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Mixed-Status Relationships

Communicating with superiors and subordinates

Following the U.S. invasion, soldier John Doe was deployed to Iraq, where he was in regular combat and subsequently received decorations for combat valor.³ In February 2004, John Doe reenlisted as a member of the Army National Guard’s Try One Program, which allows veterans to obtain military education and family medical benefits for one year. He reenlisted with the assumption that this would be his final year of service. Although he loved his military job, he wanted to spend more time with his family.

On September 4, 2004, John Doe’s commanding officer ordered him and the rest of his unit to mobilize for active duty in Iraq for a period that would run at least until April 2006—more than two years after his reenlistment period. John Doe felt intensely ambivalent about his superior’s order. He recognized that in the military disobeying the lawful order of a superior is a criminal act, but he had enlisted in Try One because it guaranteed him a fixed end date. John Doe felt that 12 years of exemplary military service and a combat tour in Iraq were enough. So, after much consideration, he decided to challenge the order of his superior officer. He hired an attorney and filed a lawsuit, naming the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army, and his company commander as defendants. The lawsuit was the first of its kind, and though John Doe eventually failed and was sent back to Iraq, it set off a national controversy regarding the power of military commanders to retain soldiers in their units against their will.

Although it might be tempting to characterize the relationships between military superiors and their subordinates as unusual, most organizations are similarly hierarchical, with some people holding positions of power over others. Relationships between coworkers of different organizational status are called mixed-status relationships, and they provide the structural foundation on which most organizations are built (Farace et al., 1977).

Mixed-status relationships take many forms, including officer-subordinate, trainer-trainee, and mentor-protégé. But when most of us think of mixed-status relationships, what leaps to mind are supervisory relationships, ones in which one person outranks and supervises another (Zorn, 1995). Most of these relationships are assigned rather than chosen.

Supervisory relationships are less likely than peer relationships to evolve into friendships because of the power imbalance (Zorn, 1995). In most friendships, people downplay any difference in status and emphasize their equality. Supervisors by definition have more power. They direct their subordinates’ efforts, evaluate their performance, and make decisions regarding their workers’ pay and job security. They may even give orders entailing life-or-death consequences, as in the case of John Doe.

While some supervisors and subordinates can become friends, many organizations discourage or even forbid friendships between supervisors and their subordinates because it’s assumed that such relationships will impair a supervisor’s ability to objectively assess a subordinate’s work performance (Zorn, 1995). Research on organizational decision making supports this assumption. Managers are less likely to give negative feedback to employees they like than to those they dislike (Larson, 1984). This occurs for two reasons. First, we are reluctant to give friends who work under us negative feedback because of the relationship consequences that may ensue—our friend may become angry or accuse us of unfairness. Second, as we saw in Chapter 3, our perceptions of others are substantially biased by whether we like them or not. Consequently, if we’re in the supervisory position, our affection for a subordinate friend may lead us to judge his or her performance more generously than others.