BUSINESS FRIENDS

​In business, you have to separate personal friendship from value-based commercial relationship. You can't be friends with your boss, with your co-worker, and your supervisor, your donors, clients, and collaborators. You can't be hanging out with these folks outside office hours without compromising your professional relationship with them. And if you have subordinates, you can be very nice but professional.
 
In North America, I noticed that people casually call their servers their friends. A neighbor told me that she has a friend who works at The Keg who happens to be Southeast Asian. Seriously, when I met her, she was juggling plates with a great personality but no, she's not a friend at all.  

On the contrary, in the Philippines, when we call someone a "friend," that person passes the test of friendship and committing to it seriously by its actions. As a collective, close-knit society, we know everyone in our communities that way, we tend to be very guarded about it. Outsiders are not accepted easily unless he/she is vouched for by another community member and took the effort to build friendship. It takes a while for Filipinos to be truly friends with another person. And that's how we are culturally wired. Maybe it's about our colonial trauma that came from 333 years of foreign domination. Who knows?

Business friends are different from personal ones. They are great for networking, referrals and recommendations, and expanding your professional circle to serve a commercial or professional purpose. None of us will ever be successful without being part of a community where we cultivate collegial relations for mutual benefit. Beyond this collegiality, it's important to set your boundaries.

I considered my former classmate in my Master's program a dear friend. We talked and spent time together a lot and we also taught at the same university at one point. When she moved to the US, we continued to keep in touch. An online conversation sparked a serious argument and before I knew it, she was out and will not talk to me again. Fast forward in these times, I got an email from her requesting if I can provide a recommendation letter. I can sure do but I don't want to spend time reconnecting because that ship has sailed. I wish her well, but no, thanks.

Some business friends should remain as such and shouldn't have moved to personal friendship. And some do, and I am grateful for each of those that transcended a transaction or loose connection. They're gems and some are just shiny objects.

Believe them if they show you who they truly are.