yet another success.

Except when it doesn’t — as Michael Cimino could tell you.

Matthew vs. Michael

Besides luck, what stops a Matthew from turning into a Michael?

To find out, we conducted a social network analysis — mapping the links of who works with whom and on what project — for project leaders managing innovative product development projects in the video game industry. We chose this method because networks, as our industry experts confirmed, signal status and prestige. Stars are admired individuals with whom others want to work and learn from because of their early success. For example, when you enter a conference room and you want to quickly assess who could be the most important person there, you might look for the person surrounded by the largest group of people. When you spot them, you intuitively think, “Oh, that person must know something.” If many people want to seek the advice of that person or work with them, that’s a sign of status and competence.

To run this network analysis, we drew from a list of the biggest game makers and used information on 4,741 of their projects. We collected this information from Mobygames.com, a video game industry database a bit like the Internet Movie Database. We used the database to find out with whom people worked in a particular organization and with whom those people worked. That allowed us to identify project managers in an organization who had far-reaching networks and consequently could be considered to have a higher status than those with smaller networks.

We constructed these separate longitudinal affiliation networks for each of the 18 companies in our dataset. For a final sample of projects, we examined how, over time, a project leader’s status affected his or her ability to implement a project that was received favorably by critics and consumers.

The results of our research showed that the benefits of status follow an inverted U. Up to a point, popularity improves your odds of success by making it easier to pick projects, attract talent, and gather resources — but there is also evidence of a winner’s curse. If you’re too popular, you may slide into Michael territory, the downhill slope where the odds of spectacular failure grow. Spectacular success is still possible, but at the most extreme, your odds of failure are higher than earlier in your career.

One possible reason is that the star’s proposal often does not get the same scrutiny as earlier proposals, making it more likely that a bad idea slips through. Another may be that nothing in particular is wrong, but “the talent” is in such demand that the person is stretched too thin and unable to focus on that single project. One industry expert, the CEO of a video-game-developer company, told us that his rising status had made it harder for him to focus:

“I can certainly notice that as my status grows, my productivity goes down … [and] the threshold of [my] ‘antennas’ changes. I noticed that when people are not absolutely clear, I start to miss the signals … until somebody says something like, ‘I need help!’ In the past, I had more time for processing the information, but now, if somebody doesn’t scream, then I don’t see the problem.”

Avoiding the Meltdown

Based on our own observations and experiences and interviews with experts in the field, we recommend employing the following measures to prevent your culture from setting up stars for failure:

Keep the proposal and budgeting process formal.

Often, the better-connected are given the benefit of the doubt, raising the odds of a mistake. Adding more formal criteria can increase the objectivity of the project selection process. Formalization can be also achieved by increased documentation and more emphasis on explicit, written evaluations. In addition, the larger and more multidisciplinary the project review committee, the more objective the evaluation process should become. Multidisciplinary review teams are also helpful in part because the farther the review members are from each other in the company’s intraorganizational network, the less likely it is that one person is well-connected to all of them, which could seriously bias the evaluation process.

Consider introducing some anonymity into project proposals.

In academia, the double-blind peer review system has been used for centuries with great success. Introducing such a system at your company could put more emphasis on the quality of proposals themselves and reduce the potentially negative effect of social influence on project-selection decisions.

Don’t celebrate your stars too much.

Project leaders benefit a lot from the fame and recognition they get as a consequence of their achievements earlier in their career, when they didn’t have a lot of status in the company. But when they have too much status, their lionization can have counterproductive effects, as our research has shown. A little celebration is never a problem as long as your stars don’t take the limelight from their less-renowned counterparts. For instance, when a star is associated with a great achievement, it might be a good idea to emphasize the role of the project team rather than a single individual in company newsletters or at corporate social events.

Make sure your stars aren’t overloaded.

Find a way to keep their attention focused on one project. If the workload cannot be lifted from their shoulders, give them support, so that they can delegate more work to, for instance, less-overloaded “hidden stars.” Set up gatekeepers to limit their distractions. For instance, assigning a secretary to your stars might be a bit old-fashioned but a very helpful measure to reduce their mental overload. Stars’ overload can also be reduced by making their outgoing communication more efficient. Stars tend to be approached often for help and advice. However, their expertise is requested frequently for recurring problems and issues. Companies could motivate high-status employees to codify their knowledge so that others can try to find their answers in a “frequently asked questions” database before taking their valuable time.

Create an environment where people are allowed, or even forced to, criticize each other constructively.

While people might be afraid of giving feedback to high-status leaders, these leaders tend to receive little criticism due to something more subtle as well: people tend to have difficulties with recognizing the limitations of high-status leaders’ contributions. Creating a climate where constructive criticism is not only tolerated but expected can push people to think more critically about their highly esteemed colleagues’ work.

