Dual Relationship

One fun thing about being married to a therapist is you learn all sorts of interesting ways to think about human behavior. And since “human behavior” is just a fancy way of saying “everything that everybody is doing all of the time,” the things you learn can be quite useful in day-to-day life.

I first heard the term “dual relationship” when my wife and I were talking about how therapists shouldn’t see friends or professional colleagues as clients, nor hire or date any of the clients they already have. These relationships are described as “dual” because they exist in two different contexts, and interactions in one context might impact the other. The conversation about why having dual relationships is a bad idea for therapists is a topic for another article¹, but the idea stuck with me even beyond the original conversation.

Dual relationships are quite common, it turns out. Hiring a friend to cater your wedding creates one, as does starting a band or a company or any other meaningful project with them. Dual relationships aren’t necessarily problematic, but approaching them with caution is recommended; most people probably know at least one story of a friendship ending over some collaboration gone wrong. And even more care is called for when there’s a power imbalance in one of the relationships. It’s not hard to imagine how conflict in one domain might end up causing power to be misused in the other.

As someone whose job is to manage software engineers, I’ve come to think of my relationships with my reports as dual in nature. I’m comfortable having managerial authority², but I don’t think of myself as inherently deserving of that authority, as fundamentally better than anyone else. The dual relationship framing has been helpful to me in thinking and communicating about this tension.

In one relationship I’m The Boss, an agent of the company we both work for, representing the power of our employer. And it’s a considerable amount of power! I have a great deal of control over how they spend their work hours, and over both their short term (paychecks, bonuses) and long term (career development, promotions) financial situations. I take this power seriously, and consider it a big responsibility. But I also take my job seriously, which means I sometimes have to make decisions that negatively impact one or more of my reports.

In the other relationship I’m a Colleague, and we’re just two people trying to make it through life who happen to work at the same place. There’s no power differential in this context; the org chart is a hierarchy, our humanity is not. I do my best to care about and have empathy for my fellow humans, and this is the context in which that care and empathy can be found.

I try to stay aware of which hat I’m wearing at any given time, and to be explicit with my reports about it. Colleague is the default; it’s who I am when I’m writing docs, doing administrative work, having engineering conversations, attending project meetings, chatting about non-work stuff, etc. The Boss shows up whenever I’m doing the manager-y stuff, especially anything related to the performance review process, from the setting of goals at the start of the half all the way through to sharing the formal feedback and any news about outcomes re: ratings, raises, bonuses, and/or promotions at the end of the half. Most of my Boss-type interactions with my reports happen in our weekly 1:1s.

The power differential never goes away, of course. Just because I say I’m wearing my Colleague hat doesn’t mean The Boss isn’t hanging out in the room. That’s central to dual relationships: you can never truly separate them. Still, thinking and talking about it in this way helps me keep an alliance with my reports. The Colleague part of me is always on their side, because I care about them and want them to succeed. The Boss also wants them to succeed, because it’s his job. But it’s also his job to accurately assess and rate performance, and to make hard decisions and share unpleasant news when the goals we’ve agreed upon aren’t being achieved.

Just like The Boss is always around when I’m being a Colleague, so the Colleague is there when I’m being The Boss. He shows up as empathy: “This sucks, I know. I imagine you’re feeling pretty disappointed. I’m sorry.” He doesn’t stop The Boss from doing his job, of course, but he’s invested in his teammate’s success and well-being in a more human way than The Boss can ever be. The Colleague’s empathy helps keep The Boss in check, by assessing the demands being made to ensure they’re reasonable, by ensuring that The Boss behaves in ways that support psychological safety, and by ensuring that the people on my team are being set up for success.

There will of course be cases when someone is upset to the point that talk of Colleagues and Bosses will seem empty to them, and they won’t be much interested in trying to separate them out. Sometimes I’ll understand this perspective, and other times I’ll disagree because I think the situation is fair. When this happens, I just have to take the hit. But empathy begets empathy, and if I’ve truly invested in the collegial, human aspects of a relationship, then it’s easier for someone to see the collegial, human aspects of me, and we’re more likely to maintain a positive, healthy interpersonal dynamic, even when things aren’t going as well as either of us would like.