THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU HEAR

• “Oh, you’ll love it here - it’s a family-run business and we love treating everybody here as part of the family!”

• “I feel bad asking for some time off. The company is going through a really busy time and well, we are like family here so there’s a lot of give and take, you know?”

• “My boss is amazing - he’s so fatherly - I feel like I can tell him everything bothering me.”

• “They treat us like kids around here.”

• “Oh, she’s kinda like my work spouse. I don’t know how I could survive this craziness at work without having someone to talk to about all the nonsense that happens here.”

…you’re in the Good, Bad & Ugly of “We’re all like family here!” at work.

THINK // 3 insights from the field

😇 THE GOOD THING about people at work saying “we are like family here” is that it may come from a genuine desire to humanise the workplace.

Those who love the idea of having a “work family” might be warm, family-oriented people who just want everybody to feel welcomed, appreciated and treated as more than just a cog in the wheel.

They might be the first ones to remember birthdays, give hand-written cards, buy thoughtful gifts, offer a shoulder to cry on - just as they might do with their real family.

“We are like family here” may also be something people working in family-run businesses might say since there literally is a family already integrated into their system. And if that family is healthy and well-boundaried, that statement may not be a bad thing yet.

Then there are some of us who have found a tiny tribe of work buddies that we connect so well with that we consider them as our “found family“ or “chosen family”: a group of people who choose to embrace and support each other regardless of blood or marriage. These are the people we stay in personal contact with long after we leave our workplace for other professional pastures.

So for all of the above people, having a workplace that “feels like family” might honestly be their warmest compliment and highest benchmark.

It’s not a bad thing - yet.

🤬 THE BAD THING about “we’re like family here” is that the people at work are NOT your family.

Workplace relationships are

• inherently contractual and performance-based.

• happening within a shared organisational context governed by common processes and standards.

• happening within a power structure that has clear power differences built into it: different levels of decision-making, different access to resources, different kinds of entitlements.

Those are not bad things. Those are factual realities and can be named as-is.

Technically speaking, a professional context should make it easier to negotiate higher pay with a boss vs. negotiating for higher allowance with your father. Or inform your team you are leaving for another job vs. informing your family you are leaving them for another family.

If we are in a healthy, democratic, psychologically safe work environment, our professional context ought to free us to discuss and negotiate our concerns around performance, contracts, time, salary etc. professional needs without embarrassment or fear.

That is why establishing a “work family” cannot be our aspiration, expectation or projection because that phrase does blur our understanding of personal vs. professional boundaries.

At work, we want people to do things with, for, alongside each other because they have personal appreciation for each other as people and a professional understanding of what they signed up to do as fellow professionals. They should not be doing things for each other out of some weirdly over-personal sense of obligation.

Author Alison Green sums it up in a New York Times interview:

If you do a Google search, you’ll find many discussions that echo Green’s sentiments:

3 Problematic Things with “We’re like Family”

Blurred boundaries
= Blurred attachments
= Blurred loyalties
= Blurred priorities

We may feel deeply attached and love our work teams to bits. But we should not feel more attached to people at work vs. the people in our personal life whom we know will be the ones who we want and need by our side when the chips are down.

Who would you consider as the ones so strongly attached to you that they will be right by your side should you become unemployed, fall grieviously ill, get slammed by a major crisis etc. serious roadbumps in life?

For people who have hit a goldmine of “great friends/ found family for life” there in the workplace, they might say “yes, it’s my work family”.

But for many of us, we might realise that in the most extreme circumstances, while our very best people at work might be deeply empathetic and helpful in those seasons, they likely will not/ cannot be there 100% at your side in life’s worst seasons - because simply put, they are just not your family (real or found) at the end of the day. Bluntly put, they are not going to be the ones holding your hand at the deathbed.

Modern workplaces naturally demand a lot of our focus, energy and time - and if we add on genuine enjoyment of our work and our work buddies, we will naturally sacrifice even more focus, energy and time there.

The opportunity cost is that this is focus, energy and time we might have spent cultivating our personal relationships and personal growth.

A healthy workplace would never ask you to choose between people at work vs people at home. A healthy workplace should encourage you to make as much time for your personal commitments as you do for your professional commitments. A healthy workplace would encourage people to form healthy bonds and attachments with their actual families/friends outside of work.

This is why once envied office perks (like glamourous kitchenettes, showers, foosball tables, massage spaces) that were designed to make the workplace feel like a playful “home away from home” are now viewed as signposts of a organisation that prefers you to just keep working and never go home.

We cannot keep giving our self, our closest family and friends the leftover crumbs of our energy, time and affections. You also don’t want to encourage your colleagues to do that to their actual family and friends outside of work. It’s not right.

