Let me tell you about this one time I got my heart broken.
It all started with a regular intro call with a candidate, let’s call him Simon, whom I was trying to recruit for a job. I had done my research on him, tailored my pitch to perfection, and woken up that morning full of swagger. The vibe was on from the start of the call. The small talk was fluid; we shared a few laughs, and the job was just what he was looking for. It turned out we had a lot in common, and a connection was formed. Simon made the first move and suggested we meet up for coffee. When we did, he was charming, witty, interesting and an excellent listener.
I came back to the office buzzing and told my more experienced, perhaps more cynical, colleague about my new friend. His response:
“He must really want the job”
That set off a gentle spiral of overthinking. Here I was believing that I had formed a genuine connection with someone. And maybe I had. But equally, or perhaps more likely, was the possibility that this person just wanted to charm me in the hopes I would tip the scales in his favour and ultimately land him this job. Was I being used? How dare he! But, come to think of it, I hadn’t called him up with all that energy and joviality to make a friend either: I had done it to secure a candidate. So who’s the hypocrite now?
Friends with the right people
The greatest marketeers discovered that the best way to make a sale is to build an emotional connection. People buy things from people they like, people who smile, people who seem trustworthy, people who call them by their name. But it’s not just in sales; the truth is, in life, it pays to have friends in the right places. Thus, the art of “winning friends and influencing people” (as popularised by Dale Carnegie) became a cornerstone of corporate performance and success. People in the business world are incentivised to befriend people, colleagues, service providers, potential customers, and everyone else, regardless of whether they are naturally interested in them. They are encouraged to build relationships that might someday yield them a useful outcome. To make friends with the right people.
Every successful executive I’ve ever met shares the common belief that it is possible to be a genuine friend while simultaneously hoping to one day gain something from that relationship. In sales (business development, customer acquisition, partnerships, you name it), where this relationship-building is most encouraged, the value of friendships can be directly quantified by how much money they pay you or your company. You can measure just how much you’re benefiting from each of your friends.
True believers in this practice see nothing wrong with this. On the contrary, they would argue that their interests and those of their friends/clients are aligned. They only make a sale if the client/friend needs their services, the agreed price is a fair market price, and the service delivered is of higher quality because of the deep and longstanding relationship with the client/friend. Everybody wins. And there is merit to that argument. A business transaction need not be zero-sum, even if all parties are trying to maximise their own economic gains from said transaction.
Trust issues
As the old saying goes, time is money. In life, you only have so much of the former, and in business your goal is to convert it into the latter. So you have to be efficient with your time. There are only so many evenings in the week; who you choose to spend those with is important. You might want to have dinner with your friend Annie, but she hasn’t brought you any business for three years, and you have a target to meet. Instead, you might be compelled to dine with the much less amusing but much more lucrative Connor, who, despite his lacklustre stories, always comes to you with new projects and single-handedly makes up 40% of your revenue. This feels like a reasonable balance: sometimes you have to do things that advance your career, other times you can do things for your personal enjoyment.
But what about Connor? He doesn’t know you’re inviting him to dinner because he pays your company for services. He thinks you two are friends. And he thinks that because you spent the past five years convincing him of that, with all those Christmas cards and birthday wishes and invitations to your wedding. He’s met your kids for Christ’s sake.
Who wants to be Connor?
When building relationships with people who might have a professional interest in doing so, you can never rule out the possibility that interaction is engineered. The simple fact that your counterpart might be, to some degree, motivated by the possibility of a future sale, business partnership, or career advancement colours the whole interaction. As long as there might be a selfish reason to befriend you, you can never be sure you aren’t Connor. Where an ulterior motive may exist, complete trust cannot.
True intentions
The problem with this situation comes down to one thing: conflict of interest.
A conflict of interest is any situation in which someone has multiple incentives that aren’t aligned. In many areas of life, there are laws against conflicts of interest. Politicians, judges, doctors, financial advisors, journalists, academics, and even charity workers must disclose conflicts of interest. Society disapproves of situations where there are competing incentives and seeks to limit their occurrence. And for good reason: letting someone believe you are acting in their best interest when you have other motives is dishonest and unethical. It also dramatically increases the chances of not acting in their best interest.
But in business, conflicts of interest are so commonplace, built into the very foundations, so openly present that we often forget it is there. Everyone in business is acting in their own self-interest. The smart operators are acting in long-term self-interest, which can sometimes involve sacrificing short-term gain for your benefit, in the interest of convincing you they’re looking out for you and building trust. Trust which they will later use for their own gain. This isn’t cynicism; this is the nature of the game. Anyone in business knows that while things might not be zero-sum, there is never a good reason to act in someone else’s economic interest unless it might benefit you down the line.
This is incompatible with what a friendship should be: a relationship founded on a genuine and altruistic desire for the other’s happiness, and a willingness to sacrifice for that end.
Healthy boundaries
So what happened with Simon?
Despite my strongest endorsements, he didn’t end up getting the job. But that didn’t stop us from keeping in touch. When I moved companies, he was among the first to congratulate me and suggest we catch up. We met up in person once more and exchanged a few phone calls. I never came across another good opportunity for him, which was a shame, and a few years ago I left the recruitment industry altogether. Looking back through our correspondence, I’m embarrassed to admit that I was the one who let the conversation die out. It might be that, as much as I sincerely liked Simon, my motivations for spending time with him were mainly professional. Or the fear that my cynical colleague was right, and that Simon only kept in touch for professional gain, made it impossible for me to believe the connection was real.
It is not to say that a genuine relationship cannot emerge from a professional setting. People meet lifelong friends and spouses through work all the time. So what is the difference?
Here is my rule for friendships:
Your therapist can’t be your best man, but your best man can once have been your therapist. You shouldn’t have a romantic relationship with your colleague, but you can have a beautiful marriage to a former colleague. You can’t be friends with someone you benefit from, but you can be friends with someone you used to benefit from.
If you want friends, you have to surrender the benefits. If you want the benefits, you can’t call them your friends.