And if you’re the rock star in question? Pick your projects carefully. Watch out if everyone complies with your wishes. And most of all, keep people on your team who aren’t afraid to tell you the truth, teammates you can count on to say, “Sorry, Elvis, but those sequined bell bottoms just don’t quite work.”

The post How to Prevent a Rising Star from Flaming Out appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

For the college graduates of 2020, Covid-19 has disrupted dreams and shifted plans. But what about the millions of college students who dropped out this year before earning a diploma? Or others who graduated saddled with debt only to be underemployed in their first job? These students, many of whom are people of color, faced enormous challenges even before the pandemic.

Traditionally, job candidates with a college degree have been expected to launch their careers shortly after earning a diploma. But in his 2016 book There Is Life After College, writer and researcher Jeffrey Selingo found that only one-third of today’s graduates jump into careers or start down a path that will lead to “success” in the working world right after graduation. He refers to this group as “Sprinters.” Others, whom he calls “Wanderers” and “Stragglers,” have less linear paths.

What separates “Sprinters” from others are largely the opportunities to which they had access during their undergraduate programs. Eighty percent of the graduates in this group had at least one internship, 64% committed to a major without changing it, and 43% had less than $10,000 in student loan debt. Selingo concludes that these opportunities can spell the difference between when — and whether — a college graduate has access to a stable career path.

Such opportunities are much less available to people of color. Race remains a key factor in job attainment even for graduates who finish their college degrees. According to 2013 data, Black graduates aged 22 to 27 were two times more likely to be unemployed, a clear indication that discrimination remains a major problem in the labor market.

To make matters worse, about six in 10 students invest time and money in pursuing a degree they never finish. These students often wind up worse off than if they’d never set foot on campus in the first place. In fact, as recent as 2017, one study showed that only about five in 10 Black and Hispanic students who started in a four-year public institution completed their degrees within a six-year period, compared to about seven in 10 white and Asian students.

As we engage in conversations about recovery and reopening during the pandemic, many higher education institutions and employers are being forced to rethink long-standing practices that have resulted in Covid-19 having a disproportionate impact on youth of color. Many of these practices are entrenched in historical economic and environmental inequities born out of systemic racism. Now is the time for us to interrogate the pathways that ultimately distinguish a “Sprinter” from a “Wanderer” and to build equitable systems that meet the needs of all young people.

How can employers start?

Start Professional Development Early

First, more must be done to reach students earlier in their academic careers to help them tap into job exploration, skills building, and professional development.

One of the most effective and proactive steps employers can take is to expand quality internships for young people of color. No online training module or YouTube video can replace the learning that takes place when a young person interacts with professionals in their industry of interest. Just as companies are increasingly sharing the diversity numbers of their full-time employees, they need to examine the demographics of their internship cohorts and establish diversity goals. Offering compensated career exposure through onsite and remote experiences can ensure that students have information about their options early on.

In addition to internship programs, industry and skills-specific programs are partnering with businesses to provide students of color with effective learning opportunities. CodePath.org, for instance, is an organization that works with major employers, including Facebook and Google, to create open-source computer science courses that are targeted specifically to underrepresented students and can be taught on any campus. The courses are aligned to the tech industry’s fastest-growing specialties, like cybersecurity and mobile app development, and they are nimble enough to evolve with frequent technological changes. Within one year of completing a course, 85% of Black and Latinx CodePath.org alumni landed tech jobs at companies such as Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, and others.

Increase Access to Technology

This is a good start when companies are deciding where to place their efforts. But employers must also take into account that many youth of color who need these types of programs do not have access to them due to the digital divide. Low-income and rural communities in particular often lack access to high-speed internet and effective access to technology. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have increasingly voiced concerns about their student populations’ lack of access to the connectivity and infrastructure needed to effectively participate in online learning.

The good news is that businesses can also work to create change here. One option that has proved effective is partnering and supporting organizations already doing this hard work with success. Rheaply, for example, is a climate tech company that combines a resource-sharing network with a user-friendly asset management platform that allows corporations to donate laptops to students and communities in need. In another effort, Kapor Capital’s SMASH — a program that provides students of color with intensive STEM education, culturally relevant coursework, and access to resources and social capital — recently announced support for an initiative to donate 5,000 computers and internet access to college-age students who have been impacted by Covid-19 and are learning to code. Both these organizations can serve as examples for businesses looking to make a positive impact.

Similar partnerships can be made at the hiring level. Several organizations are already working with employers to create more equitable opportunities for recent grads of color. Braven, for example, works with businesses and universities alike to launch students into “strong first jobs,” empowering young people to lead within the companies and organizations they join following graduation.

