LEADERSHIP: how to deal

I've worked in an environment where the boss was dating married to "one of us". I have to admit that it was awkward for us, and for his wife.

Employees talk, naturally. Sometimes they talk about things you wouldn't want the management to know about, such as... how much we hate the management, or how badly we screwed up, and nobody found out. For that reason, conversations used to abruptly stop as she arrived in earshot.

There's always a degree of "them and us" in a workforce, and by dating one of "them", I guess the boss's partner would become one of "them". That's been my experience.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Cellius

I'm more concerned with how they perceive me as a relative authority figure than how they perceive her as "one of them," but you're right, I never even thought about that.

I don't really know for sure how it is from that side of things. The only aspect I have any personal knowledge of is how we as a workforce reacted to his wife. To the best of my recollection, the manager in question wasn't generally regarded any differently because of it. I can't say I was ever entirely comfortable with the concept, but it didn't seem to compromise his authority. He was scrupulous about maintaining the barrier between personal and professional life, though, and would communicate with his wife the same way in the workplace as he would any of us.

Ours was a fairly non-authoritarian workplace though. We all knew our jobs, and needed very little guidance on how to proceed in doing them. In theory, the boss was giving the orders, but in practice, he would simply prefer that we proceed as we know best, most of the time. That may have affected the situation.

There's nowhere I can't reach.