I donât see any way you could meaningfully âaddressâ the work/âsocial overlap without trying to get people not to date, live with or befriend people they otherwise would have dated, lived with, or befriended. And if you put it in those terms, it seems messed up, right?
I donât actually think thatâs necessarily messed up? That sometimes your role conflicts with a relationship youâd like to have is unfortunate, but not really avoidable:
A company telling its managers that they canât date their reports .
A person telling their partner that they canât date other people.
A person telling their partner that they canât date a specific other person.
A school telling professors they canât date their students.
A charity telling their donor services staff that they canât date major donors.
The person has the option of giving up their role (the manager and report can work with HR to see if either can change roles to remove the conflict, the poly partner can dump the mono one, etc.) but the roleâs gatekeeper saying you both canât keep the role and date the person seems fine in many cases?
The harm isnât in the harshness or softness of the punishmentâitâs friendships nipped in the bud, beautiful relationships that can never even get started. I think people should think harder about the sacrifices that in practice people would have to make, and about how important social relationships are.
In agreement there!
Most of my comments have been trying to say âwe should evaluate both sides of these tradeoffsâ. Too much of the discussion has been âX has downsidesâ or âX has upsidesâ as if these are decisive.
I also think the word âpunishmentâ in the original post is too loaded. Taking on certain social roles has an effect of limiting the personâs freedom in various ways; it disqualifies them from taking certain inconsistent roles. But we wouldnât, for instance, say that a charity is âpunishingâ its donor services staff by stating that they canât date major donors.
I donât actually think thatâs necessarily messed up? That sometimes your role conflicts with a relationship youâd like to have is unfortunate, but not really avoidable:
A company telling its managers that they canât date their reports .
...
A school telling professors they canât date their students.
A charity telling their donor services staff that they canât date major donors.
In theory, I think it makes a lot of sense to have some clear hard lines related to some power dynamics, but even when Iâm trying to write those red lines I notice myself writing guidelines because human dynamics are subtle and context specific. For instance:
because you shouldnât have power dynamics potentially seep into a romantic relationship or influence your work behaviour: donât date direct reports; and most likely same for anyone in your workplace hierarchy; or where you have any inkling this negative dynamic could arise
Someone at a certain level of seniority and /â or power within an organisation will find others feel less able to speak up if their behaviour doesnât chime with them, so you should be extra careful in non-work social settings, especially if thereâs banter which could be flirtatious or a bit too close to the bone
Someone very experienced /â well regarded in a companyâeven if very juniorâcan wield a lot of power over someone more senior, so they too need to keep themselves in check in terms of how they affect the other person; including how they challenge them
Basically, I donât think thereâs a feasible checklist for dealing effectively with the range of issues that might occur: affection and loyalty, and power, influence and control are all so subtle. To ensure youâre not doing wrong to others or being done wrong to, itâs more a constant process of checking in with yourself and empowering others to speak up.
Moreover, I think itâs difficult to separate out what counts as more /â less ok workplace relationships. You could say we need to see fewer people working in EA orgs who were friends outside of work (as opposed to friends you make at work) or romantic relationships starting in EA orgs, but then thereâs just the people who you get along with and see eye-to-eye with within the work place and sometimes develop more impactful and /â or toxic relationships with. For example:
having political loyalty to a colleague, leading to factions
nepotism between close friends /â former work colleagues
simply the more junior person feels their career is still dependent on their mentor /â friend[1]
Which is to say implement all these rules targeting âout of workâ friendships /â relationships, but human power dynamic issues will still prevail in adjacent domains.
Reflecting that tighter human alliances and power dynamics is somewhat inevitable (I postulate), itâs worth noting that a lot of the time companiesâbig or smallâdeal with relationships in flexible ways, and sometimes this is worth considering. Things like:
if two people want to start datingâwhether theyâre in the same team or in a line management hierarchyâgive them the option of changing teams where thatâs appropriate for the business and still maintains sufficient separation to avoid power imbalances /â
in some cases, just turning a blind eye because people have their shit together and it isnât interfering in their work-lives
stipulating that a married couple cannot be in the same senior leadership team (as theyâll be a unit)
Side note: most of the above examples are why Iâm often banging on about diversity within organisationsâjust newbies full stopâbecause they can break much of these dynamics up both through behaviours and new ideas, but I wonât get on that hobby-horse just now.
I do agree that itâs reasonable/âinevitable that sometimes roles conflict with who you want to date. But in all your examples, I wouldnât necessarily frame this as âtelling someone who they couldnât dateâ (more like saying âyou canât date x while one or both if you is in y circumstanceâ). Like, if I ran an organization and a manager came to me and said âuh, my report and I have kind of fallen for each other, and we want to dateâ, I wouldnât be like âwell you canât date themâ, Iâd be like âcongratulations! But yeah, you probably shouldnât manage them anymoreâIâll find them another managerâ. When potential romantic relationships arise in workplace settings where thereâs a power dynamic, I think the best move is to let the relationship play out and move around the working relationships so thereâs no longer a power dynamic between the two. The reason I think this is that romantic relationships are very precious for people, and not that easy to find, whereas manager/âreport relationships (or professor/âstudent or whatever) are generally less meaningful and require less compatibility, so it makes sense to prioritize the romantic relationship over the professional one.
