Introductions
Hey Friends, my name is Chris King (he/him) and I am a storyteller. More accurately, I am what the youngsters these days refer to as a “professional yapper”. Why is this important for you to know? It is important because unless this is a class assignment or research paper, I tend to type the way that I talk. Traditionally, an article should read like it was written by one person, but we believe that this story will read better if we each share our experiences. I recommend curling up with a fresh coffee and some good music in the background (personally).
Alright, enough of that. Only a couple years back, I graduated from Marquette University with my Bachelor of Science in Educational Studies, Social Welfare & Justice, and a minor in Human Resource Management. A few months ago, I graduated from Clemson University with my Masters of Education in Counselor Education with a specialization in Student Affairs. I now have the pleasure of serving as a Residence Coordinator at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
While at Clemson University, I worked as a Graduate Community Director for Clemson Home. Within a short time of starting this job, I met one of the most wonderful humans in the world. Diamond is her name, and she lives up to that name. She is unique, has a wealth of knowledge, and shines bright. Aside from her diamond-like traits, she is also kind, funny, supportive, present, and everything else you would look for in a great friend. As a coworker, she was an easy role model to look up to because of her strong work ethic, knowledge of the institution and role, and her strong mentorship ability. We quickly learned that we would make a strong team that could learn from, challenge, and grow with each other. The question became: how could we balance a strong personal friendship with a strong professional relationship?
Hello! My name is Diamond Crawford (she/her) and I am very grateful for being able to not only share some of my learned experiences with others, but also being able to do it alongside someone with whom I have both a personal and professional relationship. I graduated from Clemson with a B.S in Food Science and Human Nutrition and a M.Ed. in Counseling Education in Student Affairs. Toward the end of my graduate school experience, I began working as the Assistant Director of Residence Life and First Year Experience at Coker University, and now I work as the Athletic Compliance Coordinator at Western New Mexico University. Prior to my full time professional experiences, I worked as a Graduate Community Director (GCD) for about two years during my master’s program.
The start of my second year as a GCD is when I was blessed with meeting the Chris King. It was not more than a couple of days (honestly it might’ve just been one single day) that Chris and I became friends. I quickly not only gained a true friend (who would always go grab food with me at any given moment), but also a person whom I respected as a professional I could bounce ideas off of and/or ask questions. As a human, I will talk and be friendly to just about anyone, but befriending people that I want to stay in my life takes a bit more intentionality. With Chris, we had (still have) mutual respect and immediate communication of each other’s boundaries (which we will discuss throughout this piece). Those two things created a positive and deeply authentic foundation for our personal and professional relationship.
Why We Are Friends
Chris
It only took one dinner for Diamond and me to know that we were going to become great friends. We have similar beliefs, values, personalities, attitudes (emphasis on the attitude) and we knew right away that it was a great fit. While we knew that we could be each other’s bad influences when it came to eating out and spending money, we also knew that we could be each other’s positive influences. We helped each other grow by challenging each other, helping form ideas, and sharing our knowledge and experience. I can say with certainty that I am a better person because of her, and that made the balance worth the effort.
Diamond
I can honestly say that I have never had a friend quite like Chris- and I mean that in the best possible way. I could automatically tell– after the first half hour of being around Chris during our housing training– that Chris was very knowledgeable about our work field, and I knew I wanted to surround myself with people that I could learn from professionally. Not long after that, I began to notice that Chris and I shared similar values of life (respect, timeliness, education, etc.), which confirmed that we were going to be not only friends. Because of our shared values and ability to respect each other when giving constructive criticism or talking about how something the other did frustrated the other, I knew that solidified the friendship past just grad school. Personally, Chris and I have stayed in contact over the past couple of years, which is huge considering how easy it can be to lose contact when in different graduating classes, living hours apart, and now, states (and time zones) apart. When we were in the same city, Chris and I would always go to brunches and dinners to build and maintain our friendship (and love for food), but we also called each other out, in a respectful way, both in life and work when necessary, which only helped our personal and professional relationship. While we may not talk every single day like we used to when we were both in grad school, we still are always a phone call away, or more accurately, a snapchat away.
