Advice for Maintaining Personal Boundaries Between Nonprofit Coworkers

IN THE TRENCHES

By Rebecca Gardyn

One day, the close-knit staff of Build Rehabilitation Industries, a charity in San Fernando, Calif.,

that provides vocational education to disadvantaged populations, grew a little too close for comfort, recalls Michele Utley, the group’s vice president.

A colleague had called Ms. Utley from a project location to inform her that a co-worker was having chest pains and was being sent to the hospital in an ambulance. Hours later, Ms. Utley called to follow up on an administrative issue and discovered that half of the staff had gone to the hospital with their ailing co-worker, leaving the project without adequate coverage.

Throughout her 15 years in the nonprofit field, Ms. Utley says, she has witnessed many supervisors and employees cross the line that separates personal relationships from professional ones. That tenuous border isn’t always easy to patrol, she says, especially for employees of nonprofit organizations who tend to work in informal settings where familial-like relationships frequently develop.

Such “border crossings” are inevitable, she says. “It is the nature of many nonprofit employees to extend themselves to others,” she says. “In an environment of counselors, case managers and social workers, it is impossible to expect that they in turn will not seek out assistance and support from one another on their personal issues. But when it interferes with the operations of the organization or the services provided to constituents, it can cause problems.”

Personal relationships between co-workers can affect a staff’s productivity, focus, and dedication — sometimes for better, and often for worse. While tight friendships on the job often can spawn creativity, trust, and teamwork, the same relationships gone bad can breed dysfunction, resentment, and a lack of responsibility, not to mention potential legal ramifications for an organization. Setting up and maintaining appropriate boundaries is not easy — especially for small charities with informal office cultures — but every supervisor, human-resources manager, or rank-and-file employee can take steps to make sure that friendships formed on the job only add to, and never distract from, a positive and productive workplace.

Empathy and Sympathy

Employees who fail to set appropriate boundaries between their personal and professional lives can easily lose objectivity on the job, says Jonathan Segal, a lawyer in Philadelphia specializing in employment issues who works with nonprofit clients. When relationships get too close, workers can become reluctant to express their needs or dissatisfaction, he says.

Mr. Segal describes an incident with one of his nonprofit clients in which two employees working on a project together became very close friends. One was not pulling his weight, but the other did not complain because he was afraid his co-worker would get in trouble. Ultimately, the project failed and both lost their jobs.

“There is no clear rule about when to draw the line between your personal and professional lives. We each may draw the line at different places,” says Mr. Segal. “But the bottom line is that if a relationship with a co-worker takes priority over the relationship with the employer, there’s a real problem.”

Employees who find that their personal friendships are interfering with their objectivity on the job need to create some distance, says Paul Rusch, director of marketing and contracts for Penn-Behavioral Health, a nonprofit employee-assistance program run by the University of Pennsylvania that provides such programs for local and national nonprofit groups. (Employee-assistance programs provide workers with treatment for a wide range of personal issues, including emotional problems and substance abuse.) Those who find themselves in constant conversation with a co-worker about his or her personal problems should try to remain as detached as possible, he says.

“There’s a major difference between showing empathy and showing sympathy,” says Mr. Rusch. “Sympathy denotes feeling the same pain and sharing a similar experience with the person who is emotionally venting. Empathy represents listening with concern, but not becoming overly involved in their dilemmas. Empathy also means coming up with ways to help them resolve or deal with their situation quickly.”

Rather than offer advice, he adds, employees might suggest to troubled co-workers some outside resources, such as employee-assistance programs, which can provide counseling and support away from the office.

Remaining detached isn’t always so easy, however, says Jessica Brayden, director of human resources at Family Continuity Programs, a human-services charity in Lawrence, Mass. One of the biggest problems she has faced in trying to keeping her employees’ relationships from getting too intimate is the fact that her staff members — consisting primarily of social workers — can’t seem to turn off their counseling skills when dealing with one another.

“I often get calls from managers saying, ‘So-and-so has an attendance problem, and I know it isn’t just because he’s tired. I know he must have an alcohol and drug problem, ‘” says Ms. Brayden. “I tell them: ‘Stop it. You cannot be diagnosing your staff.’”

