Handling Facebook “friend” requests from your boss

Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose.  I am a speaker and author. I am an expert in time and project management.

I help busy professionals and entrepreneurs create effective systems so that they can comfortably delegate to others, be more profitable and have time to enjoy life even if they don’t have time to learn new technology or train their staff.  I have a knack for turning big ideas into on time and profitable projects.

At the end of the day, I give people peace of mind.
Today’s question came from a busy professional interested in freeing some time and space to advance in his career.

How do you handle friend-ing requests from your boss? How about
your employees?

This is a tricky situation, especially if it is your boss making the friend request. You don’t want to say “no” to your boss, for fear they think you are hiding something.   In the “good old days” before social media, it was easy to keep your work life and private life separate. You have more control over what you shared in the office and what you took home at night. It was easier to keep private things private.

One wise friend recommends not placing anything on Facebook that you would be embarrassed if your boss saw it. I 100% agree. But that leaves all your other friends posts. While you can control what you post, it’s impossible to control what other people post.

Mixing your work colleagues and private friends on Facebook and social media is a slippery slope. Even if you are careful about the types of language and messages you put on your wall – there still are risks. Once you have shared friends and colleagues on Facebook, you have lost control over what other people post regarding your shared activities. Other friends can innocently tag you on photographs that they post.

It doesn’t have to be questionable photographs of you drinking (or being drunk) at a party to cause trouble at work. One real-life example is when a friend posted/tagged another friend in a photograph of their day excursion to New York. The managers saw the photograph on Facebook and realize that the employee had called in sick that day to take advantage of this play-date. The employee was fired. And he turned around and sued his friend for posting that photograph. The plaintiff accused his friend of causing his dismissal. Of course the judge corrected the plaintiff – because it was actually the plaintiff’s playing hooky from work that caused the dismissal. At the end of the day, the employee lost his job and a friend.

The intent of that story was to illustrate that you cannot predict the result of mixing your professional and private lives.

This is why I normally recommend keeping your work folks on a separate “professional page”. Keep them separate from your party-friend group. If possible, don’t allow the groups to mix. One recommendation is to keep your business contacts on Linkedin and your party friends on Facebook.

To learn more about how to effectively leverage LinkedIn to advance your career, check out the ecourse “Leveraging Links to Get That Skip-Level Promotion”.

For a list of the 10 Tool to Advance Your Career, request using this link <HERE>.

I know your situation is different. Why don’t we schedule an appointment, where I get to know more about your unique situation? And then I will be happy to make recommendations on what your best steps are moving forward. To schedule an appointment, book it HERE.

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