Braven partners with large public universities to build career education into the undergraduate experience through a credit bearing course fueled by volunteers from the professional workforce. It provides first generation college students and students of color, who often feel disconnected from campus, with a network of supporters to build a sense of belonging, and it works within and across universities to foster a generation of diverse leaders. According to Braven’s 2018-2019 impact report, their “300 graduates between 2016-2018 have outpaced their peers nationally in strong job attainment by 23 percentage points (69% vs 46%) within six months of graduation.” These types of programs empower young people to learn more about career opportunities while offering talent solutions within companies.

Businesses that want to be proactive about reaching local talent can also take a look at the 538 workforce boards and 1,600 job centers across the country, where many urban youth go to look for jobs in their immediate communities. Such resources represent a huge opportunity for employers not only to be good corporate neighbors but also to invest in burgeoning talent in their backyards.

Improving Hiring Practices

When it comes to actual hiring practices, separate efforts must put into place to ensure that graduates of color can thrive in a post-Covid world. Human Resource departments and hiring managers need to challenge the notion that talent comes only from certain institutions or that particular achievements serve as a proxy for success. Research has shown that diverse teams result in greater innovation and, therefore, we can assume, better financial performance. For businesses to put this finding into practice, they cannot continue to hire based on the myth that only those who attend elite institutions during their formative years are eligible for entry-level positions. Instead, they must expand where they look for talent — which should be everywhere.

To begin, companies should screen resumes without names and schools and use clear rubrics. Organizations like Deloitte, HSBC, and the BBC have begun using this method of blind recruitment, removing name, age, education, and other indicators that might unintentionally introduce bias into the hiring process. The goal should be for organizations to align their hiring rubrics, screening questions, and tests with the skills needed in a specific position rather than using degrees from elite institutions or references from people they know as proxies. While networks still remain critical to getting a job, many young people of color and first-generation college students lack access to the most influential networks. Organizations like America Needs You and Beyond 12 are intentionally closing the college access and network gaps so that even those who traditionally have been disconnected can make the valuable connections they need.

Once a candidate is being considered for a role, managers should pose the same questions to each applicant and ask them to perform tasks similar to those required for the position in order to test their skill sets accurately. In this way, managers can start to remove biases that often favor those with a fancy resume or an Ivy League education.

Examples of organizations that are working with businesses to help create this kind of change include The Equity Lab and 228 Accelerator. Both are aiming to help companies reimagine their HR practices, training routines, and other systems to support diverse talent and challenge bias.

Students from Black-led organizations and HBCUs, and students of color throughout the United States, are the talent that industries are overlooking. These are the people who could have filled the more than seven million jobs that were vacant before Covid-19. Employers who want to thrive during and after this pandemic need to be more intentional about finding them. This means working with organizations that can help them do so, and actively creating opportunities to help these students succeed.

If young people of color continue to be overburdened with debt and are not provided with a fair chance to gain the skills they need to pursue their interests, companies and communities will lose out on their talent, passions, and contributions. Supporting young people and their aspirations can build the inclusive economy that our nation needs.

The post How Businesses Can Recruit and Develop More Young People of Color appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

How many hours will you spend with your coworkers over the course of your lifetime? If your job is a typical 9 to 5, that means you’ll spend around eight hours a day, five days a week, for roughly 40 years, with the various people you work with. That equates to almost 90,000 hours total. So, a very long time.

Understandably, it would only make sense for some of these connections to blossom into something more personal, like friendships. And that’s a good thing because having friends at work has been proven to increase job satisfaction, performance, and even productivity.

But there is a flip side to this. Close friendships also have the potential to cause friction, especially for those of us who work in hierarchal environments. Once you are promoted into a leadership position, you will inevitably be required to make tough decisions and evaluate the people on your team fairly, whether or not those people are your friends. This presents a real challenge if you are a new manager transitioning from the role of “work-friend” to the role of “boss.” When one person in a friendship moves up, the dynamic changes from that of equals to one of meritocracy.

Navigating the boss-friend dynamic is even more difficult today than it was 15 years ago. Before the existence of iPhones and social media, people generally knew much less about each other’s private lives, and collaborated mostly during office house when colleagues were available in-person. Today, new technologies and social sharing have made us reachable around the clock. Social etiquette is vastly different: 32% of workers are friends with their boss on Facebook, 19% follow each other on Instagram, and 7% on Snapchat. Sixty-eight percent of workers have their boss’s cell number; 60% have met their significant other; 24% have visited their manager’s residence; and 34% have solicited advice from their manager on personal matters.

With the rise in work friendships — and everyone knowing perhaps a little too much about each other — our latest research sought to identify the most effective way to manage your relationship with friends at work when you become their boss. We surveyed 200 male and 200 female recently promoted, first-time managers across 17 countries between January and August 2020, and asked them the following questions (among others):

We found, rather worryingly, that more than 90% of these first-time managers have struggled to navigate the boundaries between being a boss and a friend, and more than 70% have lost friendships since becoming a manager. But this still didn’t answer our question: How do you manage someone you used to be friends with, and do it well?