Similarly, if a monogamous person says âI wonât date you if you date other peopleâ, that seems like them (reasonably) expressing a condition on who they will dateâsimilar to if they said âI wonât date you if you eat meat/âare a social conservative/âare a smoker/âwant kidsâ. This feels different to external people trying to stop me from dating another person who wants to date me.
Maybe a lot of this is semantic, but the substantive thing might be âin cases where there are clashing social and work relationships, Iâd be in favour of prioritizing the social one over the work one, and in workplaces accommodating social relationships that arise within in them, rather than trying to prevent them from happeningâ - similarly to how good workplaces should accommodate people having kids (by e.g. offering parental leave), rather than telling them to just quit if they want a kid.
whereas manager/âreport relationships (or professor/âstudent or whatever) are generally less meaningful and require less compatibility, so it makes sense to prioritize the romantic relationship over the professional one.
While I do think this is generally true for managers at large organizations, thereâs also an issue where there could have been some amount of abuse of power around the manager and report getting together. I think thatâs even clearer in the professor and student case, where I would be extremely surprised to see a âcongratulationsâ from the Dean.
Youâre right that in some circumstances people would choose to handle a conflict by giving up their existing role, and âyou canât date Xâ phrasing from role gatekeepers assumes that someone strongly values their specific existing role. But I do think itâs reasonably common that people do value their existing roles more strongly, especially when weâre talking about casual dating and not âI think Iâve found my life partnerâ. So I do think this is responsive to the point you made in your original post, which is that having norms against combining certain roles with certain relationships does have consequences in terms of people not getting to enjoy some otherwise positive and fulfilling relationships.
congratulations! But yeah, you probably shouldnât manage them anymoreâIâll find them another manager
In lots of small orgs this is tremendously costly or impossible. It might be a nonstarter at a lot of large orgs too, I just wouldnât know about it because Iâve never worked at a large org.
I think the word âprobablyâ in this quotation is quite concerningâyou should 100%, definitely, in every case and without question not let someone manage someone they are dating. Itâs an unresolvable conflict of interest and totally unprofessional.
But also, to Quinnâs point, if itâs a small org, even making this change might not really mitigate the problem. Imagine a 5 person team, where the CEO and one of the staff are dating, so then you change the reporting line for the junior person in the relationship. It seems highly probable that the new manager is going to be influenced by the fact that their boss is dating their subordinate.
Iâm going to write a longer comment on how I think you can manage this below.
I donât actually think thatâs necessarily messed up? That sometimes your role conflicts with a relationship youâd like to have is unfortunate, but not really avoidable:
A company telling its managers that they canât date their reports .
A person telling their partner that they canât date other people.
A person telling their partner that they canât date a specific other person.
A school telling professors they canât date their students.
A charity telling their donor services staff that they canât date major donors.
The person has the option of giving up their role (the manager and report can work with HR to see if either can change roles to remove the conflict, the poly partner can dump the mono one, etc.) but the roleâs gatekeeper saying you both canât keep the role and date the person seems fine in many cases?
In agreement there!
Most of my comments have been trying to say âwe should evaluate both sides of these tradeoffsâ. Too much of the discussion has been âX has downsidesâ or âX has upsidesâ as if these are decisive.
I also think the word âpunishmentâ in the original post is too loaded. Taking on certain social roles has an effect of limiting the personâs freedom in various ways; it disqualifies them from taking certain inconsistent roles. But we wouldnât, for instance, say that a charity is âpunishingâ its donor services staff by stating that they canât date major donors.
In theory, I think it makes a lot of sense to have some clear hard lines related to some power dynamics, but even when Iâm trying to write those red lines I notice myself writing guidelines because human dynamics are subtle and context specific. For instance:
because you shouldnât have power dynamics potentially seep into a romantic relationship or influence your work behaviour: donât date direct reports; and most likely same for anyone in your workplace hierarchy; or where you have any inkling this negative dynamic could arise
Someone at a certain level of seniority and /â or power within an organisation will find others feel less able to speak up if their behaviour doesnât chime with them, so you should be extra careful in non-work social settings, especially if thereâs banter which could be flirtatious or a bit too close to the bone
Someone very experienced /â well regarded in a companyâeven if very juniorâcan wield a lot of power over someone more senior, so they too need to keep themselves in check in terms of how they affect the other person; including how they challenge them
Basically, I donât think thereâs a feasible checklist for dealing effectively with the range of issues that might occur: affection and loyalty, and power, influence and control are all so subtle. To ensure youâre not doing wrong to others or being done wrong to, itâs more a constant process of checking in with yourself and empowering others to speak up.