Friendships in the Workplace
Chris
You might be wondering: what inspired you both to write (and speak) on this topic? While being a Graduate student, you are constantly battling the “gray area” of being both a student and a paraprofessional. This offers a lot of opportunity for growth as you learn what it means to be a professional. Diamond and I knew that it could be easy to let our personal friendship overlap with our professional relationship, however, we realized that too much overlap could lead to some challenges that would negatively impact both the friendship and relationship. So, we had to start asking ourselves what we could do to have both while keeping them separate. The first thing was to start defining what a professional relationship actually looks like and how it differs from a personal friendship. Our initial thoughts were that a good coworker is someone who supports you while also challenges you, listens to you while also educating you, and helps you shape strong and creative ideas. Additionally, they are someone who is present, meaning you can always count on them to be there for you when you need them (and vice versa).
Business Hours vs. Social Hour
There are times for working with co-workers who are friends and there are times for working on a friendship. There are times to be serious and work, and there are times for being light hearted and fun. There are times when you are a co-worker in the moment, and there are times when you are solely a friend. With all that being said, it is not always as cut and dry or black and white as we wish or hope it is. If there is a person or people that you work with and begin to form a personal relationship or friendship with, you may quickly start to see how easily those lines of friend and co-worker can blur or get tangled together. Setting boundaries and parameters from the start is extremely important.
Business hours are those hours that you are working and have employment obligations– not always a straightforward nine to five. Social hours are those hours where you might not have work/business obligations so you have time to relax (hopefully) and can work on building relationships with others and/yourself– because self-care is just as important, but that is a different topic for a different time. Now, as the common trend is, these can overlap at certain times of the year and there can and will be slip ups. As an example, working together in housing meant lots of work hours outside of 9 to 5 and a heavier workload at certain times of year such as opening and closing. However it is important to make sure the boundaries between work and personal life are not permanently muddied. You hold yourself and others accountable to make sure that eventually that boundary becomes part of your everyday expectations.
Diamond
During business hours it is important to remember that you are both professionals and just because you disagree professionally with a coworker does not mean you dislike your friend. As a result, it is important to set boundaries during those social hour(s) times. When Chris and I would go out to dinner for example, we would make sure that all of our “work talk” was discussed within the first 10 minutes of dinner, then after that, we gave no more time to talk about work related things. We didn’t do that because we didn’t think work is an important topic, we did that because it forced us to strengthen our personal friendship. As a result, we could build a true life outside of work– which is something that can be very difficult to do at times when working is student affairs.
This practice of a 10-minute-talk related to work also makes sure that we respect the capacity of the other person. By agreeing to 10 minutes of work talk, we can mentally prepare to dedicate to discussing work. It frees both of us up after 10 minutes, since we may not have the mental capacity or personal desire to continue to talk about work. This “rule/guideline” helps ensure that. While as friends we feel comfortable saying “Hey, I don’t have the space right now to talk about work”, it is nice that we do not have to do that because we have already set that 10 minute boundary. I am not saying 10 minutes will work for everyone, but it is something worth discussing with your friends, especially if they are also your coworkers. Social hour should also be a time where you are able to laugh and/or have deep discussions, and if you are talking about work for a decent portion of that, it could continue to be difficult in the future for you to separate work and personal life. If there is a dire need to talk about work during non-business hours, use those 10 minutes (or whatever agreed time) to make a list of what you want to talk about with that co-worker during the next business day.
You might be wondering why this “time method” is the system that Chris and I found that worked best for us. Trust me, we tried other things but this was the one that not only stuck but allowed us to truly feel free to talk about work for a short bit, then fully focus on non-work topics and conversations. For example, the biggest method that we truly recommend staying far far away from is the “whoever talks about work first has to pay the dinner bill”. While this might seem like it could be very effective, we quickly realized it was quite the opposite. There are three main reasons that made us realize it was not working. First, we were so focused on not talking about work, that we were never really fully present in the moment because we did not have a space to air out work talk. We were subconsciously focusing on what we couldn’t talk about as opposed to what we should have and could have been talking about. It was like not wanting to say the wrong thing so you just don’t speak at all, which is not helpful.
Second, if there was something important regarding work that someone wanted to get off their chest or make the other aware of, there was no space to do that. The limitation could be frustrating because we were not able to share information or a topic we cared about. On the flip side, the third reason is if there was something that we needed to talk about and it was work related, my mindset was “I’ll risk it and pay for it (dinner) today,” That was not helpful because then the can of worm was opened and there was no boundary to stop us from talking about work for the entire dinner time.
Again, there is no one perfect solution to create boundaries with friends who are also co-workers between business and social hours, but the most important thing is to talk about it, figure out what does (and doesn’t) work for each of you, and continue to work on it while holding each other accountable. I also want to mention that what might work for you and one friend/coworker might not work for you and another friend/coworker, but it is important to keep your personal boundaries and values steady with all friends/coworkers. Good practice strengthens both the working relationship and the friendship.
