# Workplace Surgery: Christmas party dilemma

- **Episode:** [152](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/152.md) (2024-12-10)
- **Type:** workplace-surgery
- **Tags:** christmas-party, workplace-culture, dilemma
- **Time:** 44:20–51:41 (start 2660s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/152?t=2660](https://truthliesandwork.com/152?t=2660)

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[44:20] Leanne Elliott: Fancy
[44:21] Al Elliott: The works. It's costing around £300 This is a British person. Hello, Brit. £300 per head, but I felt the team deserved it. Yesterday I accidentally overheard 2 team members discussing plans to leave the official party at 10 PM and head to a local bar where apparently most of the team is planning to continue the night without the management team. I later discovered they've got a WhatsApp group specifically for this. Oh, that's the worst when you find out you're not in a WhatsApp group, isn't it? I later discovered they've got a WhatsApp group specifically for this after-party that excludes all the senior leadership team. I know I shouldn't be hurt. I'm their boss, not their friend. This is good. This is good. But I can't help feeling a bit gutted. We've always had a pretty relaxed culture, and I thought we had good relationships across all levels. Should I accept this as normal and let them have their space? Part of me wants to cancel the expensive venue and just give everyone a bonus, but that's probably me just being a bit petty
[45:10] Leanne Elliott: Lee. You're not their friend. You are their boss. You are taking it personally, and there's really no need
[45:17] Al Elliott: There you go. Thanks for writing in. Well, make this person feel a little bit better
[45:22] Leanne Elliott: What's making you think you don't have good relationships across levels? They're talking about an afterparty. They're not talking about dodging the event altogether. Also, I personally have always felt and found that having some kind of slight separation between leadership teams and employees on a social level is quite good. Because the odd time I have engaged beyond kind of like, you know, I've gone to the after-party, I've spent my night with a drunken employee or 5 telling me about how much they, they dislike such and such from another department, or how if they could change one thing, it would be this, or—
[46:07] Al Elliott: They don't, they don't— listeners don't know. There's only gonna be one listener listening to this. Hello, Alec
[46:11] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, or indeed, they'd be telling me about how much they wish they worked on my contract, or they'd tell me about, you know, problems they're having with their boyfriend. And I understand because we'd built this coaching-type relationship where I'd help them work through challenges to come to a solution. But ultimately, that's not how I wanna spend my Christmas party. So, I got to the point where I was like, I'm gonna start to build in a separation. I do know other managers, hi, Alec, who have been able to kind of walk this line really beautifully and still engage very much in the social side
[46:40] Al Elliott: Yeah
[46:41] Leanne Elliott: and maintain that, um, that professional relationship, um, with people and work from it, especially from a performance perspective as well. So it's, it's really tricky, and I think you need to figure out which one you are. And I think, I'll be honest, I think it's probably the 1 to 2% of leaders that can actually manage to walk that line perfectly. I think more than likely you need to have a slight separation, but that doesn't mean you can't have a great fabulous time until 10. Maybe the duo were that good that they'll push the after-party until 11. Fabulous. It's, it's wonderful that people want to go to your event. Why not have an after-party for the senior leadership team?
