before calling it friendship
Over the past few days, I have been sorting through some old emails. The same phrases kept recurring with almost liturgical regularity: ‘we’ll be in touch’, ‘we’ll come back to this’, ‘the proposal is interesting’, ‘perhaps later on’.
Next to those lines, in my archive, I had written: response to be checked, project to be defined, no follow-up.
The future possesses a remarkable diplomatic virtue: it allows us to promise without yet having to answer for the consequences. Those who use it well preserve the image of being available; those who place too much trust in it continue to wait, prepare material, imagine developments and leave a door open for someone who has never actually decided to walk through it.
Over recent months, I have brought several relationships to an end. In some cases, I had proposed articles, ideas or collaborations. In others, I had offered time, experience, contacts or work. Sometimes replies arrived only when I decided to withdraw the proposal; at other times they remained suspended for long enough to make any follow-up pointless.
I have watched enthusiasm dissolve at the first precise request. I have seen solemn declarations of esteem shrink, with admirable composure, into perfectly polite silence.
It would be easy to attribute intentions to the people involved. At times, it would even be comforting. I prefer to stop at behaviour.
Intentions inhabit other people’s consciences, and their archives are difficult to consult. A reply sent, a promise kept, an assignment clearly defined, work properly acknowledged, these leave traces. And traces can be examined.
In the third letter to Lucilius, Seneca begins with a tiny contradiction which, for that very reason, is revealing. Lucilius calls a man his ‘friend’ and, a few lines later, advises Seneca not to confide certain things to him.
Seneca suggests putting events back into their proper order: first examine the person, then admit them into your friendship; once chosen, trust them.
I have often taken the opposite route.
I have offered trust, availability and work in advance. I have extended credit before knowing the debtor’s reliability. Observation came later, when the relationship had already consumed time, attention and energy.
I believed that offering trust helped others show the best part of themselves. Sometimes it did. At other times, I financed, with my own time, a long and costly investigation into someone else’s intentions.
Seneca also warns against the opposite extreme. Trusting everyone leaves us open to deception; distrusting everyone reduces risk and impoverishes life. Maturity requires something more difficult: judgement before trust.
Sympathy is a clue. So are courtesy, shared interests, stimulating conversation and even declarations of esteem. Repeated behaviour provides far stronger evidence.
In the ninth letter, Seneca takes the argument one step further and distinguishes friendship from usefulness.
The wise person desires friends because he wishes to practise friendship: to have someone to help, accompany and protect. If we choose someone chiefly for the advantage they may bring us, the relationship is born with an expiry date already written in invisible ink. We cannot yet see it, but sooner or later it will appear.
When the advantage disappears, interested friendship tends to fade with remarkable punctuality.
A professional relationship may perfectly well arise from mutual interest and create value for both parties. It has a dignity of its own and requires no disguise. Friendship follows a different measure.
Confusing the two creates an ambiguous territory in which we end up asking of a friend what should properly be entrusted to a professional, or calling something friendship when it is simply unpaid availability that happens to be convenient.
Seneca addresses a similar problem in the sixth book of On Benefits, using the doctor and the teacher as examples.
Payment remunerates the time, skill and work required. Yet a doctor may take particular care of a patient, or a teacher may devote to a pupil more attention than the role strictly demands. At that point, something additional comes into being: freely given goodwill, capable of generating gratitude and affection.
The two dimensions may meet. It is nevertheless wise to distinguish them, because the distinction protects both.
I have learned, somewhat late, to call relationships by their proper names: friendship, acquaintance, mutual esteem, exploratory discussion, editorial proposal, professional assignment.
Each has a dignity of its own. An interesting acquaintance does not have to become a friendship. A pleasant conversation does not imply collaboration. Collaboration does not automatically produce a personal bond. Esteem, however sincere, remains esteem until behaviour builds something more.
Confusion tends chiefly to favour those who receive time, attention or work without assuming a corresponding responsibility.
Seneca’s principle, judge first and trust afterwards, therefore reaches far beyond friendship. It also applies when someone proposes work to me. And it applies to me when I decide how much time to devote to a proposal whose contours are still uncertain.
For this reason, I prefer to make explicit what I ask of anyone who wishes to involve me.
Professionalism can also be measured by the ability to formulate a request clearly.
‘I’d like to involve you’ may open a conversation. It is a beginning, nothing more.
An assignment begins when someone can describe the concrete problem and the consequences it is producing; the result they wish to achieve or the decision they need to prepare; the context in which the problem exists; the people who are authorised to decide; the material available; the constraints and missing information; the expected timescale and the effort required.
It is also necessary to state clearly what is being proposed: a professional assignment, an editorial collaboration, an interview, an informal discussion, a voluntary activity. Where financial terms are involved, they too belong to the proposal and should be stated.
For an editorial collaboration, one should at least know the publication venue, the subject, the format, the review timetable and the person who will take the final decision.
For a professional assignment, it is necessary to know who is sponsoring the project, what scope must be examined and which people, data, documents and systems will be accessible.
An informal exchange is equally welcome when presented as such. It has no need to wear the ceremonial cloak of a collaboration that nobody has yet decided to begin.
Three precise paragraphs will often prepare a better conversation than an hour spent in an exploratory video call with no clear subject.
I can read the request, assess it, state my limitations immediately, offer a first working hypothesis or explain that the problem requires skills different from mine. In each case, we have already achieved something: we have avoided wasting time.
My contribution becomes useful when an organisation needs to understand how it actually works.
I reconstruct activities, responsibilities, information, decisions, dependencies and exceptions. I analyse and improve processes. I design planning and control tools, governance systems for projects, programmes and portfolios, management reporting, knowledge management and document management.
Jira, Confluence, BigPicture, eazyBI and other tools enter the picture when they help make work observable, understandable and verifiable. They come later. First, the problem must be understood, otherwise the tool risks becoming an excellent solution in search of a question.
In the first book of the Meditations, Marcus Aurelius recalls, among the qualities he learnt from Severus, frankness in dealing with friends: they were not forced to guess what he wanted or did not want, because he made it clear.
It is a rare quality in friendship and a valuable one in work.
Clarity is sometimes mistaken for coldness. I regard it as a form of respect. It allows the other person to know what we are asking and, above all, preserves their freedom to accept or refuse without having to decipher implications.
Perhaps the same principle applies to friendship.
Before using that word, it is worth allowing time the right to testify.
Words can anticipate the future. Behaviour, with greater modesty and far greater precision, describes the present.
A clear proposal does not guarantee that we will work together. It allows us to discover quickly whether we should.
And the time that two people manage not to waste is, after all, the first thing of value they have already produced together.