Setting Boundaries
How do you draw the lines between a personal friendship and a professional relationship? The answer is both simple and complex, it mostly depends on your comfort with direct conversations. Some good questions to ask yourself and your friend/coworker are:
- When will we talk about personal business? About work?
- What do power dynamics look like? Does one have supervisory responsibility over the other? Does one’s job impact the other? How will we navigate those issues?
- How will we ensure that we can strengthen our professional relationship regardless of what happens in our personal friendship? And vice versa?
- In whom will we confide if issues arise in either personal or professional life? Will we talk about our personal friendship with coworkers? Will we talk about our work relationship with our other friends?
- Where is the line between sharing and oversharing?
- What happens if these boundaries start getting crossed?
Boundaries are crucial for any relationship, but especially here when drawing lines between two types of relationship with the same person. Additionally, it is important to note that these boundaries can change over time as needs change and any other factors are adjusted whether in or out of your control. Asking to take the opportunity to shift boundaries is your right, similar to revisiting expectations in a work setting. If someone is not open to adjusting boundaries to meet your needs, then that is an indicator of their likelihood not to respect those boundaries.
Friendship at a Distance
Diamond
Understanding that just because you do not talk to or hear from someone every second of everyday doesn’t mean that person doesn’t care about you was one of the hardest things that I have had to learn. For Chris and me, initially we saw each other just about every day (if we went a day without seeing each other in grad school it felt almost illegal). Then we began to realize we needed to have time to ourselves individually to unwind, focus on self-care, and do homework by ourselves at times. That didn’t mean that we weren’t friends or we cared more about watching a show by ourselves than hanging out with the other person, it just meant that we needed time with ourselves, and we needed to support the other person in that.
Now that we are 1,990 miles (or 2,044 miles depending what route you take) apart, not talking every day or every week has become the new normal. But that is not a bad thing. Our new situation means that we are both busy people trying to figure out how to balance life and work and self-care, but we know that we mean a lot to each other and if one of us needs the other, we’ll hop on a call right then and there.
I will regularly see one of Chris’s snapchat stories (normally of delicious food from a new place or recipe he has discovered) and I will comment on it. That exchange will spark a brief conversation about catching up. There are times where Chris will randomly Snapchat me or text me and we catch up that way or we share things on Instagram or TikTok that remind us of us or the other person. Those actions might seem small, but they add up over time and we know the other will always care. We make time for our friendship since it means so much to us.
We used to take an annual trip to a beach for Chris’s birthday. We know that might not happen every year due to the distance, but we continue to talk about future trips. This is important because we prioritize our friendship which is deeply rooted in personal connections and the professional respect that we have for one another.
From Us to You
We hope that you enjoyed reading our story, but you might be wondering how you can pull lessons from this article to apply to your friendships and relationships. Before getting into the details, the biggest lesson that we would like you to take away is that drawing boundaries between your work life and personal life will help you build strong relationships while protecting your peace. Also, remember that boundaries are not going to be perfect overnight; they are a two way street– people need to be reminded at times and given grace in the beginning to ensure proper understanding.
Some important practices to keep in mind are:
- It is okay to become friends with your coworkers, but this should not be your priority in taking a position or navigating your job nor should it interfere with your work life
- Your personal and work lives should remain as separate as possible to help you draw healthy boundaries and reduce the overlap to the best of your ability. Too much overlap can unintentionally lead to burnout because you will feel like you are always thinking about work.
- If you become friends, it is important to have conversations similar to those that we had to help set yourselves up for success and reduce chances of potential friction
- Remember that this balance is your responsibility, not the responsibility of those around you
If you are interested, we have also shared our thoughts on this topic via a podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6MOevFy8KISVkg2C0N29ZA?si=pjqDTKApROuFWBwZzrvlpQ
Author Bios
Chris King (he/him) is a Residence Coordinator at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He has an M.Ed. in Counselor Education – Student Affairs from Clemson University and a B.S. in Educational Studies, Social Welfare & Justice, and a Minor in Human Resource Management from Marquette University.
Diamond Crawford (she/her) is an Athletic Compliance Coordinator at Western New Mexico University. She has a B.S in Food Science and Human Nutrition and a Public Health Certificate from Clemson University. She also received an M.Ed. in Counselor Education – Student Affairs from Clemson as well.