To explore this question further, we analyzed data from their responses and then conducted follow-up interviews. Our goal was to hear about their experiences in more detail and validate our findings. Through their responses, we identified five ways you can find the right balance between being a boss and a friend in “the information age.”

Acknowledge the power shift.

Relationships are fluid, and the ones that last often involve open and clear communication. But for this to happen, the people involved must learn to renegotiate or re-discuss the parameters of their relationship as it changes over time. Interestingly, more than 80% of the first-time managers we surveyed did not address how their promotions changed the power dynamics with their former peers — and regretted waiting too long to do so. Many were not proactive about acknowledging the new meritocracy, and assumed any awkwardness that existed between them and their friends would disappear over time. But they were wrong. Many of their friendships have suffered as a result.

Healthy relationships require a degree of honesty, often described as radical candor — the ability to address the problem at hand, even if the feedback is harsh (as long as it comes from a place of caring). If you are a new leader managing a friend, it’s important to face the reality and acknowledge that your relationship has changed sooner rather than later. You can do this by taking time to speak candidly to your friend, explaining how you feel about your new dynamic and how you’d like to keep any awkwardness at bay. Denying your feelings of discomfort may cause you to come across as disingenuous. At the same time, you need to empathize with your friend’s situation. You could say, “I’m a little uncomfortable, too, bringing this up, but I value our friendship, and I want to maintain the bond we have. Some parts of our relationship might change at work, and I think it’s better we call them our now so we’re on the same page.”

Accept your new role. 

Your behavior as a new manager should be congruent with your new responsibilities. Within our study many first-time managers found this difficult to do, and often fell back into “friend mode” with their closest colleagues, particularly those they were connected to on social media. This often occurred when they felt stressed or angry. Many resorted to gossiping carelessly about work challenges or sharing confidential information.

Once you are the boss, it’s essential to be respectful and treat all your team members equally. Never gossip with your friend about colleagues. When you’re a junior colleague chatting with peers, this kind of talk may be inevitable, and even make you feel closer. But as a leader, it’s your job to fix friction between team members and find solutions — not to get caught up in the problems. If you set a bad example, you will lose credibility and trust. After all, who wants to be led by someone who spreads negativity and encourages drama?

When you need to vent, find a colleague you can confide in at your own level, such as another manager, or a mentor to share and offload. You must also take care to do so in the confines of a safe space and never the public realm of social media. Additionally, you can solicit a neutral party, like a coach, who has zero ties to your organization and your network.

Be consistent and fair.

Another part of accepting your new role is being consistent in how you treat everyone on your team. This means that you cannot have favorites, and if you do, don’t show it. If your team members suspect partiality, they may grow to resent you or the person you favor, and other toxic behavior could ensue.

For example, if you’re heading out for lunch, extend the invitation to your whole team, not just those on your team you’re most friendly with. In doing so, you may even discover new work-based friendships: In fact, more than 50% of our respondents reported developing new bonds with colleagues through this practice.

Don’t let emotions get in the way of tough decisions. 

Being the boss means you have to accept that not everyone will like you, and that’s okay. At the end of the day, the brutal truth is you’re required to make the tough decisions. That’s why you’re the boss. It’s important for you to recognize that if you’re friends with an employee, you may be blinded to their flaws, or you may not be able to place personal feelings aside so easily when you need to. This is why you have to be extra cautious about not letting your friendships influence your decisions, including raises, assignments, and layoffs.

Let’s take layoffs, for example. This is probably the hardest leadership decision you’ll ever face, and you should accept that letting go of employees (or firing a bad employee) is an unavoidable part of your job. You can’t hold someone to a different set of standards just because you are friends — that’s nepotism.

One way to treat everyone fairly is to put in place evaluation systems, such as objectives and key results (OKRs), and use it for everyone equally, so you’re relying on objective data, not subjective.

Manage how much you share on social media.

We don’t recommend befriending or following coworkers on social media, regardless of the platform. Your friends may use it to flaunt their bond with you making their colleagues (your direct reports) jealous. For this reason, 10% of our respondents unfollowed and unfriended colleagues (and friends) after they were promoted. Many told us that doing so helped instill clearer boundaries between them, and reduce the likelihood of oversharing. Others did not, choosing instead to tighten their privacy settings, allowing them to maintain a personal network that exists in isolation from their work network.

Whichever strategy you adopt, our research suggests that outside of work, never share any information with your work friends that wouldn’t be shared inside an office. In doing so, you could damage credibility and undermine all of the preceding tips.

So remember, while workplace friendships have their benefits, they do have the potential to cause problems as your career paths diverge. Don’t ignore the tough conversations. It’s best to face the problem head-on as you transition from “work-friend” to “boss.”

The post What to Do When You Become Your Friend’s Boss appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.