The atmosphere of the night club was energetic, and the people were packed in like so many sardines in a can. As I pulled up, I had thought about the implications that I was about to meet my employee and his girlfriend for a few drinks after a long day at work. At a dance club. To say that I have to walk the balance of defining “appropriate behavior” is an understatement.
But, as promised, I walk into the night club and immediately find my coworker and his girlfriend hanging out with a few of their friends. And then, the phrase finally hit:
“This is my boss, Chris.”
I stumble a bit with figuring out how carry myself in this situation, and confirm that yes, I am indeed the boss in this situation. As the night goes on, jokes are made at my expense as well as that of my employee (threats to fire him if he didn’t buy me a beer happened at least twice), but I eventually overcame the idea that I was someone’s boss for the night, and had a great time meeting some truly great people. It inspired a confidence level that likely wouldn’t have been reached otherwise through standard operating procedure at the office.
By all standard definitions, I am a boss to a growing number of software engineers and designers alike, but whenever I am introduced to someone by one of my employees, the word “Boss” makes me cringe slightly. For me, I suppose, it conjures up images of a stuffy office building, wandering around from cubicle to cubicle and standing over people’s shoulders. Or, perhaps, calling people into my office to make them sit uncomfortably across from me as I ramble on about maximizing ROI, squeezing peak efficiency out of the employees or, god forbid, hosting a motivational speaker.
But what makes a good boss in the first place? Does my displeasure in the idea of being a boss stem from the idea that a small team is more manageable? Certainly, things may be a bit different if I had, say, 150 employees to preside over. Surely I can’t give individual attention to each of them. My developers have a philosophy that everyone on a project should have an equal voice over it’s production, and as of yet there haven’t been any problems with this approach; in fact I rather prefer it. Though at times it’s good to remember that there is a difference between the people who started a company vs the people who help run it.
If it comes down to being the strict type and squeezing a little more work per hour out of my employees, or taking a more relaxed approach and having happier employees, I’ll take the road that leads to the bar at the end of the work day.
