One thing we often notice among employees is that they often spend a lot of their social time with their co-workers. There is an advantage there, of course, because it can make the workplace a much more inviting and engaging place if your employees are friends as well as being co-workers. Plus, let’s face it, they are probably talking about work-related stuff while they are out and about, so you are basically getting some free work out of them. That sounds like a winning situation for you.

This is not unexpected. As the line between work and personal time has blurred over the years, and as we are constantly in touch for work purposes via our smartphones and iPads, it’s hard to tell where work ends and personal time begins, so it’s no surprise the same people will be mixed into both. With leisure time becoming weisure time, it’s natural for our “work friends” to become “friends.”

Where you want to be careful, though, is putting yourself into the same situation. As a leader, you need to be awfully careful about close friendships with people who work for you. The military uses the term “fraternization,” and it’s kept at a minimum because, well, it is hard to order your friends to do something that’s liable to get them killed. You probably don’t have too many situations like that yourself, but even so, you are liable to have things come up that are unpleasant, like picking one person over another for a project, or choosing someone for a promotion, or worst of all, having to fire someone. That’s tough enough when these are nice people but not necessarily your friends. It can be agonizingly difficult when this is who you hang out with on the weekends.

You might even be careful about spending too much social time with your peers. Being a leader brings a certain amount of pressure with it, and when you are away from work it is important to be able to blow off some steam. You need to be careful about complaining about work with other people who work there. You’re liable to get into some sensitive areas that your peers just don’t need to know about, and you have to assume that anything you say to your fellow leaders is liable to get back to others in the company.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t have friends from work, because that really can make things better for you. Just be careful not to invest all your free time in friends from the office; hang onto somebody who’s completely disconnected from what you do for a living. You work hard and you deserve to have some time off, so try to keep it uncomplicated without a lot of strings attached.