Up close and personal

By JULIE MIDDLETON

You know the way it works - a male colleague is seen having an evidently enjoyable workday lunch with a woman who is not his wife/mother/sister/usual partner. Or a man and woman who work together seem unusually close and friendly. The tongues start wagging.

But what if they really are just friends, perhaps even very close? What if we accepted that sexually-energised but strictly working relationships that don't lead to affairs are possible with opposite-gender colleagues?

What if these relationships can open up a whole new world of business achievement and creativity?

That colleagues can be sexually and emotionally attracted is a given. The belief that this chemistry can be managed and productively channelled into work underpins a model of male-female work relationships that American management consultants and trainers David Eyler and Andrea Baridon promote in their 1991 book More Than Friends, Less Than Lovers.

The pair says we need a new way of thinking about chemistry - one that offers us more of a choice than rumpled sheets or the frustrated attraction that leads to harassment.

People can and should exploit a "third way" - the "energy of workplace attraction without physical sex or falling in love, or avoiding each other altogether and pretending that the workplace is genderless".

Underpinning something not quite romantic, but not platonic, either, they say, is honest work-based motivation.

"Attraction is energy!" says Baridon. "If that energy can be channelled into work, think about what can be accomplished. All of us have felt that special connection that comes with attraction.

"And if you're working on something with that person, don't you look forward to coming to work? And, provided you behave professionally, attraction and all, the work that comes from that energy can be the best you've done."

But intimacy in this context "is not physical," she says. "We're talking about intellectual intimacy, personal connection. You know how it can be if you spend a lot of time with someone you get to know well and like - you can finish each other's sentences, write a portion of an important report in exactly the same style as the other person, conduct a two-person training session as if you're one - cueing off the other person without pre-arrangement."

What Eyler and Baridon suggest is a "consciously-managed relationship founded on mutual trust, respect, and acceptable boundaries that are openly agreed on, communicated, and monitored by both parties".

It's strictly business, limited to shared work time, and not a conspicuous part of everyday life. It shouldn't diminish commitment to a primary partner, either.

The authors don't fall into this category themselves, says Baridon, but they are "extremely intellectually compatible" and have worked together for the last 20 years. Both are employed by the Washington DC-based American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

However, Baridon has had several sexy but sexless relationships with colleagues, and says they often turn into "lasting friendships".

But happenstance, she says, led to the book: they were prompted to develop their thinking after Eyler's book agent - he's published numerous career guides - heard that the pair were often confused as a couple when travelling together for work.

There's no doubt we're well overdue for a re-think of office dynamics. Women have stampeded into the workplace in the last 20 years, upsetting the cosy past where blokes congregated at work and the women at home, limiting the opportunities for cross-gender contact.

Work colleagues are "pre-screened" to have much in common with you, and there are endless opportunities for friendship when you are thrown together at least 40 hours a week.

Eyler and Baridon describe three phrases of a sexy but sexless affair: discovery, establishment and consolidation. They offer examples of how colleagues moving towards discovery might talk to each other - see C12 for their how-to guide.

The book places great emphasis on the importance of mutual respect for boundaries and talking about them openly, using humour or just straight-out reasoning.

You have to be pretty confident to manage this sort of thing, but the logic is that if you can talk as openly as this about more sensitive subjects, your work-related communication will be brilliant and the opportunities to achieve together boundless.

So what's it like inside such a relationship? It's the best of both worlds, says a happily-married professional Aucklander who found herself attracted to a colleague.

"I was tempted to have an affair, but I didn't want to because I adore my man, and in a way that opportunity [to have an affair] clarified what is really important to me.

"But I didn't want to lose the enjoyment I got from this other guy's friendship either, because we got on brilliantly from the first day we met.

She was "up-front" with him about her feelings and the pair talked their way to an understanding: "We sorted out boundaries to keep us on the right side of the line.

And the benefits? "I have gained not only a good friend and colleague, but a mentor as well - I can ask his advice on my work and he will always give me a straight answer, positive or negative," she says. "And people like that are pretty rare in any office. Being able to openly seek his advice gives me so much more confidence - and that can only be good for my work.

"He is in no doubt about the affection, respect and trust I have for him, and that we are very friendly is no secret to my partner, who incidentally has some close female friends. Trust is the key thing here."

Baridon and Eyler quote American lawyers Don and Alicia, who have a similar relationship. Here's Don: "Part of me says it's all or nothing when I have sexual feelings about a woman. But another part of me says it's more complicated than that with a woman like Alicia" - who was happily hitched, pregnant at the time, and, like Don, heading for partnership with the firm.

He adds: "Somehow it has to be possible to play safely with sexy feelings, enjoy them, and still not have to sleep together."

Mary Loftus, in an article on the excellent Psychology Today website, argues that companies which find a way to accommodate workers' mutual attraction "may be fostering the psychological health of modern men and women. The approach could have a positive impact on the competitive health of the company itself".

Think about it: if you had to go out of town with a colleague, you'd far rather it was someone you knew and liked, because you'd know you could be at ease with that person and work uninhibitedly, possibly taking professional risks you might not attempt with others.

It's now 10 years since Eyler and Baridon's "third way" saw them interviewed by radio, television and newspapers all over the United States. So how has people's thinking progressed?

Most of us are still stuck on the scale that has rampant affairs at one end, arms-length formality at the other and nothing in between, laments Eyler. He's disappointed that the initial wave of interest didn't translate to a change in thinking.

"We were simply unable to get people to buy into anything other than the traditional sexual affair. We found people too focused on the lurid side to seriously consider our point of view."

People were keen on a new way of looking at workplace waves and cheered them on, he recalls, "but were so afraid they'd be identified as having an improper attraction, that they hesitated to join the conversation". However, Eyler remains "convinced that it's a valid and useful concept". It's up to the rest of us to make it happen.

* The Deyler-Baridon book More Than Friends, Less Than Lovers: managing sexual attraction in the workplace, published by Jeremy P Tarcher, is available from internet bookstore Amazon. Second-hand copies are available through the internet. Auckland City Libraries also has a copy.

Read the Eyler-Baridon Psychology Today paper, Far More Than Friendship, on the internet and putting "Eyler" in the search window.