I recently did.
It wasn’t due to cancer, at least not the physiological kind. It wasn’t an accident. No one died. The friendship ended, not the lives concerned. The culprit was being in business together.
I have lost three friends in this manner over the years. The cause of demise is essentially unfulfilled expectations. The odd thing is that a “true” friendship, that is, one based on presumably unconditional love and acceptance, can percolate along for decades. Then the one unspoken condition that actually did exist is not met, and there goes the relationship.
This evening I learned how I had failed to meet the expectations of a friend of 23 years. The odd part about it is that I would do the same things all over again. The fact is, I couldn’t live up to the expectations of my friend, even if I had known them in advance.
It’s humbling to know that your best can fail.
It is this lesson that, continually reinforced, presents the biggest opportunity for human progress. I need to see the optimistic side of all tragedy, so forgive me for moving quickly on to the most positive interpretation of this sad loss.
The opportunity is to really apply Don Miguel Ruiz’ proposal to establish new “agreements” with ourselves, in order to advance as sentient beings, and to have an essentially happy life. Ruiz wrote “The Four Agreements”, a book about improving one’s experience of life, day to day. One of Ruiz’ recommended self-agreements is “Don’t take anything personally”. It means to remember that when another person is unhappy, it has nothing to do with you. It is their agreement with themselves to be unhappy.
To the degree I can adopt that attitude (it’s all about attitude, as we know), I will spend less time and energy in self-flagellation. My best failed. Now, on to the next challenge to improve. No delay in continual learning. Which is what life is really all about, right? We are learning creatures. We stop learning, we stop living.
I’m sure many of you out there in the world of business have lost friends and business partners in the course of business relations. In my case, the issue was around conflict of interest. My friend expected me to put my friendship above my fiduciary duty to all constituents. And the manner in which I fulfilled that broader duty was undiplomatic. Time was short, deadlines loomed, yada, yada. So in the pressures of many demands, I failed to properly prepare my friend for the actions I had to take. There was no question in my mind that I had to do what I did. But I could have done it differently, and possibly saved my friendship. Or not. I would have preferred, in retrospect, to have tried.
Some would respond at this point with, “Well, everyone knows you don’t do business with friends or relatives, not without getting into messy relationship issues.”
While that is indeed wise advice, sometimes it’s unavoidable. If you have a long-term view of business relationships, those turn into friendships over time anyway. And why not do business with people who have similar values, interests and motivations, i.e., people you’d likely be friends with?
So my lesson is twofold: When business mixes with friendship, take the time to set expectations of what that will mean to the friendship, priorities, balance of duties and anticipated conflicts of interest. Especially conflicts of interests. Secondly, when you can see a pot hole coming, no matter how busy you might be, slow down and address it with your friend personally. These two strategies may not work, but the odds are better that the friendship will survive the contest that inevitably arises between the duties of a friend and the duties of a business leader who has many constituents to consider.
It may take me a while to adopt the self-agreement that allows me to have no emotional reaction to a 23 year friendship crashing and burning. Right now I’m just feeling the hole where my friend used to be. That’s selfish, but hey, it’s also human. I’m stuck with my species, as it were.