While it is certainly appropriate for co-workers to show interest in one another’s lives, someone has to be bold enough to delineate the cutoff point, says Lydia Ramsey, a consultant on office etiquette in Savannah, Ga., and author of Manners That Sell (Longfellow Press, 2000, $19.95). Employees should hone their communication skills and learn how to turn off-topic conversations back to work-related issues as quickly as possible, she says. Don’t be timid about letting colleagues know when it is time to cut the chatter and get back to the grindstone.

“If things get too personal, it is perfectly acceptable to say, ‘Thank you, but I would rather not discuss that, ‘” she says. “An unwillingness to reveal too much personal information — or to listen to another person reveal too much personal information — should not be seen as unfriendly.”

Drawing the Line

Unfortunately, sometimes being blunt is seen as being unfriendly. Even if an employee does feel like the socializing is getting out of control, no one wants to be constantly chilling the water-cooler chatter. To protect workers’ privacy in even a relaxed nonprofit environment, senior staff members and human-resources managers must set up appropriate rules and provide outside resources, say nonprofit managers.

For example, at the North Carolina Victim Assistance Network, a small nonprofit organization that provides services for victims of violent crime, a set of written policies helps to ensure that social and work boundaries are maintained. One policy, for instance, prohibits employees and volunteers from supervising family members, and the group’s code of ethics spells out, among other things, that “private information shared by fellow employees must be held confidential” and that “concerns or judgments about co-workers be reported to supervisors through proper channels” (i.e., no gossiping allowed).

“These types of rules help keep us from getting too deep in each other’s personal business,” says Donna Pygott, the charity’s executive director, although she readily acknowledges that the rules can be tough to enforce for the small organization. “With only five employees, you tend to know more about your co-workers than you normally would in a larger office. It’s difficult not to become like a little family — one that can sometimes be a little dysfunctional.”

To avoid such dysfunction and to clarify appropriate office conduct, Caryn Servis, an employee-assistance-program associate at Penn-Behavioral Health, recommends that organizations develop explicit, written rules for interaction among various types of workers — among rank-and-file employees, between supervisors and subordinates, and between supervisors and human-resources managers.

Such codes of conduct, and the consequences of breaking them, then need to be communicated frequently to staff members through educational materials and training, says Ms. Servis. Offering employees flexible work schedules, generous time off when needed, and counseling via an employee-assistance program, she says, can also go a long way to help keep personal relationships and issues from tainting the professional work environment.

Still, no matter how many rules are set up, some will inevitably be broken. When they are, Robert Esty, president of Human Management Services, an employee-assistance program in West Chester, Pa., has this advice for managers: Stay out of it, unless productivity begins to suffer.

“Human-resources people have to stay above the rumor and innuendo involved in any personal situation between two co-workers and focus only upon their job performance,” says Mr. Esty. “As much as they may be tempted to intervene, as long as job performance is not affected, the manager should stay detached.”

Caring and Sharing

Despite the potential problems, close relationships on the job can benefit a charity — as long as there is a clear understanding at the outset that the work always comes first, says Lisa Olivas-Cook, a grant-proposal writer in Phoenix, who has worked at several nonprofit organizations over the last 12 years. “When you know your co-workers on a personal level,” she says, “you have a better understanding of each other’s perspectives, strengths, and shortcomings, and you can use each other’s best abilities to get the job done most efficiently.”

In fact, while too much personal sharing can create a less-productive work environment, too little can also present problems. Ms. Brayden recalls one employee who was extremely private and didn’t want to share any personal information about herself to anybody, at any time. “She was pregnant with twins and didn’t tell anyone until she absolutely had to, and even then, she didn’t want to talk about it,” says Ms. Brayden. “She wouldn’t even tell people her birthday or participate in any celebratory events. It definitely made things awkward between her and her co-workers.”

Balancing congeniality and professionalism can be tough, but it is a goal that all nonprofit employees should aim to reach.

“While there are risks in co-workers having close relationships, there are also risks in co-workers being distant from one another,” says Mr. Segal. “Cold environments are less pleasant and often less productive. The goal is to encourage collegiality, but in the context of a professional environment.”

Do your co-workers successfully balance camaraderie and professionalism? Tell us how your organization maintains boundaries in the Share Your Brainstorms online forum.