[47:15] Al Elliott: Hmm
[47:16] Leanne Elliott: And that's not about us and them. That's just about, we can talk about things that we could never talk about in front of them, um, while they talk about things that they'd never talk about in front of you. You're still building relationships, you're still building camaraderie, you're having that whole event together in the beginning anyway to celebrate as an organization and celebrate each other. I think it's the best of both worlds, isn't it? You have that group thing, together, and then you separate into your groups where you might be able to have that drunken chat in a more appropriate, more appropriate context. Your final thing about maybe canceling it and just giving everyone a bonus— not at this point, you set some expectations— but next year, if this happens, it might be worth doing some investigation of how people would want you to spend that extra money. It might be that actually this time of year, a bonus of even £300 is going to make a massive difference to somebody's Christmas and New Year. So it might just be worth canvassing that opinion generally over the year to see how people might want Um, bonuses to be allocated or indeed social events to be organized. I'd imagine it's going to be a combination of the two, but it's always worth asking. Um, so I think, yeah, don't get offended. Celebrate that everyone— enjoy the fact that everyone has worked hard for this year. It's been really tough. They've come through, they've delivered. They're all going to come to your party and have a fabulous time. You're going to go off with your leadership team afterwards. They're going to go off and have another, you know, fabulous time where they can get up to all sorts and you don't have to worry about seeing on Instagram the next day
[48:36] Al Elliott: Um, and it'll I think that's really good advice. And I think the, um, I think what you've said there, it makes— it's underlined this thought I was reading when I was reading this, is that be careful what you wish for. Uh, you know, if you get— if, if you say, right, well, they're all going to hang around till 2 o'clock in the morning, then you're like, well, they're going to do potentially the things that they wanted to do after 10 at your party. And we won't go into what those things might be, but they do range from illegal to immoral to probably just a bit silly
[49:03] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[49:04] Al Elliott: Um, so you— the good news is that you are having all the good but none of the bad, because then at 10 o'clock they're all going to drift off. And as Leanne said, you might find that they hang around till 11. Take that as a massive win that you've put on such a good, such a good event. But don't try and do that. Just do your best to make sure they're happy. This event is about them. It's about saying thank you to them. It's not about you. And that's such a difficult thing when you're an entrepreneur. Generally, I've always said entrepreneurs are broken. So if you've started, if you started a business, Like, there's probably a good chance, and I've done this, probably a good chance that you started because, because you wanted to have friends, or because you had an idea and you wanted to coalesce around a particular idea and everyone got really excited about it. Unfortunately, that's, that's fine when you're like 3 or 4 people, but when you're like— I think you said you were 12 now— that 12th or 13th person is the pivot. That's when it changes, and it's not about you. So Leanne's advice is amazing. I love it. And also, Leanne's been there and done that, and, um, I think what she says there about not being cornered by Trevor from accounts talking about Betty from— I don't know where Betty works, but that's probably something
[50:07] Leanne Elliott: Finance
[50:07] Al Elliott: Finance. You're probably— well, yeah, you're probably going to be, uh, probably going to be a nice swerve
[50:12] Leanne Elliott: My, my most favorite Christmas do is a leadership, and this isn't meant as a bar humbug, but as you jump in as a national leader, different teams, different Christmas dos, which do you pick? Which one you go to? Do you have to go to all 3? How do you deal with it in the moment? It so happened that every region I was managing had Christmas do when I'd already planned to be in another region. And that happened completely accidentally, that I was not going to be in any of the right regions for the Christmas do. So I spoke to my manager, he's like, just take yourself out for a nice lunch. So I did. I went to Rick Stein's, um, restaurant in Cornwall, had a big bowl of moules frites, a glass of wine, and it was fabulous. Um, it was the best Christmas do I've ever had
[50:53] Al Elliott: Do the do, do the do for your people, and then Go and get yourself a nice big bowl of mussels. Yeah. Crisp white wine, maybe something from Alsace, perhaps a Pinot Gris
[51:03] Leanne Elliott: And pasta is beautiful. Highly recommend Rick's Restaurant
[51:06] Al Elliott: Yeah. Good luck getting in before Christmas though. Okay, that's brilliant, Leanne. I'm loving these. I love these. These are one of my highlights
[51:14] Leanne Elliott: We love that our listeners are in peril and trouble. We love that you're having a really bad time with it
[51:21] Al Elliott: I love that we're benefiting off your, uh, of your bad fortune. Yes. Now, if you've got a question that you'd like me to— if that hasn't If you've got a question you'd like me to put to Leanne, then check the show notes for more details. We are back next Tuesday with another edition of This Week in Work, and of course, this and every Thursday we bring you a great interview with cool guests who have real stories about building amazing workplace cultures