Eggshells and Friends

We’ve all heard at least one of the saying about true friends: there are a lot more than these. ‘Friends help you move, real friends help you move bodies.’ And ‘A friend will bail you out of jail; a real friend will be sitting next to you saying, “Damn that was fun!”.’

So here is my take on the different levels of people we know and how we interact with them. A friend is someone you know well and regard with affection and trust. Most of us have very few of these, maybe 10 at the most. We have even fewer true friends. These are people we trust with almost all of our secrets, but they are also the ones that can hurt us the most with betrayal.

Most people in our lives are not really friends they are just acquaintances. They are simply people with whom we are acquainted. They are the people we may or may not know their names but we see them often enough that we say we know them. We say hi to them on the street or at work but we would not really say we know them personally.

Where am I going with this you may be asking; well, I want you all to think of the last group meeting you were in, maybe a church group, a community organization, or even a business meeting of some sort. Now, with that in mind did you like everyone there? Are any of them friends or were they just all acquaintances?

Now as happens in groups; discussions break out, topics are brought up that not everyone agrees on and the topics are talked about, maybe debated, and sometimes they are even argued loudly. Once this starts everyone takes sides based on what they believe or feel on the topic.

Now that we all have the picture in mind I want each of you to think about how you feel, how you go about bringing up your point or disagreeing with others. Do you just speak your mind or do you temper your opinion so as not to hurt others feelings?

Example: You are in a meeting and there is a person that each meeting has to go into so much detail about how hard their job is and how much they do for the group. They have done this for years and everyone just sits and listens to them, not correcting them, not cutting them short, and not telling them when they are wrong. Now, after this has happened for so long, the person actually believes they are as good as they say and that everyone else thinks so too.

My first thought on this is no one there is truly their friend, a true friend would have told them the truth, shut them up and put them in their place. A true friend would not let them stay at the level there are or allow them to get to the point where no one else at the meetings even listens to them anymore. The rest of the people in the room are just being polite, in their minds. Most would rather just tell the person to sit down and shut up but they don’t for fear that they may be the only one thinking that way. So we are worried about friends of friends and so on.

I have several concerns about this, first is how this is harming the group/organization. It is a waste of meeting time, sets a bad precedence, and leads to bad feelings. A meeting is not the place for egos. Meetings take planning to make sure everyone that needs to be there can make it and that there is enough time for all the topics that have to be discussed. Everyone’s time is valuable so allowing a few people to take it up just to build their own ego is a disservice to everyone else there. I am also concerned that this person may not be the best person for the job if so many people want to shut them up. An organization needs to be run by those that have the best interests of the whole organization and its future in mind. If someone is in a place of authority just for the power or the ego boost this is harming the organization. This may not always be visible, as other may be picking up the slack of the few not doing their jobs, but think how much farther the group could be if everyone was able to put that extra time and energy into their own work?

Now I am just as guilty of this as the next person but I think that will come to an end now that I recognize it as happening. If someone is not doing their job point it out, make it clear why you feel that way and how to correct it. If after time it does not get fixed, remove the person and get someone that will do the job. If they are doing the job but just want to brag about their work to boost their ego, put a stop to it. If the person is in a visible job others will know they are doing it well, if they are not then management should be publicly acknowledging theirs and everyone else’s work performance.

c Shell Franklin