The recent turmoil with the former CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, is an extreme example of the danger of romantic relationships at work, especially extramarital ones.
Add in allegations of international espionage and cutting-edge technology angles, and you have a world-class scandal — at the root of which is a tale as old as time: Mixing business and romance is complicated.
I’m the former VP of HR at Microsoft, and I’ve also been happily married for 43 years to someone I met at work. I understand why one’s job is a place to meet people, and I reject the assumption that all workplace romance is a mistake. I’ve seen it work well, but those are the exceptions — it also gets messy quickly, even with the best of intentions.
Consider the outsiders
Relationships are hard enough without the challenges of work. Add in performance evaluation, promotions, and payroll, and it quickly makes for a complex soup that gets bitter because of the subtlety and judgment involved.
I know this complexity firsthand. As a software development manager earlier in my career, I managed someone and worked for their husband, the CEO. The arrangement was set up to avoid having her work directly for her spouse, but it left me squarely in the middle.
I gave her a glowing performance review; she criticized my embellishment. On her next review, I was honest and direct; her husband rebuked me and asked me to change it.
There were other, less direct examples of how the business-related relationship affected everyone around it: Did her colleagues refrain from criticizing her work because of who her husband was? Did her arguments in product discussions always win?
People outside the relationship may have modified their behavior in ways large and small, and that impact is almost always unknown or uncertain.
Reporting line isn’t the key
Relationships between a person and their direct or indirect manager are a problem; that’s why most companies explicitly prohibit that. But influence spreads well outside the reporting chain of command. Of course, at the CEO level, there is no role that is outside the line of reporting, making any internal affair problematic.
In my career, I’ve seen this happen with even the best of intentions — even with everyone, including HR, being aware of a relationship, with it all in the open. Despite the most earnest statements from senior leaders reinforcing the need for fair treatment, honest appraisal, and open communication about their partner, the relationship has an impact.
Someone in a relationship with a senior manager wields power, even unintentionally. The relationship can also have a chilling effect on others, or draw unwarranted scrutiny and criticism because of jealousy or concern over lax standards.
HR can’t always expect honest answers about the impact. They may try to investigate or uncover bias or other impacts and run into roadblocks. Often people won’t admit it, or worry that HR is not an objective observer in the situation. After all, they work for the company. It’s a clear no-win situation.
Good intentions are not enough
I’ve seen very mature and respectful relationships at work handled well; I’m living proof of that.
My now-wife and I worked for a company that had a policy against all in-company dating. We were peers; her team used the computer systems I managed. We never left work at the same time or told anyone we were dating. Yet I can still hear the joking my wife got when her colleagues wondered aloud if her printouts came out faster because I was in charge of the printer.
These days, the very best and most mature senior leader can bend over backward to ensure that their partner gets no special treatment. They can recuse themselves from, and request outside review of, all decisions regarding their partner. They can be the most responsible leader possible.
But they can’t control the impact on others. They can never know for certain how others will see it or what others will say, or not say. The relationship will always have the potential to taint any decision that involves judgment, which all the most important decisions do. Compensation, promotion, and performance are all judgment calls — the relationship has the potential to color them all.
Even worse, if the affair is extramarital, it comes with a host of other concerns. There are wide-ranging impacts on company perceptions, internal morale, and even blackmail and other risks. It changes from being ill-advised to being potentially catastrophic.
Departure is the cleanest break
The only clean break is for one of the people in the relationship to move on — to go work for some other firm, but that isn’t always straightforward. If your spouse is a senior executive, there’s impact. Suppliers, competitors, or unrelated companies can see and want to leverage that influence. But at least the direct possibility is removed.
The junior person doesn’t have to be the one who leaves. Often the senior person has better job prospects. So it shouldn’t be taken for granted that the junior person is the one to go.
But the cleanest solution is that one of them should go.
Romance is not the problem
Romance in business is hard to avoid completely. People are side-by-side for hours at a time. Relationships can and will happen. And I can say from personal experience that they can end well.
But they often get complicated, especially when authority is in the equation.
My recommendation is strong: Separate work and personal lives as quickly and cleanly as possible. Don’t ask everyone else to make way for your relationship. They often can’t.