We are here to support our people find the best win-win balance and not ask them to imbalance their well-being for the organisation’s well-being.

😈 THE UGLY THING about "we’re family here!” is it can hide dynamics similar to what you find in toxic family systems.

This is especially visible in family-run businesses where the actual family is already unhealthy and brings their toxic familial patterns literally into the way they run projects, lead teams etc.

Look out for some “Work is like family” symptoms that are red flags:

🚩 having bosses as controlling or smothering father/mother figures that surround themselves with staff who fear, defer or revere their authority.
🚩 managers or leaders talking to/ treating staff as if they are kids to be disciplined or kids to be coddled vs. talking to them as adult peers
🚩 keeping secrets on behalf of parental figure leaders because you’ve learnt a dysfunctional pattern of “let’s keep things within the family” “don’t wash the family’s dirty linen” “keep family secrets”
🚩 not communicating or negotiating upfront for professional needs because you’ve learnt a dysfunctional pattern of “when family goes through bad times, we all must sacrifice/or put up with things”
🚩 having “work husbands/work wives” that rival real husbands and wives for time spent and emotional connection

We have to also see that people do bring to work their unresolved personal patterns from their family of origin.

In Transactional Analysis, we learn that everybody has a Parent Ego State copied from our past parental figures (Nurturing Parent or Critical Parent), a Child Ego State replayed from past childhood habits (Free Child or Adapted Child) and an Adult Ego State trying to make reasonable choices in the here and now.

Without getting too much into Transactional Analysis, the TLDR is this: in our daily interactions with each other, we may possibly trigger each others’ most dysfunctional Inner Parent or worst Inner Child.

So if you feel like talking to your boss reminds you of feeling like a sullen child talking to your passive aggressive mother once again, you may not be too far off.

It would be worthwhile taking a step back and asking yourself from your Adult state: should a fellow Adult talk to me like that? Or is this person coming at me from some wierd Parent/Child state?

FEEL // 2 links to help you feel less alone

WATCH  Gloria Chan Packer - founder of Recalibrate, a workplace mental wellness provider - explain how treating work as family can breed burnout

READ Nicole Miller - Director of People at Buffer - discusses why she stopped calling her coworkers “Family”, even though she once used that term with a lot of affection.

DO // 1 strategy to try this week

NOTICE  the next time someone says something like “We are like family here here!” in reference to their workplace

THEN, GET CURIOUS

Is that phrase coming from a healthy space? Or are there issues of blurred personal vs professional boundaries going on?

1. Are there blurred attachments? Are people relating way too closely with each other at work in a way that feels inappropriate and unprofessional?

2. Are there blurred loyalties? Are people overly protective, loyal and secretive around a parent-like/child-like figure?

3. Are there blurred priorities? Is there a constant pattern of excessive sacrificing of personal energy, time, commitments etc. for the sake of the workplace?

Is this person describing their workplace interactions from a healthy Adult state or a strange Parent/Child state?

1. Are there unhealthy Parent-State dynamics going on? This can look like an excessively critical/nurturing authority figure that is aggressively disempowering others or infantilising others

2. Are there unhealthy Child-State dynamics going on? This can look like people who act like rebellious children playing childish games with each other or talking back in unproductive ways to authority? This can also feel like cowed children hiding or silencing themselves from certain authority figures

3. Are there healthy Adult state dynamics? This can look like people being able to get along, discuss, disagree and fight through tensions from a more or less equal power position. They are able to make rational choices together in the here and now that don’t feel strangely or excessively personal.

IF YOU SAY “WE ARE FAMILY HERE!”, TRY SAYING

1. We respect and support each other here.

2. We honour your need to care for you family at home here.

3. We help you draw healthy personal/professional boundaries here.

4. We enjoy working with each other here - but when it’s time to go home, we want you to go home and focus on your family.

YOU CAN ALSO ASK

1. How do we respect and support each other here?

2. How can we honour your need to care for you family at home here?

3. How can we draw healthier personal/professional boundaries here?

4. How can we help each other go home in time to focus on our selves, our family etc?

Is there anyone who can help me deal with a dicey situation involving “family dynamics” at work?

It's hard work to do alone. And I would love to have a chat with you about what's going on for you and how I could possibly help.

I help my organisational clients strategise how to change what's working/not working in their culture. I design interventions, train leaders & their people in necessary skills and facilitate necessary conversations on their behalf.

Have a worthy weekend, workplace warriors.

Leading organisational cultural change is a good and meaningful thing. But it can be a battlefield through some bad things and ugly things. I'm here for you in the trenches.

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Meanwhile, get some rest this weekend. I'll see you next Friday,

❤️ 👊 🙌

Wishing you love, power & meaning,

Shiao