Sometimes you are faced with having a close/social friend work for you.

This is where it is easy to lose your objectivity in evaluating performance. It helps to ask yourself if you are treating this person like any other employee when you are at work. Are you being fair to everyone in the group? If you have doubts, seek an opinion from others who interact with this person.

If the group believes you are not being fair-perhaps giving your drinking buddy more leeway than other employees-then trust between you and your group will erode faster than a New York minute.

Also, when hiring a friend, fairness is especially critical. It helps to take yourself out of the decision loop. Delegate the final decision to others in your group. Form a special committee if this is a critical hire and then go with whatever decision the committee makes. If you have prepared a proper personnel requisition with hiring requirements, this will make it easier for the group to see if your friend does/does not meet the requirements.

Sometimes your best buddy just can't do the work. You must be prepared to fire him/her for the good of the group. I recall the first time I had to do that. I felt terrible and did indeed lose the friendship with the guy I fired. But several people who worked for me came up to me later and said how they really respected that I had fired my friend. They didn't think I would do it, and they commented on how the morale of the group soared because I did fire him.

All of this is a thousand times more critical if the friend is not platonic...

-Don Burtis