Why Friends Often Don’t Help Enough

A client told me recently that his wife, Linda, is now working at home. At lunch last week, she seemed to have a breakthrough of thought. Linda looked up from her sandwich and said,”Hon, I think I know what’s been bothering me.”

He put down his salad fork to listen.

“I don’t have to do anything.” Linda went on. “I know that I won’t get paid, if I don’t. I understand that, but I look around and realize there is no one thing that I have to do. I always wished for a life of no “have-tos,” and here I am feeling kind of lost.

Linda isn’t the only one who is facing that realization. Working at home without an appropriate replacement for regular paced interactions of the business day can cause us to feel like we don’t have direction. Linda was feeling a loss of focus, because she could do anything for work, she didn’t know what to do.

Unfortunately, this lack of direction can lead to stress on ourselves and our family.

Work came with daily, weekly monthly goals built in. Accountability was part of the package — don’t have any and soon enough a conversation would be happening with our managers about how to get some. A similar result would occur over time management.

What We NEED

For progress and earning to happen we need to have discipline, accountability and time management to move forward. We also need ways to judge the effectiveness of our progress. Without these controls anyone is bound to feel dissatisfied with our situation and soon to wish to return to the traditional work force.

What To Do

Here are two options people choose when we are faced with situations that require sorting, prioritizing, accountability, and time management skills.

• Folks often turn to a friend for help. Sometimes friends can fill this void and help with establishing well-rounded business day. A friend who knows us well and in whom we trust can offer a sounding board and help sort our options. However, friends are less likely to be great at holding us accountable or challenging our discipline. The value for friendship makes this a hard issue for friends to discuss.

  Sometimes friends see helping as a burden or think their advice might cause damage to a friend’s personal or professional life. These qualities in a friendship make it hard to get to an efficient truth-laden relationship — one which reflects and clearly states where the problems are so that we can look at them, analyze them, and find workable solutions. More often than not, asking a friend or a family member can lead to overtaxing the relationship.

• Hiring a manager to work as an equal partner often is a stronger approach to getting things on track. The psychological investment that goes with investing real cash is a powerful incentive to pay attention to what is being said. On the manager’s side the receipt of that cash is an equally powerful incentive to provide value that move things forward in a strategic fashion.

  A manager, who is not a friend, will work with a client to ensure that work progresses as it should, despite reasons or excuses we might provide. The manager is focused on the goals that were set as the criteria of a job well done. In other words, the manager stays in the job description that was chosen and manages in a fashion to hold the client there too.

Obviously, the second choice is superior — provided that the client and the manager agree on the goals and have personalities that work well together.

If you had a Perfect Virtual Manager, what tasks would you be most interested in having your manager do?

Liz Strauss