Moreover, I think itâs difficult to separate out what counts as more /â less ok workplace relationships. You could say we need to see fewer people working in EA orgs who were friends outside of work (as opposed to friends you make at work) or romantic relationships starting in EA orgs, but then thereâs just the people who you get along with and see eye-to-eye with within the work place and sometimes develop more impactful and /â or toxic relationships with. For example:
having political loyalty to a colleague, leading to factions
nepotism between close friends /â former work colleagues
simply the more junior person feels their career is still dependent on their mentor /â friend[1]
Which is to say implement all these rules targeting âout of workâ friendships /â relationships, but human power dynamic issues will still prevail in adjacent domains.
Reflecting that tighter human alliances and power dynamics is somewhat inevitable (I postulate), itâs worth noting that a lot of the time companiesâbig or smallâdeal with relationships in flexible ways, and sometimes this is worth considering. Things like:
if two people want to start datingâwhether theyâre in the same team or in a line management hierarchyâgive them the option of changing teams where thatâs appropriate for the business and still maintains sufficient separation to avoid power imbalances /â
in some cases, just turning a blind eye because people have their shit together and it isnât interfering in their work-lives
stipulating that a married couple cannot be in the same senior leadership team (as theyâll be a unit)
Side note: most of the above examples are why Iâm often banging on about diversity within organisationsâjust newbies full stopâbecause they can break much of these dynamics up both through behaviours and new ideas, but I wonât get on that hobby-horse just now.
I do agree that itâs reasonable/âinevitable that sometimes roles conflict with who you want to date. But in all your examples, I wouldnât necessarily frame this as âtelling someone who they couldnât dateâ (more like saying âyou canât date x while one or both if you is in y circumstanceâ). Like, if I ran an organization and a manager came to me and said âuh, my report and I have kind of fallen for each other, and we want to dateâ, I wouldnât be like âwell you canât date themâ, Iâd be like âcongratulations! But yeah, you probably shouldnât manage them anymoreâIâll find them another managerâ. When potential romantic relationships arise in workplace settings where thereâs a power dynamic, I think the best move is to let the relationship play out and move around the working relationships so thereâs no longer a power dynamic between the two. The reason I think this is that romantic relationships are very precious for people, and not that easy to find, whereas manager/âreport relationships (or professor/âstudent or whatever) are generally less meaningful and require less compatibility, so it makes sense to prioritize the romantic relationship over the professional one.
Similarly, if a monogamous person says âI wonât date you if you date other peopleâ, that seems like them (reasonably) expressing a condition on who they will dateâsimilar to if they said âI wonât date you if you eat meat/âare a social conservative/âare a smoker/âwant kidsâ. This feels different to external people trying to stop me from dating another person who wants to date me.
Maybe a lot of this is semantic, but the substantive thing might be âin cases where there are clashing social and work relationships, Iâd be in favour of prioritizing the social one over the work one, and in workplaces accommodating social relationships that arise within in them, rather than trying to prevent them from happeningâ - similarly to how good workplaces should accommodate people having kids (by e.g. offering parental leave), rather than telling them to just quit if they want a kid.
While I do think this is generally true for managers at large organizations, thereâs also an issue where there could have been some amount of abuse of power around the manager and report getting together. I think thatâs even clearer in the professor and student case, where I would be extremely surprised to see a âcongratulationsâ from the Dean.
Youâre right that in some circumstances people would choose to handle a conflict by giving up their existing role, and âyou canât date Xâ phrasing from role gatekeepers assumes that someone strongly values their specific existing role. But I do think itâs reasonably common that people do value their existing roles more strongly, especially when weâre talking about casual dating and not âI think Iâve found my life partnerâ. So I do think this is responsive to the point you made in your original post, which is that having norms against combining certain roles with certain relationships does have consequences in terms of people not getting to enjoy some otherwise positive and fulfilling relationships.
In lots of small orgs this is tremendously costly or impossible. It might be a nonstarter at a lot of large orgs too, I just wouldnât know about it because Iâve never worked at a large org.
I think the word âprobablyâ in this quotation is quite concerningâyou should 100%, definitely, in every case and without question not let someone manage someone they are dating. Itâs an unresolvable conflict of interest and totally unprofessional.
But also, to Quinnâs point, if itâs a small org, even making this change might not really mitigate the problem. Imagine a 5 person team, where the CEO and one of the staff are dating, so then you change the reporting line for the junior person in the relationship. It seems highly probable that the new manager is going to be influenced by the fact that their boss is dating their subordinate.
Iâm going to write a longer comment on how I think you can manage this below.