The Diamond Rule

When my Best Friend @Sam Queeno started @Best Friend Friday as part of our AEP Security culture journey no one knew how far it would go. Few of us could have predicted that five years later the videos would include the entire company and many from outside AEP. Even Sam would have been shocked to think that he had a waiting list of people who wanted to tell their @Best Friends at Work (BFAW) stories!

In a previous BFAW memo, Sam addressed the age old fallacy that leaders can’t be friends with those they supervise. Often, leaders cling to the idea that they cannot be friends with a subordinate because they have to hold those subordinate employees accountable and may even have to discipline them. The tragic downside of this approach is that it creates a division between subordinate and supervisor that hampers communication and reduces trust. It also creates an environment where fear keeps the subordinate, who is almost always the subject matter expert, from sharing the truth with the leader. This combination hampers mission alignment and ultimately results in substandard operational performance.

Effective leaders understand the difference between personal life and business and can navigate that dichotomy in a professional manner. Maybe the solution to the dilemma that still exists for many leaders is to treat their team members like best friends. Treating someone like a best friend doesn’t necessarily mean that the team member must become your best friend if you still feel the need to maintain that potentially dangerous divide.

When we were in our formative years, someone in our circle of influence introduced us to the Golden Rule. Our parents, a teacher or even our grandparents talked to us about treating others the way you would like to be treated. The Golden Rule has its origin in some form in the major religious philosophies. In the late 1970s Milton J. Bennett coined the Platinum Rule, where one should treat others the way that they would like to be treated. The shift in focus between the rules centered on the principle of empathy. Both rules focus on being nice to others with either your version of that behavior or their version of that behavior as the guidepost.

In a leadership context, I do not believe that either rule goes far enough. While all leaders should be nice to their team members, I believe that leaders need to dig much deeper. So, I am proposing the Diamond Rule. The Diamond Rule focuses on treating every team member like your best friend. Treating someone like your best friend includes being nice to your team members but goes much further and includes things like:

• Learning about your team members’ likes, dislikes, career aspirations and family by developing a relationship with them
• Creating trust with team members by treating them like your best friend
• Developing a level of trust that will allow the leader to have the hard honest conversations with the team members regarding their contribution to the team mission
• Helping your team members achieve their personal and professional dreams
• Owning their failures while giving them all of the credit for the successes
• Recognizing them for their great performance while correcting them in private

This list is not all inclusive and the beauty of treating team members like best friends is that every relationship will be different and focused on that particular team member. Does treating someone like your best friend make them your best friend? I don’t think so. As our good friend @Lee Oughton the co-founder of @the kindness games tells us “Kindness Counts”. Being kind to someone does not mean that you can’t hold them accountable or have a difficult conversation with them. It simply means that you can have that conversation in a professional and empathetic manner.?Coupling kindness with the Diamond Rule actually allows you to focus on trying to understand why the failure occurred and how to help the team member avoid that challenge in the future.?

The Diamond Rule?puts leaders in a better position to hold others accountable because we hold those we truly care about, our best friends, accountable while we treat them with kindness,?empathy, dignity and respect. I challenge you to move your team to the next level by practicing the Diamond Rule with your team members!